4 ms·

I mean, the other way to be safe is if the government would actually arrest the crooks and throw them in jail instead of releasing them back onto the streets of

by dheera 4y ago

I mean, the other way to be safe is if the government would actually arrest the crooks and throw them in jail instead of releasing them back onto the streets of SF and Oakland.

cptskippy 4y ago
I mean, if that's the case then I'm ok with the residents of SF and Oakland running all the lights they want. But everyone else needs to turn them off and rest peacefully knowing their criminals are being shipped to SF and Oakland.
it_citizen 4y ago
Aren’t the US waayyy ahead of other developed countries in term of incarcerating its population? How is that working so far? Mass incarceration doesn’t seem to be working well so far. Maybe it would be time to stop treating the symptoms and try a different approach?
- mrguyorama 4y ago
  Only if your crime is smoking weed. There's a huge amount of "we won't do anything about it" for property crimes among police departments now. It's hard work, and not flashy, so cops don't do it. They have largely not been punished in any way for this.
  - lliamander 4y ago
    Most people in prisons are there for violent crimes (partly because they tend to have longer sentences). Property crimes are definitely under-policed.
    - rom-antics 4y ago
      According to this page, drug offenses are by far the highest category. https://www.bop.gov/about/statistics/statistics_inmate_offenses.jsp https://www.bop.gov/about/statistics/statistics_inmate_offen...
      - lliamander 4y ago
        That is true for federal prisons. For state prisons, where the majority of criminals are incarcerated, 62% of prisoners are there for violent crimes. https://bjs.ojp.gov/library/publications/prisoners-2021-statistical-tables https://bjs.ojp.gov/library/publications/prisoners-2021-stat...
      - deleted 4y ago
        [deleted]
    - Gigachad 4y ago
      Is it possible the US has an unusually violent population? Perhaps due to greater car usage during the leaded petrol era?
      - lliamander 4y ago
        The rates of violence are highly region dependent. Much of the US has quite low rates of violence, with a few localities that have quite high levels. Lead may well be a contributing factor, but there are probably a number of other causal factors at play in those populations.
  - throwaway894345 4y ago
    > They have largely not been punished in any way for this. Of course not, the lack of policing isn't because police abruptly became lazy, it's because of intense public pressure on cities to reduce the amount of policing. Since 2014, municipalities have been desperately trying to avoid becoming the next Ferguson by pressuring their officers to minimize discretionary policing (and the incumbent potential for "bad optics"). Many municipalities have passed laws which restrict police (e.g., "no pursuit" laws), some have made the job so unpleasant that their police departments have massive attrition (e.g., Chicago), and some others have passed formal policies to reduce the amount of police/policing (e.g., Minneapolis). Some cities elected soft-on-crime prosecutors who release or minimally-sentence anyone the police apprehend, further eroding the incentive of officers to make arrests. It's not like police need to be punished for not policing, we just need to take away the negative incentives for policing. Of course, police accountability remains an issue, but the answer isn't a naive, blanket reduction in policing (instead, repeal qualified immunity, weaken police unions, raise the bar for qualification, mandate mental health evals, etc).
- lliamander 4y ago
  Comparisons of policies between different countries is notoriously error prone because often there are so many differences between the populations. If you look at the US compared to itself over time, increased policing and encarceration (such as during the 90's) does in fact lead to lower crime. The relative absence of policing and prosecution since 2020 have resulted in a sharp increase in crime. I'm certainly open to the idea that sentences should be shorter, but I think that would need to come with a corresponding increase in the number of police - and in their willingness to enforce laws. This would be under the theory that increasing the odds that you will be punished is more of a deterrent than increasing the severity of the punishment.
  - throwaway894345 4y ago
    > The relative absence of policing and prosecution since 2020 have resulted in a sharp increase in crime. This has been going on since ~2014, and you're absolutely spot-on that it absolutely correlates with reductions in the amount of policing. Roland Fryer (famed Harvard economist) and Tanaya Devi wrote a paper about this a couple years ago (but many other papers have similar findings): https://www.nber.org/system/files/working_papers/w27324/w27324.pdf https://www.nber.org/system/files/working_papers/w27324/w273...
- throwaway894345 4y ago
