6 ms·

> Where crime in Chicago is a real problem is in the south and west sides of the city, where white people don't live. Those areas are playing out a slow motion

> Where crime in Chicago is a real problem is in the south and west sides of the city, where white people don't live. Those areas are playing out a slow motion mechanistic tragedy set in motion a century ago when they were redlined, sliced in half by the Dan Ryan, evacuated by white people, and disinvested. A map of Chicago violent crime is, roughly, a map of redlining. Let's grant these are the sole and entire reasons for crime. This historical analysis is entirely and fully correct. What does it imply, going forward? What is the solution?

tptacek 4y ago
It strongly implies that being tougher on crime --- and I'm no defunder --- isn't the solution, most especially because that's been repeatedly tried and there's a plausible argument that it made things worse.
- ta8645 4y ago
  I worry that this is simply cover for people who don't want to pay for policing and incarceration any more. Essentially abandoning the many innocent victims of crime in those troubled areas.
  - tptacek 4y ago
    Again: I'm no defunder. But we tried intensive policing and incarceration (and: if you catch someone with an illegal firearm, put them in prison!) and it didn't work. CPD broke the major gangs in the 80s and 90s, and now we've got dozens and dozens of tiny new gangs.
    - ta8645 4y ago
      It's still a necessary component, even if it's not sufficient. People are way too eager to be soft on crime without offering anything in the way of an actual solution. To me, it sounds like cover for less than altruistic motivations.
      - nwienert 4y ago
        It’s stronger than that: you can’t say it didn’t work at all. Using the same rigor you can say they didn’t do enough! Unless you have extremely broad meta studies, and you don’t, saying it didn’t work is just personal skew.
        tptacek 4y ago
        The intensity of policing in Chicago has varied and hasn't solved the west and south side crime problems. I honestly don't care if Chicago decides to intensify policing. I'm not, like, morally opposed. I just think it's whistling past the graveyard if you can't fix the underlying economic problems. They're getting worse, not better, as all the families with economic mobility in the redlined neighborhoods flee to the south suburbs.
        nwienert 4y ago
        I agree it needs more than just police, but I suspect it needs a ton of law and order too. Fwiw I’ve talked to some very in the know locals, one who owned a ton of liquor stores all around those parts, and the common knowledge is that the police basically don’t have any control and won’t engage on just about anything. It’s essentially run by gangs at this point.
        tptacek 4y ago
        I don't know what that's supposed to mean. I got CPD to track down a mugger whole my phone; they were arrested less than 15 minutes after I got mugged. The arrest happened at J&J Fish in Austin. The police clearly had control there. At the same time, there are drug corners all over the west side; there's a gas station in Humboldt Park on my commute that is occasionally an open-air drug market, with dealers literally out in the street doing traffic control. I'm sure that's shocking and upsetting to very in-the-know west siders who own liquor stores. Will CPD really engage over small groups of people selling heroin on a corner? No, I doubt it: I see the same groups day after day on my drive into the office. Those parts of the city are not safe to be in. It's not OK that there are parts of the city that are not safe to be in. I'm not making excuses. But that absolutely does not describe the area around the McDonalds HQ, or, for that matter, almost anywhere in Chicago that middle/upper-middle class white people live.
    - AbrahamParangi 4y ago
