5 ms·

I'm so sick of crime in the Bay. We need to be way tougher on crime. Immediate life sentences without parole for murder, ending catch+release for property theft

I'm so sick of crime in the Bay. We need to be way tougher on crime. Immediate life sentences without parole for murder, ending catch+release for property theft. The mere thought of stealing, or attacking a stranger, or dealing drugs illegally, must become so unappetizing that they simply refuse to do it even when they have no other options.

a-user-you-like 4y ago
Capital punishment for murder. You take a life, yours is gone. On top of justice, you don’t stick the taxpayer with lifelong care of a murderer.
- burnte 4y ago
  Plus how cruel is it to stick a human in a box for 60 years? Rapists and murderers are dangerous animals, and we put dangerous animals down.
  - a-user-you-like 4y ago
    Yes, our prison system needs to be severely reduced. Someone smokes weed and gets thrown in a dog kennel for years? And we call ourselves humane for that?
    - burnte 4y ago
      Agreed.
- dingosity 4y ago
  meh. lotsa people have religious objections to this concept.
- tablespoon 4y ago
  > Capital punishment for murder. You take a life, yours is gone. On top of justice, you don’t stick the taxpayer with lifelong care of a murderer. One problem with that idea is that even murder convictions are not even close to 100% accurate, so you'd end up killing lots of innocent people.
  - a-user-you-like 4y ago
    Using that logic you’d never go to war because you’re not sure you’d never have collateral damage.
    - komali2 4y ago
      Considering that war is one of the worst inventions of humanity, it's not really bad to apply this logic as yet another reason to not go to war.
      - a-user-you-like 4y ago
        It’s not an invention of mankind. See Chimps, other animals. It’s fine to take that approach, you’re just a complete pacifist at that point who won’t defend his women and children. I thinks it’s why pacifism is a fairly rare quality.
simse 4y ago
Few criminals consider the consequences of their actions. As crappy as it feels, harsher sentences just don't work.
- havblue 4y ago
  Among other reasons, imprisonment is used for reasons of incapacitation, deterrence and rehabilitation. It should be fairly easy to see how light or no sentencing has compromised those goals.
threatofrain 4y ago
The event that sparked all this conversation is the homicide of Bob Lee. If we're talking about the problem of car break-ins, robberies, or vandalism, that's one thing. But on the matter of homicide, SF (6.35)¹ tracks closely to the national average (7.8)². Property crime is what substantially contributes to the image that SF is an unsafe city. --- [1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_United_States_cities_by_crime_rate https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_United_States_cities_b... [2]: https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/fastats/homicide.htm https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/fastats/homicide.htm
- dingosity 4y ago
  I think it's the fact that most of the people in the comments section here weren't alive in the 80s to have a point of reference. 6 homicides per 100,000 per year? That's high? You should have been here or NYC in the 80s. That being said... yes... 6 homicides per 100,000 is 6 homicides per 100,000 too many.
  - threatofrain 4y ago
    Not every city can be like Cupertino, which basically has 0 homicides per 100k, where the streets are often devoid of police patrols (the city not have a police dept), where the public schools are the pride of the city and the youths are beaming with optimism. The streets are clean, the local community college is beautiful, and the businesses are classy but with an interesting dash of old-school mom and pop ethnic restaurants. But I don't think any Cupertino in the US can scale to 800k and maintain these stats.
- oh_sigh 4y ago
  Part of the issue might be how the murders are distributed. Some cities with high murder rates have a very small segment of the population killing each other (eg drug dealers/gang members), whereas normal people go on mostly untouched save for stray bullets. Maybe SF murders are more randomly distributed among the general population?
- hnbad 4y ago
  Do you know what's a great predictor for a high crime rate? High levels of wealth inequality. Yes, the poors are more likely to turn to crime (at least the kind of crime that has officers with gun chase you around rather than the kind that requires expensive lawyers) but there's less incentive (and spite) if everyone in the neighborhood is similarly poor.
earthscienceman 4y ago
Yeah. Makes total sense. That's why the wild west was crime free, because everyone feared the retributive punishments... People don't pull out a knife then think "wait, but I'll be punished" and put the knife away. What you are proposing feels good but in no way lines up with the reality of society in a contemporary city. If you want there to be less crime you have to treat it as the social class problem it is and find ways to get people access to other ways of living, or if they're ill (mentally or otherwise) get them care and shelter. That, or we can continue to price people out of being healthy members of our social strata. It's clearly going great in SF
- dingosity 4y ago
  Just curious. Where are you getting your data that the wild west was crime free? (or... is this satire / sarcasm? it's hard to recognize sometimes.)
  - pwinnski 4y ago
    It's very clearly sarcasm. Retributive justice is not just.
- seanmcdirmid 4y ago
  People who want to crime do tend to avoid places where the police are more aggressive with enforcement. E.g. you don't really want to do petty property crime in Bellevue Washington when more tolerant Seattle is right across the lake. The same problem exists for "getting care and shelter" in that the problems themselves are hardly immobile, while the solutions are expected to be provided locally.
  - earthscienceman 4y ago
    This is a very valid and important point. It also causes knock-on effects that are aggravating factors. The important subtlety in what you are stating is: People don't consider punishment when they're committing crimes but they do absolutely seem to consider the likelihood that they will be caught (hooray for the complexities of being human!). So we end up with densely concentrated areas of crime in places that are "soft on crime". But it's very clear that the solution isn't increasing police presence in these areas, if it were that simple NYC the 80s would have been crime free. The solution is to fix the problem at its core but to do that we need to agree to cooperate on a broader scale... with something like a federal government that can enact wide policies to create incentives for these things to end. This is how it works in "crime free" japan. But we seem to have given up on federal solutions to these things ages ago.
bryanlarsen 4y ago
Tougher sentences have almost a zero effect on crime. Somebody who isn't worried about a 25 year sentence for murder isn't going to worry about a life sentence. Far more effective is to increase the chances of getting caught & prosecuted. A guaranteed 10 year sentence for murder is far more effective than a life sentence when you believe you won't get caught.
dingosity 4y ago
It turns out that there's a pesky problem with our judicial system in that it requires people to be charged and then tried by a court before sentencing them to life in prison. One difficult aspect of violent crime is that you have to have a suspect before you can bring them to trial. And it's funny because the murder clearance rate seems to match the police funding rate. And the police funding rate is on par with taxes collected nationally and locally. So sure... you can have police investigating murders, or you can have a zero-tax libertarian utopia, but it appears that you can't have both.
notacoward 4y ago
> Immediate life sentences without parole for murder, ending catch+release for property theft. Interesting that you skip right over any idea of prevention, deterrence (other than by threat of incarceration), or alleviation of the conditions that lead to criminality. "Tough on crime" is not the only way to actually reduce crime, and I posit not even the best. Would you care to elaborate on possible solutions other than the punitive?

