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>Therein lies the problem. The district attorney refuses to seek jail time for drug dealing or most any other offense not involving direct, physical violence.

>Therein lies the problem. The district attorney refuses to seek jail time for drug dealing or most any other offense not involving direct, physical violence. I’m not really clear how this restraining order helps what you’re describing. Do you support the ability of the police to impose jail time in a way that circumvents the (elected) prosecutor’s office? >If you compare person prison years, the U.S. is an extreme outlier. However, by prison admittances per year, we're actually not extreme at all, even compared to Europe. This is factually wrong. It entirely hinges on extremely warped interpretation of data that can only be generated by a person or organization that starts with a desired version of reality and works backward to justify that position. Out of curiosity, in general do you view yourself as somebody that could at some point —in any way whatsoever— piss off a cop? I’ve noticed that people that advocate for longer jail sentences and does the whole “humans won’t adjust their behavior unless every cop gets a rocket launcher and a teleporter to send criminals directly to prison forever” bit answer “No.”

mlyle 4y ago
> I’ve noticed that people that advocate for longer jail sentences I'm a bit confused. I read the above poster as advocating for shorter prison sentences, but not to overcorrect in making the change. Did you misread the person you're replying to?
- braingenious 4y ago
  How do you interpret this point (and subsequent paragraph) from the post I was responding to? > To those who say that less jail time is good, I would point out a fallacy in the common criminal justice reform … At another part in that post this person brought up issues with lack of prosecution (which by definition means less jail time) and diversion (ditto). So… in your estimation the author was… advocating for more people to go to jail but also supporting the idea of shorter sentences while pointing out that people that say that advocating for shorter sentences means to fall for a fallacy? This poster wants to point out that the push for less jail time is the result of a fallacy, but thinks it’s good?? Did you read the post I responded to? What did you think was trying to be expressed?
  - wahern 4y ago
    The context of this discussion is deterrence of drug dealing in a city with a legitimate substance abuse mortality emergency--in other words, where any marginal deterrence effect, such as slightly reduced drug availability, might directly translate to double-digit saved lives over the course of a single year. And one aspect of this issue (apropos the injunction rejected by the appellate court) is that the city has an elected DA who is ideologically opposed to any incarceration for non-violent offenses. (And to be clear, in his view drug dealing is non-violent, even when carrying a gun and creating an implicit threat of violence--which I don't necessarily find unfair, just trying to be clear that few if any arrested drug dealers face the threat of incarceration under Boudin as a prosecutorial policy matter.) While I think politics has begun to corrupt Boudin, I actually think he's an atypically sincere, honest (though trending down--politics corrupts), principled person, and I agree in principle with most of his policies. However, because there's effectively no incarceration for this class of offense, when drug dealers are arrested they're typically back out on the same corner in a couple days. Over and over and over again--not hyperbole. (This is part of the reason why SF police have mostly stopped arresting dealers. Just part, though--I'm not apologizing for the SF police departments larger diligence issues.) Note that because Boudin is a principled person in this regard, he laudably refuses to abuse pretrial detainment when he has no intention to seek incarceration, much to the frustration of a system that sadly relied so heavily on that abuse before. The commonly held belief is that drug dealers, especially street-level, are basically fungible and quickly replaced. There's clearly truth to that. But now this belief is being tested to the extreme. It's also true, as any student of economics would tell you, that there's always some marginal effect to a policy, even a crappy one; the real question is the magnitude of the effect. (And to avoid muddying the equity waters, I'm ignoring the fact that the threat of incarceration provides leverage when trying to get street-level