      I feel like didn't work is a poor argument because you could just counter that it wasn't enough. Presumably at some limit of policing, crime would be largely eliminated (at potentially tremendous cost) but it seems unlikely to me that it wouldn't work.
      - ultrarunner 4y ago
        It would seem that such a hypothetical level of policing is taking place inside actual prisons, and yet violence and contraband run rampant. If it isn't possible to eliminate crime amongst already incarcerated people, what suggests that an arbitrarily high level of policing would eliminate crime amongst the wider populous? Especially when such levels of policing would almost certainly approach something akin to imprisonment?
      - lodovic 4y ago
        No, at a certain level of policing you end up with a police surveillance state, it wouldn't work.
      - bearmode 4y ago
        The US is already MASSIVELY winning the "percentage of your population in prison" contest. Then you look at the recidivism rates and realise why it doesn't work. Tough on crime -> more people in prison -> criminals are treated like dogs -> significantly more likely to reoffend upon release, and thus we have a cycle.
- LudwigNagasena 4y ago
  I don’t see how it implies that.
- DeWilde 4y ago
  Policing is only one part of the equation and I doubt that violent gangs can be broken up without resorting to tough measures. The trick is that this needs to be combined with social policies to disincentivize repeat offenders and to prevent youths from starting at all by having ample economic opportunities.And there are other measures like decriminalizing drugs which can reduce the economic profit of crime.
- somenameforme 4y ago
  I think this maybe an example of an increasingly common scenario in life. We like to envision for any given problem that there are good solutions, and that there are bad solutions. And so if one solution is provably bad, then surely an alternative must be better. But in reality, there are often just bad solutions and worse solutions. The point I make with this is that attacking the failings of one solution doesn't really say anything about the alternative. It's often interesting how much wisdom there is tucked away in simple, old, folky sayings that one only appreciates much later. "Out of the frying pan and into the fire."
- pjc50 4y ago
  I don't think it's possible for Chicago to deploy more violence against crime, given what they've done recently. https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2015/feb/24/chicago-police-detain-americans-black-site https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2015/feb/24/chicago-poli... As an outsider, I suspect the lack of meaningful accountability for police allows them to be both excessively violent and not actually any good at preventing crime. It's a notoriously corrupt city: https://news.wttw.com/2022/05/11/three-peat-chicago-ranks-no-1-corruption-report-finds https://news.wttw.com/2022/05/11/three-peat-chicago-ranks-no... . Of course, the McDonald's CEO isn't going to call out this kind of crime, even though it's arguably responsible for allowing the other kind of crime. I don't think I can offer any solutions other than the long grinding work of local politics. There are solutions available (e.g. Glasgow's long notorious gang problem was addressed by the Violence Reduction Unit, which offers a successful strategy), but probably not the will to use them. Like Russia, you can't win a war if the first priority of too many administrators is stealing from the system.
- rendall 4y ago
  I'm on the side of less is more, too. Poverty alleviation is, while not a universally solved problem, is well enough understood that we know what does not work. Harsh, punitive measures such as long prison sentences without corresponding in-prison safety, nor sincere rehabilitation and redemption programs, are guaranteed to maintain cycles of poverty and resentment across generations. I do think school voucher programs is a promising direction, but like anything that becomes a pawn in the culture war, it becomes difficult to discuss it without FUD.