a-user-you-like 4y ago

Capital punishment for murder. You take a life, yours is gone. On top of justice, you don’t stick the taxpayer with lifelong care of a murderer.

burnte 4y ago
Plus how cruel is it to stick a human in a box for 60 years? Rapists and murderers are dangerous animals, and we put dangerous animals down.
- a-user-you-like 4y ago
  Yes, our prison system needs to be severely reduced. Someone smokes weed and gets thrown in a dog kennel for years? And we call ourselves humane for that?
  - burnte 4y ago
    Agreed.
dingosity 4y ago
meh. lotsa people have religious objections to this concept.
tablespoon 4y ago
> Capital punishment for murder. You take a life, yours is gone. On top of justice, you don’t stick the taxpayer with lifelong care of a murderer. One problem with that idea is that even murder convictions are not even close to 100% accurate, so you'd end up killing lots of innocent people.
- a-user-you-like 4y ago
  Using that logic you’d never go to war because you’re not sure you’d never have collateral damage.
  - komali2 4y ago
    Considering that war is one of the worst inventions of humanity, it's not really bad to apply this logic as yet another reason to not go to war.
    - a-user-you-like 4y ago
      It’s not an invention of mankind. See Chimps, other animals. It’s fine to take that approach, you’re just a complete pacifist at that point who won’t defend his women and children. I thinks it’s why pacifism is a fairly rare quality.

simse 4y ago

Few criminals consider the consequences of their actions. As crappy as it feels, harsher sentences just don't work.

havblue 4y ago
Among other reasons, imprisonment is used for reasons of incapacitation, deterrence and rehabilitation. It should be fairly easy to see how light or no sentencing has compromised those goals.