dealers to flip; FWIW, I do agree coerced plea deals is a legitimate problem, but notably also an issue where scope and severity matter, not simply nominal existence of an incarceration threat.) Usually in public policy debates we stick to qualitative aspects rather than quantitative, justifiably or not. But Boudin's radical anti-incarceration policies has made SF a fascinating experiment where the precise magnitude (whether as deterrence or simply as removing a criminal temporarily from the population) could make a signifiant difference; it's the only relevant question left, at least in the short-medium term. The present situation in the city is a difficult one for Boudin, politically speaking. It's becoming clear (at least to me) that Boudin is hiding behind the ambiguity in incarceration statistics. I also think this must be willful, because Boudin is also committed to shorter incarceration sentences for violent crimes, so he clearly understands there's a meaningful, consequential distinction between some jail time and none. (FWIW, I support a lighter sentencing policy for violent offenses, and if this were his only policy I'd be glad someone with the backbone--or at least intransigence--of Boudin were in office. Most other viable SF district attorney candidates would have a similar policy, at least nominally, but might not have the wherewithal to follow through to the same extent.) Almost everyone agrees that incarceration rates (i.e. per capita rates) are too high, at least at a national level. (I haven't found good per capita incarceration rates for San Francisco specifically, but almost certainly it's substantially below national levels, and likely has been for awhile given San Francisco has been at the forefront of criminal justice reform decades before Boudin. But let's just say they're still unjustifiably high.) As long as people don't or can't distinguish between no jail time vs lesser jail time, Boudin can sustain greater support than he could otherwise. Most voters are strongly committed to improved criminal justice equity, even when it comes with real negative costs. Boudin has been able to position his [extreme] policies as a choice between pursuing or rejecting meaningful reform, full stop. But if the prospect of achieving all or most of that improved equity without some of the extreme and deadly costs currently demonstrated in SF, then what remnants of local support Boudin enjoys would quickly crumble. (National support for Boudin would likely be sustained as after holding Boudin up as an archetype, national reform advocates are afraid a Boudin loss would benefit their opponents. For the same reason they're also afraid of the consequences of allowing any debate over this distinction in metrics, period. In America that's why we can't have nice things--so much, including acceptable policy alternatives on an increase array of policy areas, is radically polarized.) I think it's important to make these distinctions. I think they matter. And in SF, they might even matter to the sum of demonstrably, significantly reduced deaths. But I admit that's not at all guaranteed. The marginal effect of pursuing even short incarceration for repeat offending street dealers might indeed be de minimis--either intrinsically or simply dwarfed by the negative effects of the city's broader so-called "harm reduction" strategy wrt drug use.
wahern 4y ago
> I’m not really clear how this restraining order helps what you’re describing. Do you support the ability of the police to impose jail time in a way that circumvents the (elected) prosecutor’s office? There are absolutely better policies. The injunctions are an act of desperation in the face of a mounting death toll. > > If you compare person prison years, the U.S. is an extreme outlier. However, by prison admittances per year, we're actually not extreme at all, even compared to Europe. > This is factually wrong. It entirely hinges on extremely warped interpretation of data that can only be generated by a person or organization that starts with a desired version of reality and works backward to justify that position. Care to point out how its factually wrong. (EDIT: I said person years, but I meant per capita. But if you're even the least bit charitable it's the same thing.) For the record I'm not reciting some Heritage Foundation policy paper. In fact, I discovered this factoid on a whim as it occurred to me that the incarceration rate metric was ambiguous. In doing so I found only a single partisan research paper, which hasn't seem to garnered any attention. I also went back into some criminal justice literature I've read over the