  Crime is complex, but we know with certainty that one of its causes is crime. If you grow up in a high-crime neighborhood, crime is a normal part of your daily life, and you are much more likely to engage in crime yourself (thus perpetuating the cycle) than someone from a low-crime community. As such, incarceration is addressing a root cause. Further, virtually no one in American politics is arguing that incarceration is sufficient, but rather the debate is about whether or not it is necessary or if we can (for example) replace police with social workers and call it a day.
- dheera 4y ago
  > Mass incarceration doesn’t seem to be working well so far. No, they're not incarcerating the right people. They're incarcerating some financial idiots like SBF and Holmes and some weed users who don't threaten my physical safety at all and I frankly don't give a damn about, while the people running around punching Asian grandmothers in SF and smashing local Asian businesses are running free.
  - throwaway894345 4y ago
    I mean, I'm glad that white collar crime is prosecuted, and I don't think the majority of people in prisons are "like SBF and Holmes". I just want to roll back policing to pre-BLM levels.
    - dheera 4y ago
      I mean, I'm selfish. SBF didn't cause me to lose money. He isn't even remotely on my radar. You know who did? The fucker who broke into my car last year and stole $5000 worth of stuff. What's that guy doing? Roaming the streets breaking and smashing more cars, probably, considering the police dropped the case.
      - throwaway894345 4y ago
        I get it, but (1) we don't have to choose and (2) if we don't prosecute white collar crime you will eventually lose money to it.
      - it_citizen 4y ago
        White collar damages are more indirect but they hurt society just as much if not more. Imagine how much better US cities would be if the white collars that pushed oxicontin and fentanyls by corrupting doctors, officials and insurance companies had been more scared of consequences. But no, most of them still roam free.
        throwaway894345 4y ago
- TreeRingCounter 4y ago
  [dead]
KennyBlanken 4y ago
Two cities in one state in one country are not even remotely relevant to this discussion, but a friendly reminder that violent and property crimes in the US have been on an overall downward trend for half a century: https://www.google.com/search?q=fbi+property+crime+statistic https://www.google.com/search?q=fbi+property+crime+statistic Also, people generally do crime because of lack of opportunity or options, which is why many countries treat the criminal justice system as an opportunity to rehabilitate people. We have one of the most punitive criminal justice systems in the world and the highest incarceration rate of any country. Imagine if we were able to spend all that money on helping to lift struggling people, instead of punishing them. They'd be productive, contributing members of society, instead of a huge drain on society. Keeping people in prison is very expensive.
- dheera 4y ago
  > Also, people generally do crime because of lack of opportunity or options, which is why many countries treat the criminal justice system as an opportunity to rehabilitate people. I agree with rehabilitation, but I personally would like to be alive tomorrow, which is why I do not choose to live in Oakland. > Imagine if we were able to spend all that money on helping to lift struggling people, instead of punishing them. These two can happen at the same time. It's less about punishment, and more about making everyone else feel safe. If they want to create a "city of crooks" in the middle of Nevada that isn't a punishment but a rehabilitation center I'm all up for that.
- slothtrop 4y ago
  There's been an uptick in crime in recent years. Policing reduces crime. https://astralcodexten.substack.com/p/what-caused-the-2020-homicide-spike https://astralcodexten.substack.com/p/what-caused-the-2020-h... If the US rids itself of petty drug convictions the incarceration rate wouldn't be so high.
- throwaway894345 4y ago
  > a friendly reminder that violent and property crimes in the US have been on an overall downward trend for half a century This is a generic argument against progress. Imagine if we shrugged off vaccines because "the pathogen-derived death rate is trending down over the last 200 years" or if we rebutted #metoo with "a friendly reminder that women's rights are trending up over the last 100 years". Just because something was worse 50 years ago doesn't mean we should content ourselves with a worsening trend now. > Also, people generally do crime because of lack of opportunity or options, which is why many countries treat the criminal justice system as an opportunity to rehabilitate people. If the premise were true, crime should have gone down in the face of the red-hot labor market we had been experiencing over the last few years. Even still, if you can find a way to reliably rehabilitate violent offenders, I doubt you'd face any serious objection. In the meanwhile though, the soft-on-crime approach to violent crime (both with respect to reducing the amount of discretionary policing and catch-and-release approach to prosecution) appears to be (predictably) devastating communities and (predictably) further perpetuating the cycle of violent crime.