threatofrain 4y ago

The event that sparked all this conversation is the homicide of Bob Lee. If we're talking about the problem of car break-ins, robberies, or vandalism, that's one thing. But on the matter of homicide, SF (6.35)¹ tracks closely to the national average (7.8)². Property crime is what substantially contributes to the image that SF is an unsafe city. --- [1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_United_States_cities_by_crime_rate https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_United_States_cities_b... [2]: https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/fastats/homicide.htm https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/fastats/homicide.htm

dingosity 4y ago
I think it's the fact that most of the people in the comments section here weren't alive in the 80s to have a point of reference. 6 homicides per 100,000 per year? That's high? You should have been here or NYC in the 80s. That being said... yes... 6 homicides per 100,000 is 6 homicides per 100,000 too many.
- threatofrain 4y ago
  Not every city can be like Cupertino, which basically has 0 homicides per 100k, where the streets are often devoid of police patrols (the city not have a police dept), where the public schools are the pride of the city and the youths are beaming with optimism. The streets are clean, the local community college is beautiful, and the businesses are classy but with an interesting dash of old-school mom and pop ethnic restaurants. But I don't think any Cupertino in the US can scale to 800k and maintain these stats.
oh_sigh 4y ago
Part of the issue might be how the murders are distributed. Some cities with high murder rates have a very small segment of the population killing each other (eg drug dealers/gang members), whereas normal people go on mostly untouched save for stray bullets. Maybe SF murders are more randomly distributed among the general population?
hnbad 4y ago
Do you know what's a great predictor for a high crime rate? High levels of wealth inequality. Yes, the poors are more likely to turn to crime (at least the kind of crime that has officers with gun chase you around rather than the kind that requires expensive lawyers) but there's less incentive (and spite) if everyone in the neighborhood is similarly poor.

earthscienceman 4y ago

Yeah. Makes total sense. That's why the wild west was crime free, because everyone feared the retributive punishments... People don't pull out a knife then think "wait, but I'll be punished" and put the knife away. What you are proposing feels good but in no way lines up with the reality of society in a contemporary city. If you want there to be less crime you have to treat it as the social class problem it is and find ways to get people access to other ways of living, or if they're ill (mentally or otherwise) get them care and shelter. That, or we can continue to price people out of being healthy members of our social strata. It's clearly going great in SF

dingosity 4y ago
Just curious. Where are you getting your data that the wild west was crime free? (or... is this satire / sarcasm? it's hard to recognize sometimes.)
- pwinnski 4y ago
  It's very clearly sarcasm. Retributive justice is not just.
seanmcdirmid 4y ago
People who want to crime do tend to avoid places where the police are more aggressive with enforcement. E.g. you don't really want to do petty property crime in Bellevue Washington when more tolerant Seattle is right across the lake. The same problem exists for "getting care and shelter" in that the problems themselves are hardly immobile, while the solutions are expected to be provided locally.
- earthscienceman 4y ago
  This is a very valid and important point. It also causes knock-on effects that are aggravating factors. The important subtlety in what you are stating is: People don't consider punishment when they're committing crimes but they do absolutely seem to consider the likelihood that they will be caught (hooray for the complexities of being human!). So we end up with densely concentrated areas of crime in places that are "soft on crime". But it's very clear that the solution isn't increasing police presence in these areas, if it were that simple NYC the 80s would have been crime free. The solution is to fix the problem at its core but to do that we need to agree to cooperate on a broader scale... with something like a federal government that can enact wide policies to create incentives for these things to end. This is how it works in "crime free" japan. But we seem to have given up on federal solutions to these things ages ago.

bryanlarsen 4y ago

Tougher sentences have almost a zero effect on crime. Somebody who isn't worried about a 25 year sentence for murder isn't going to worry about a life sentence. Far more effective is to increase the chances of getting caught & prosecuted. A guaranteed 10 year sentence for murder is far more effective than a life sentence when you believe you won't get caught.

dingosity 4y ago

It turns out that there's a pesky problem with our judicial system in that it requires people to be charged and then tried by a court before sentencing them to life in prison. One difficult aspect of violent crime is that you have to have a suspect before you can bring them to trial. And it's funny because the murder clearance rate seems to match the police funding rate. And the police funding rate is on par with taxes collected nationally and locally. So sure... you can have police investigating murders, or you can have a zero-tax libertarian utopia, but it appears that you can't have both.

notacoward 4y ago

> Immediate life sentences without parole for murder, ending catch+release for property theft. Interesting that you skip right over any idea of prevention, deterrence (other than by threat of incarceration), or alleviation of the conditions that lead to criminality. "Tough on crime" is not the only way to actually reduce crime, and I posit not even the best. Would you care to elaborate on possible solutions other than the punitive?