years and was also surprised to see this gap--plenty of scholars have pointed out issues with the severity of U.S. sentencing, but don't seem to have given much analysis to this particular aspect of the data. I also have a formal legal education and likewise don't remember anyone pointing out this distinction--professors and law students alike never seemed to appreciate that there might anything meaningful about the details of the popular metric, probably because for the past 20 years the narrative regarding the need for criminal justice reform has been largely universally accepted across the political spectrum, at least in academia--there was no disputing that too many people were in jail. Prison admittance data exists, however, from various primary government sources in both the U.S. and Europe; it just hasn't been assembled properly for convenient, comparative consumption. If I was a paid researched I would absolutely spend the time to assemble it properly and make the case. Instead I spent one night on it and, well, I can't even say I was convinced of anything--it's just a simple matter of numbers. If you give a moments thought, the metric is problematic, and when you look at the admittance numbers there's simply nothing to seriously dispute. There's inconsistency regarding whether pretrial detainment is included in various statistics--for many, it seems to be included, but I can't confidently say that's true for all the sources I found. That said, countries, like France, have pretrial detainment rates similar to the U.S; and even in the most pessimistic scenario least favorable to the U.S., admittances couldn't even begin to create a gap of the size the U.S. has regarding per capita--at best a fractional difference, not large multiples! It's also entirely intuitive and sensical when you stand back and look at things. Consider that in most countries, especially in Europe and the Americas, murder has a maximum penalty of 20 years jail time. In the U.S. life sentences are not uncommon. And consider the effect of things like three-strikes laws, which during the 1990s and early 2000s could turn a serious of felonies into life sentence. Or drug laws--if someone spends a year in the U.K. for a drug offense (not a real figure), but 5 years in the U.S., it's not at all surprising that per capita incarceration for drug offenses would be 3-5x greater in the U.S. even when both the U.K. and the U.S. have the same jail sentencing rate for drug offenders. When judging per capita (which is absolutely the metric used in all public policy discussion numbers, and absolutely the one used for the infamous 7x outlier statistic), the incarceration rate is undeniably horrible. There's also an obvious curve that matches the history of the most recent "tough on crime" phase. By this unit the U.S. peaked at 7x about a decade ago, but today is now down to around 4x. However, prison admittances have remained much more consistent, at least on average across the country. There's are definitely some interesting questions regarding relative effects of absence of prosecution vs lighter sentencing, and how it might relate or not relate to policies preferences between, say, SF and Texas, but for a first-order approximation and in the context of the magnitude of the huge per capita incarceration rate discrepancy between the U.S. and elsewhere, it's all really irrelevant. The takeaway is that the primary factor in the unacceptably high per capita incarceration rate in the U.S. is duration of sentencing, not the prevalence of incarceration as a penalty.
nickysielicki 4y ago
> I’m not really clear how this restraining order helps what you’re describing. Do you support the ability of the police to impose jail time in a way that circumvents the (elected) prosecutor’s office? Absolutely not, but when the courts and the police can’t act together, you can understand why the police reach desperately for some sort of enforcement — any enforcement. A few months ago I drove through the area and it’s ridiculous. It’s a real life recreation of hamsterdam from The Wire, with all the problems that existed in the show. So many people nodding face down on the sidewalk that genuinely look like dead bodies. Is that what progressive and empathetic drug law looks like? There are certain drugs like weed where the main risk 15 years ago was the legal risk. But the main risk for heroin isn’t the legal risk, it’s the risk that you find yourself face down nodding out on a sidewalk in the tenderloin from fentanyl. Not enforcing reasonable drug laws is good for who? The drug users? No. The drug dealers? Who cares. The city? No.

