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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

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.
- braingenious 4y ago
  >The context of this discussion is deterrence of drug dealing in a city… No. It literally is not. This article is about: “CA Appeals Court Rules San Francisco Cannot Ban Tenderloin Drug Dealers” Subject: California Appeals Court Verb: rules (against) Object: San Francisco(/SFPD) What has happened in this news article was an accounting of how multiple courts in California have ruled that this injunction violated people’s rights. The SFPD suffered an embarrassing loss because they tried some absolutely bonkers loophole-building as part of a petulant tantrum, and multiple courts struck it down for good reason. That’s what the article is literally about. You would like drug dealing to be the topic, or overreach by prosecutors (but not police), or a weird bad-faith equivocation with protections for abused spouses, or some abstract concept of what’s mathematically optimal or acceptable for jail populations. However, the article about how multiple courts have ruled that the silly baby attempt at Judge Dredd was unconstitutional is about… how multiple courts have ruled that the silly baby attempt at Judge Dredd was unconstitutional. Anyway, you can buy fentanyl in prison! Or order it off the dark web and get it sent to your mailbox. I am assuming you know this, which means your request for a wild expansion of police powers, despite courts ruling that is terrible for human rights, is something that you would advocate for anyway.
mlyle 4y ago
> 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? The author likes to write opaque walls of text. But in subsequent comments, it's become very clear that he is saying: * The US sends a similar number of people to jail as other jurisdictions, but is an extreme outlier on sentence length. He's provided (weak) factual support for this, and I find this point believable-- not an idea to outright reject like you have. * The US has a political system that tends to drastically overcorrect on problems, especially in individual locales. * Sentence lengths should be reduced, but this doesn't mean jail should be eliminated or deterrence effects should be completely lost. Which is pretty close to my initial read. I'll admit some motivated reasoning on my part: I'm uncomfortable with the US's incarceration rate but have also been uncomfortable with excessive use of prosecutorial discretion in places like SF to basically ignore a huge fraction of "quality of life" crime. The author proposing a lens to look at this which could lead to policy that reduces the incarceration rate but doesn't give up on petty crime is appealing-- it's just time to think about whether it's true.
- braingenious 4y ago
  The author has now written literally thousands of words that boil down to “I think the cops should be able to put those 28 people in jail even if the DA disagrees.” What he hasn’t addressed (I think, I haven’t read every tome he’s posted) is that this DA is who the people of SF voted for. When people complain about “prosecutorial discretion” without talking about campaigning and voting for another DA, it’s common to hear loads of drivel that boils down to “I know the people of this city want these prosecution policies, but I disagree with them. Rather than try to change minds, I support a unilateral transfer of power to a group that says they have my approved ideology.” The problem with that line of thinking is that it puts the cops above the electorate in terms of influence. It’s a terribly slippery slope, but it’s very common in America. “Freedom and liberty means that the police arrest people that I don’t like! Even if society in general doesn’t want the police to have that much power, who cares? I, Supreme Understander, am more worthy and human than them!” Edit: Oh wait the author did respond to another poster that brought up replacing the DA or seeking a remedy from the state. Sounds like they would like that, but for whatever 700-word reason it’s important to shift unilateral power to the police either way. Just in case.

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.

braingenious 4y ago
>The context of this discussion is deterrence of drug dealing in a city… No. It literally is not. This article is about: “CA Appeals Court Rules San Francisco Cannot Ban Tenderloin Drug Dealers” Subject: California Appeals Court Verb: rules (against) Object: San Francisco(/SFPD) What has happened in this news article was an accounting of how multiple courts in California have ruled that this injunction violated people’s rights. The SFPD suffered an embarrassing loss because they tried some absolutely bonkers loophole-building as part of a petulant tantrum, and multiple courts struck it down for good reason. That’s what the article is literally about. You would like drug dealing to be the topic, or overreach by prosecutors (but not police), or a weird bad-faith equivocation with protections for abused spouses, or some abstract concept of what’s mathematically optimal or acceptable for jail populations. However, the article about how multiple courts have ruled that the silly baby attempt at Judge Dredd was unconstitutional is about… how multiple courts have ruled that the silly baby attempt at Judge Dredd was unconstitutional. Anyway, you can buy fentanyl in prison! Or order it off the dark web and get it sent to your mailbox. I am assuming you know this, which means your request for a wild expansion of police powers, despite courts ruling that is terrible for human rights, is something that you would advocate for anyway.

mlyle 4y ago

> 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? The author likes to write opaque walls of text. But in subsequent comments, it's become very clear that he is saying: * The US sends a similar number of people to jail as other jurisdictions, but is an extreme outlier on sentence length. He's provided (weak) factual support for this, and I find this point believable-- not an idea to outright reject like you have. * The US has a political system that tends to drastically overcorrect on problems, especially in individual locales. * Sentence lengths should be reduced, but this doesn't mean jail should be eliminated or deterrence effects should be completely lost. Which is pretty close to my initial read. I'll admit some motivated reasoning on my part: I'm uncomfortable with the US's incarceration rate but have also been uncomfortable with excessive use of prosecutorial discretion in places like SF to basically ignore a huge fraction of "quality of life" crime. The author proposing a lens to look at this which could lead to policy that reduces the incarceration rate but doesn't give up on petty crime is appealing-- it's just time to think about whether it's true.

braingenious 4y ago
The author has now written literally thousands of words that boil down to “I think the cops should be able to put those 28 people in jail even if the DA disagrees.” What he hasn’t addressed (I think, I haven’t read every tome he’s posted) is that this DA is who the people of SF voted for. When people complain about “prosecutorial discretion” without talking about campaigning and voting for another DA, it’s common to hear loads of drivel that boils down to “I know the people of this city want these prosecution policies, but I disagree with them. Rather than try to change minds, I support a unilateral transfer of power to a group that says they have my approved ideology.” The problem with that line of thinking is that it puts the cops above the electorate in terms of influence. It’s a terribly slippery slope, but it’s very common in America. “Freedom and liberty means that the police arrest people that I don’t like! Even if society in general doesn’t want the police to have that much power, who cares? I, Supreme Understander, am more worthy and human than them!” Edit: Oh wait the author did respond to another poster that brought up replacing the DA or seeking a remedy from the state. Sounds like they would like that, but for whatever 700-word reason it’s important to shift unilateral power to the police either way. Just in case.