by dheera 4y ago

I mean, the other way to be safe is if the government would actually arrest the crooks and throw them in jail instead of releasing them back onto the streets of SF and Oakland.

cptskippy 4y ago

I mean, if that's the case then I'm ok with the residents of SF and Oakland running all the lights they want. But everyone else needs to turn them off and rest peacefully knowing their criminals are being shipped to SF and Oakland.

it_citizen 4y ago

Aren’t the US waayyy ahead of other developed countries in term of incarcerating its population? How is that working so far? Mass incarceration doesn’t seem to be working well so far. Maybe it would be time to stop treating the symptoms and try a different approach?

mrguyorama 4y ago
Only if your crime is smoking weed. There's a huge amount of "we won't do anything about it" for property crimes among police departments now. It's hard work, and not flashy, so cops don't do it. They have largely not been punished in any way for this.
- lliamander 4y ago
  Most people in prisons are there for violent crimes (partly because they tend to have longer sentences). Property crimes are definitely under-policed.
  - rom-antics 4y ago
    According to this page, drug offenses are by far the highest category. https://www.bop.gov/about/statistics/statistics_inmate_offenses.jsp https://www.bop.gov/about/statistics/statistics_inmate_offen...
    - lliamander 4y ago
      That is true for federal prisons. For state prisons, where the majority of criminals are incarcerated, 62% of prisoners are there for violent crimes. https://bjs.ojp.gov/library/publications/prisoners-2021-statistical-tables https://bjs.ojp.gov/library/publications/prisoners-2021-stat...
    - deleted 4y ago
      [deleted]
  - Gigachad 4y ago
    Is it possible the US has an unusually violent population? Perhaps due to greater car usage during the leaded petrol era?
    - lliamander 4y ago
      The rates of violence are highly region dependent. Much of the US has quite low rates of violence, with a few localities that have quite high levels. Lead may well be a contributing factor, but there are probably a number of other causal factors at play in those populations.
- throwaway894345 4y ago
  > They have largely not been punished in any way for this. Of course not, the lack of policing isn't because police abruptly became lazy, it's because of intense public pressure on cities to reduce the amount of policing. Since 2014, municipalities have been desperately trying to avoid becoming the next Ferguson by pressuring their officers to minimize discretionary policing (and the incumbent potential for "bad optics"). Many municipalities have passed laws which restrict police (e.g., "no pursuit" laws), some have made the job so unpleasant that their police departments have massive attrition (e.g., Chicago), and some others have passed formal policies to reduce the amount of police/policing (e.g., Minneapolis). Some cities elected soft-on-crime prosecutors who release or minimally-sentence anyone the police apprehend, further eroding the incentive of officers to make arrests. It's not like police need to be punished for not policing, we just need to take away the negative incentives for policing. Of course, police accountability remains an issue, but the answer isn't a naive, blanket reduction in policing (instead, repeal qualified immunity, weaken police unions, raise the bar for qualification, mandate mental health evals, etc).
lliamander 4y ago
Comparisons of policies between different countries is notoriously error prone because often there are so many differences between the populations. If you look at the US compared to itself over time, increased policing and encarceration (such as during the 90's) does in fact lead to lower crime. The relative absence of policing and prosecution since 2020 have resulted in a sharp increase in crime. I'm certainly open to the idea that sentences should be shorter, but I think that would need to come with a corresponding increase in the number of police - and in their willingness to enforce laws. This would be under the theory that increasing the odds that you will be punished is more of a deterrent than increasing the severity of the punishment.
- throwaway894345 4y ago
  > The relative absence of policing and prosecution since 2020 have resulted in a sharp increase in crime. This has been going on since ~2014, and you're absolutely spot-on that it absolutely correlates with reductions in the amount of policing. Roland Fryer (famed Harvard economist) and Tanaya Devi wrote a paper about this a couple years ago (but many other papers have similar findings): https://www.nber.org/system/files/working_papers/w27324/w27324.pdf https://www.nber.org/system/files/working_papers/w27324/w273...
throwaway894345 4y ago
Crime is complex, but we know with certainty that one of its causes is crime. If you grow up in a high-crime neighborhood, crime is a normal part of your daily life, and you are much more likely to engage in crime yourself (thus perpetuating the cycle) than someone from a low-crime community. As such, incarceration is addressing a root cause. Further, virtually no one in American politics is arguing that incarceration is sufficient, but rather the debate is about whether or not it is necessary or if we can (for example) replace police with social workers and call it a day.
dheera 4y ago
> Mass incarceration doesn’t seem to be working well so far. No, they're not incarcerating the right people. They're incarcerating some financial idiots like SBF and Holmes and some weed users who don't threaten my physical safety at all and I frankly don't give a damn about, while the people running around punching Asian grandmothers in SF and smashing local Asian businesses are running free.
- throwaway894345 4y ago
  I mean, I'm glad that white collar crime is prosecuted, and I don't think the majority of people in prisons are "like SBF and Holmes". I just want to roll back policing to pre-BLM levels.
  - dheera 4y ago
    I mean, I'm selfish. SBF didn't cause me to lose money. He isn't even remotely on my radar. You know who did? The fucker who broke into my car last year and stole $5000 worth of stuff. What's that guy doing? Roaming the streets breaking and smashing more cars, probably, considering the police dropped the case.
    - throwaway894345 4y ago
      I get it, but (1) we don't have to choose and (2) if we don't prosecute white collar crime you will eventually lose money to it.
    - it_citizen 4y ago
      White collar damages are more indirect but they hurt society just as much if not more. Imagine how much better US cities would be if the white collars that pushed oxicontin and fentanyls by corrupting doctors, officials and insurance companies had been more scared of consequences. But no, most of them still roam free.
      - throwaway894345 4y ago
TreeRingCounter 4y ago
[dead]