mlyle 4y ago

> I’ve noticed that people that advocate for longer jail sentences I'm a bit confused. I read the above poster as advocating for shorter prison sentences, but not to overcorrect in making the change. Did you misread the person you're replying to?

braingenious 4y ago
How do you interpret this point (and subsequent paragraph) from the post I was responding to? > To those who say that less jail time is good, I would point out a fallacy in the common criminal justice reform … At another part in that post this person brought up issues with lack of prosecution (which by definition means less jail time) and diversion (ditto). So… in your estimation the author was… advocating for more people to go to jail but also supporting the idea of shorter sentences while pointing out that people that say that advocating for shorter sentences means to fall for a fallacy? This poster wants to point out that the push for less jail time is the result of a fallacy, but thinks it’s good?? Did you read the post I responded to? What did you think was trying to be expressed?
- wahern 4y ago
  The context of this discussion is deterrence of drug dealing in a city with a legitimate substance abuse mortality emergency--in other words, where any marginal deterrence effect, such as slightly reduced drug availability, might directly translate to double-digit saved lives over the course of a single year. And one aspect of this issue (apropos the injunction rejected by the appellate court) is that the city has an elected DA who is ideologically opposed to any incarceration for non-violent offenses. (And to be clear, in his view drug dealing is non-violent, even when carrying a gun and creating an implicit threat of violence--which I don't necessarily find unfair, just trying to be clear that few if any arrested drug dealers face the threat of incarceration under Boudin as a prosecutorial policy matter.) While I think politics has begun to corrupt Boudin, I actually think he's an atypically sincere, honest (though trending down--politics corrupts), principled person, and I agree in principle with most of his policies. However, because there's effectively no incarceration for this class of offense, when drug dealers are arrested they're typically back out on the same corner in a couple days. Over and over and over again--not hyperbole. (This is part of the reason why SF police have mostly stopped arresting dealers. Just part, though--I'm not apologizing for the SF police departments larger diligence issues.) Note that because Boudin is a principled person in this regard, he laudably refuses to abuse pretrial detainment when he has no intention to seek incarceration, much to the frustration of a system that sadly relied so heavily on that abuse before. The commonly held belief is that drug dealers, especially street-level, are basically fungible and quickly replaced. There's clearly truth to that. But now this belief is being tested to the extreme. It's also true, as any student of economics would tell you, that there's always some marginal effect to a policy, even a crappy one; the real question is the magnitude of the effect. (And to avoid muddying the equity waters, I'm ignoring the fact that the threat of incarceration provides leverage when trying to get street-level dealers to flip; FWIW, I do agree coerced plea deals is a legitimate problem, but notably also an issue where scope and severity matter, not simply nominal existence of an incarceration threat.) Usually in public policy debates we stick to qualitative aspects rather than quantitative, justifiably or not. But Boudin's radical anti-incarceration policies has made SF a fascinating experiment where the precise magnitude (whether as deterrence or simply as removing a criminal temporarily from the population) could make a signifiant difference; it's the only relevant question left, at least in the short-medium term. The present situation in the city is a difficult one for Boudin, politically speaking. It's becoming clear (at least to me) that Boudin is hiding behind the ambiguity in incarceration statistics. I also think this must be willful, because Boudin is also committed to shorter incarceration sentences for violent crimes, so he clearly understands there's a meaningful, consequential distinction between some jail time and none. (FWIW, I support a lighter sentencing policy for violent offenses, and if this were his only policy I'd be glad someone with the backbone--or at least intransigence--of Boudin were in office. Most other viable SF district attorney candidates would have a similar policy, at least nominally, but might not have the wherewithal to follow through to the same extent.) Almost everyone agrees that incarceration rates (i.e. per capita rates) are too high, at least at a national level. (I haven't found good per capita incarceration rates for San Francisco specifically, but almost certainly it's substantially below national levels, and likely has been for awhile given San Francisco has been at the forefront of criminal justice reform decades before Boudin. But let's just say they're still unjustifiably high.) As long as people don't or can't distinguish between no jail time vs lesser jail time, Boudin can sustain greater support than he could otherwise. Most voters are strongly committed to improved criminal justice equity, even when it comes with real negative costs. Boudin has been able to position his [extreme] policies as a choice between pursuing or rejecting meaningful reform, full stop. But if the prospect of achieving all or most of that improved equity without some of the extreme and deadly costs currently demonstrated in SF, then what remnants of local support Boudin enjoys would quickly crumble. (National support for Boudin would likely be sustained as after holding Boudin up as an archetype, national reform advocates are afraid a Boudin loss would benefit their opponents. For the same reason they're also afraid of the consequences of allowing any debate over this distinction in metrics, period. In America that's why we can't have nice things--so much, including acceptable policy alternatives on an increase array of policy areas, is radically polarized.) I think it's important to make these distinctions. I think they matter. And in SF, they might even matter to the sum of demonstrably, significantly reduced deaths. But I admit that's not at all guaranteed. The marginal effect of pursuing even short incarceration for repeat offending street dealers might indeed be de minimis--either intrinsically or simply dwarfed by the negative effects of the city's broader so-called "harm reduction" strategy wrt drug use.