tptacek 4y ago

It strongly implies that being tougher on crime --- and I'm no defunder --- isn't the solution, most especially because that's been repeatedly tried and there's a plausible argument that it made things worse.

ta8645 4y ago
I worry that this is simply cover for people who don't want to pay for policing and incarceration any more. Essentially abandoning the many innocent victims of crime in those troubled areas.
- tptacek 4y ago
  Again: I'm no defunder. But we tried intensive policing and incarceration (and: if you catch someone with an illegal firearm, put them in prison!) and it didn't work. CPD broke the major gangs in the 80s and 90s, and now we've got dozens and dozens of tiny new gangs.
  - ta8645 4y ago
    It's still a necessary component, even if it's not sufficient. People are way too eager to be soft on crime without offering anything in the way of an actual solution. To me, it sounds like cover for less than altruistic motivations.
    - nwienert 4y ago
      It’s stronger than that: you can’t say it didn’t work at all. Using the same rigor you can say they didn’t do enough! Unless you have extremely broad meta studies, and you don’t, saying it didn’t work is just personal skew.
      - tptacek 4y ago
        The intensity of policing in Chicago has varied and hasn't solved the west and south side crime problems. I honestly don't care if Chicago decides to intensify policing. I'm not, like, morally opposed. I just think it's whistling past the graveyard if you can't fix the underlying economic problems. They're getting worse, not better, as all the families with economic mobility in the redlined neighborhoods flee to the south suburbs.
        nwienert 4y ago
        I agree it needs more than just police, but I suspect it needs a ton of law and order too. Fwiw I’ve talked to some very in the know locals, one who owned a ton of liquor stores all around those parts, and the common knowledge is that the police basically don’t have any control and won’t engage on just about anything. It’s essentially run by gangs at this point.
        tptacek 4y ago
        I don't know what that's supposed to mean. I got CPD to track down a mugger whole my phone; they were arrested less than 15 minutes after I got mugged. The arrest happened at J&J Fish in Austin. The police clearly had control there. At the same time, there are drug corners all over the west side; there's a gas station in Humboldt Park on my commute that is occasionally an open-air drug market, with dealers literally out in the street doing traffic control. I'm sure that's shocking and upsetting to very in-the-know west siders who own liquor stores. Will CPD really engage over small groups of people selling heroin on a corner? No, I doubt it: I see the same groups day after day on my drive into the office. Those parts of the city are not safe to be in. It's not OK that there are parts of the city that are not safe to be in. I'm not making excuses. But that absolutely does not describe the area around the McDonalds HQ, or, for that matter, almost anywhere in Chicago that middle/upper-middle class white people live.
  - AbrahamParangi 4y ago
    I feel like didn't work is a poor argument because you could just counter that it wasn't enough. Presumably at some limit of policing, crime would be largely eliminated (at potentially tremendous cost) but it seems unlikely to me that it wouldn't work.
    - ultrarunner 4y ago
      It would seem that such a hypothetical level of policing is taking place inside actual prisons, and yet violence and contraband run rampant. If it isn't possible to eliminate crime amongst already incarcerated people, what suggests that an arbitrarily high level of policing would eliminate crime amongst the wider populous? Especially when such levels of policing would almost certainly approach something akin to imprisonment?
    - lodovic 4y ago
      No, at a certain level of policing you end up with a police surveillance state, it wouldn't work.
    - bearmode 4y ago
      The US is already MASSIVELY winning the "percentage of your population in prison" contest. Then you look at the recidivism rates and realise why it doesn't work. Tough on crime -> more people in prison -> criminals are treated like dogs -> significantly more likely to reoffend upon release, and thus we have a cycle.
LudwigNagasena 4y ago
I don’t see how it implies that.
DeWilde 4y ago
Policing is only one part of the equation and I doubt that violent gangs can be broken up without resorting to tough measures. The trick is that this needs to be combined with social policies to disincentivize repeat offenders and to prevent youths from starting at all by having ample economic opportunities.And there are other measures like decriminalizing drugs which can reduce the economic profit of crime.
somenameforme 4y ago
I think this maybe an example of an increasingly common scenario in life. We like to envision for any given problem that there are good solutions, and that there are bad solutions. And so if one solution is provably bad, then surely an alternative must be better. But in reality, there are often just bad solutions and worse solutions. The point I make with this is that attacking the failings of one solution doesn't really say anything about the alternative. It's often interesting how much wisdom there is tucked away in simple, old, folky sayings that one only appreciates much later. "Out of the frying pan and into the fire."
pjc50 4y ago
I don't think it's possible for Chicago to deploy more violence against crime, given what they've done recently. https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2015/feb/24/chicago-police-detain-americans-black-site https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2015/feb/24/chicago-poli... As an outsider, I suspect the lack of meaningful accountability for police allows them to be both excessively violent and not actually any good at preventing crime. It's a notoriously corrupt city: https://news.wttw.com/2022/05/11/three-peat-chicago-ranks-no-1-corruption-report-finds https://news.wttw.com/2022/05/11/three-peat-chicago-ranks-no... . Of course, the McDonald's CEO isn't going to call out this kind of crime, even though it's arguably responsible for allowing the other kind of crime. I don't think I can offer any solutions other than the long grinding work of local politics. There are solutions available (e.g. Glasgow's long notorious gang problem was addressed by the Violence Reduction Unit, which offers a successful strategy), but probably not the will to use them. Like Russia, you can't win a war if the first priority of too many administrators is stealing from the system.
rendall 4y ago
I'm on the side of less is more, too. Poverty alleviation is, while not a universally solved problem, is well enough understood that we know what does not work. Harsh, punitive measures such as long prison sentences without corresponding in-prison safety, nor sincere rehabilitation and redemption programs, are guaranteed to maintain cycles of poverty and resentment across generations. I do think school voucher programs is a promising direction, but like anything that becomes a pawn in the culture war, it becomes difficult to discuss it without FUD.