KennyBlanken 4y ago

Two cities in one state in one country are not even remotely relevant to this discussion, but a friendly reminder that violent and property crimes in the US have been on an overall downward trend for half a century: https://www.google.com/search?q=fbi+property+crime+statistic https://www.google.com/search?q=fbi+property+crime+statistic Also, people generally do crime because of lack of opportunity or options, which is why many countries treat the criminal justice system as an opportunity to rehabilitate people. We have one of the most punitive criminal justice systems in the world and the highest incarceration rate of any country. Imagine if we were able to spend all that money on helping to lift struggling people, instead of punishing them. They'd be productive, contributing members of society, instead of a huge drain on society. Keeping people in prison is very expensive.

dheera 4y ago
> Also, people generally do crime because of lack of opportunity or options, which is why many countries treat the criminal justice system as an opportunity to rehabilitate people. I agree with rehabilitation, but I personally would like to be alive tomorrow, which is why I do not choose to live in Oakland. > Imagine if we were able to spend all that money on helping to lift struggling people, instead of punishing them. These two can happen at the same time. It's less about punishment, and more about making everyone else feel safe. If they want to create a "city of crooks" in the middle of Nevada that isn't a punishment but a rehabilitation center I'm all up for that.
slothtrop 4y ago
There's been an uptick in crime in recent years. Policing reduces crime. https://astralcodexten.substack.com/p/what-caused-the-2020-homicide-spike https://astralcodexten.substack.com/p/what-caused-the-2020-h... If the US rids itself of petty drug convictions the incarceration rate wouldn't be so high.
throwaway894345 4y ago
> a friendly reminder that violent and property crimes in the US have been on an overall downward trend for half a century This is a generic argument against progress. Imagine if we shrugged off vaccines because "the pathogen-derived death rate is trending down over the last 200 years" or if we rebutted #metoo with "a friendly reminder that women's rights are trending up over the last 100 years". Just because something was worse 50 years ago doesn't mean we should content ourselves with a worsening trend now. > Also, people generally do crime because of lack of opportunity or options, which is why many countries treat the criminal justice system as an opportunity to rehabilitate people. If the premise were true, crime should have gone down in the face of the red-hot labor market we had been experiencing over the last few years. Even still, if you can find a way to reliably rehabilitate violent offenders, I doubt you'd face any serious objection. In the meanwhile though, the soft-on-crime approach to violent crime (both with respect to reducing the amount of discretionary policing and catch-and-release approach to prosecution) appears to be (predictably) devastating communities and (predictably) further perpetuating the cycle of violent crime.