wahern 4y ago

> I’m not really clear how this restraining order helps what you’re describing. Do you support the ability of the police to impose jail time in a way that circumvents the (elected) prosecutor’s office? There are absolutely better policies. The injunctions are an act of desperation in the face of a mounting death toll. > > If you compare person prison years, the U.S. is an extreme outlier. However, by prison admittances per year, we're actually not extreme at all, even compared to Europe. > This is factually wrong. It entirely hinges on extremely warped interpretation of data that can only be generated by a person or organization that starts with a desired version of reality and works backward to justify that position. Care to point out how its factually wrong. (EDIT: I said person years, but I meant per capita. But if you're even the least bit charitable it's the same thing.) For the record I'm not reciting some Heritage Foundation policy paper. In fact, I discovered this factoid on a whim as it occurred to me that the incarceration rate metric was ambiguous. In doing so I found only a single partisan research paper, which hasn't seem to garnered any attention. I also went back into some criminal justice literature I've read over the years and was also surprised to see this gap--plenty of scholars have pointed out issues with the severity of U.S. sentencing, but don't seem to have given much analysis to this particular aspect of the data. I also have a formal legal education and likewise don't remember anyone pointing out this distinction--professors and law students alike never seemed to appreciate that there might anything meaningful about the details of the popular metric, probably because for the past 20 years the narrative regarding the need for criminal justice reform has been largely universally accepted across the political spectrum, at least in academia--there was no disputing that too many people were in jail. Prison admittance data exists, however, from various primary government sources in both the U.S. and Europe; it just hasn't been assembled properly for convenient, comparative consumption. If I was a paid researched I would absolutely spend the time to assemble it properly and make the case. Instead I spent one night on it and, well, I can't even say I was convinced of anything--it's just a simple matter of numbers. If you give a moments thought, the metric is problematic, and when you look at the admittance numbers there's simply nothing to seriously dispute. There's inconsistency regarding whether pretrial detainment is included in various statistics--for many, it seems to be included, but I can't confidently say that's true for all the sources I found. That said, countries, like France, have pretrial detainment rates similar to the U.S; and even in the most pessimistic scenario least favorable to the U.S., admittances couldn't even begin to create a gap of the size the U.S. has regarding per capita--at best a fractional difference, not large multiples! It's also entirely intuitive and sensical when you stand back and look at things. Consider that in most countries, especially in Europe and the Americas, murder has a maximum penalty of 20 years jail time. In the U.S. life sentences are not uncommon. And consider the effect of things like three-strikes laws, which during the 1990s and early 2000s could turn a serious of felonies into life sentence. Or drug laws--if someone spends a year in the U.K. for a drug offense (not a real figure), but 5 years in the U.S., it's not at all surprising that per capita incarceration for drug offenses would be 3-5x greater in the U.S. even when both the U.K. and the U.S. have the same jail sentencing rate for drug offenders. When judging per capita (which is absolutely the metric used in all public policy discussion numbers, and absolutely the one used for the infamous 7x outlier statistic), the incarceration rate is undeniably horrible. There's also an obvious curve that matches the history of the most recent "tough on crime" phase. By this unit the U.S. peaked at 7x about a decade ago, but today is now down to around 4x. However, prison admittances have remained much more consistent, at least on average across the country. There's are definitely some interesting questions regarding relative effects of absence of prosecution vs lighter sentencing, and how it might relate or not relate to policies preferences between, say, SF and Texas, but for a first-order approximation and in the context of the magnitude of the huge per capita incarceration rate discrepancy between the U.S. and elsewhere, it's all really irrelevant. The takeaway is that the primary factor in the unacceptably high per capita incarceration rate in the U.S. is duration of sentencing, not the prevalence of incarceration as a penalty.

nickysielicki 4y ago

> I’m not really clear how this restraining order helps what you’re describing. Do you support the ability of the police to impose jail time in a way that circumvents the (elected) prosecutor’s office? Absolutely not, but when the courts and the police can’t act together, you can understand why the police reach desperately for some sort of enforcement — any enforcement. A few months ago I drove through the area and it’s ridiculous. It’s a real life recreation of hamsterdam from The Wire, with all the problems that existed in the show. So many people nodding face down on the sidewalk that genuinely look like dead bodies. Is that what progressive and empathetic drug law looks like? There are certain drugs like weed where the main risk 15 years ago was the legal risk. But the main risk for heroin isn’t the legal risk, it’s the risk that you find yourself face down nodding out on a sidewalk in the tenderloin from fentanyl. Not enforcing reasonable drug laws is good for who? The drug users? No. The drug dealers? Who cares. The city? No.