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So you think those of us normal people using those facilities should tolerate violent behavior to save money? Why do we even have jails then?

lapcat 3y ago
> So you think those of us normal people using those facilities should tolerate violent behavior to save money? No. From the article: "building more social housing, hiring more social workers, investing in mental health workers, schools, community centres, and everything else needed to address problems before they reach the library’s doors." > Why do we even have jails then? Good question. They don't seem to be working very well. https://worldpopulationreview.com/country-rankings/incarceration-rates-by-country https://worldpopulationreview.com/country-rankings/incarcera... Top 10 Countries with the most people in prison 1. United States — 2,068,800 2. China — 1,690,000 Top 10 Countries with the highest rate of incarceration per 100,000 population 1. United States — 629 2. Rwanda — 580 How many more people do we have to lock up to "solve" our social problems?
- friend_and_foe 3y ago
  I'm responding to your examples of cheaper than jail options, specifically homeless shelters, libraries, schools. Those spaces, including homeless shelters, are for us regular, normal, nonviolent people to use when we need to. I'm not responding to the article, I'm responding to you. I'm not worried about your average homeless guy. A shelter, some housing, something like that will do fine. We need to do something about those problems and help those people. What would you do with a naked guy who hasn't showered in 3 weeks walking around the library with a piece of glass in his hand threatening to potentially cut someone? I don't like jail either, but I'm at a loss as to what you do with them. What do you have in mind?
  - lapcat 3y ago
    > I'm not worried about your average homeless guy. A shelter, some housing, something like that will do fine. We need to do something about those problems and help those people. You should be worried, though, because there aren't even enough homeless shelters. People are going to the library because they have nowhere else to go. From the article: "Some branches are open later than other social services, and most shelters in Toronto had been full anyway, so library workers were often asked to do the impossible—find shelter for someone in a system that often had no room. “When people come to us at the eleventh hour, when we’re closing, and they say, ‘Can you help me find a bed for tonight?’ we call Central Intake, and they’re at 100 percent capacity."
    - friend_and_foe 3y ago
      1) when I said "I'm not worried about your average homeless guy" I didn't mean that I don't care what happens to him, I meant that I don't think he's the one people are worried about jerking it in the kids section at the library, I was pretty sure that was evident in my sentences I wrote (you even quoted the part where I said we need to help those people), and 2) you didn't answer my question.
      - lapcat 3y ago
        I'm confused by your proposals and by your questions. People who commit violent or lewd acts are arrested and jailed. But that obviously doesn't prevent the actions. Homelessness itself isn't currently illegal. But if it were made illegal, and all of the homeless were rounded up and permanently jailed, that would actually prevent any homeless people from harassing other people in libraries (assuming that the police could find all of the homeless, which we can't assume in reality, but let's assume it for the sake of argument). However, this mass jailing of the homeless would be obscenely cruel and also obscenely expensive. Jailing a person prevents that one person from committing crimes outside of jail (but not crimes inside of jail) for as long as that person is jailed. Otherwise, though, there's very little empirical evidence to show that jailing people in general reduces crime in general, as proved by the statistics I gave earlier.
        friend_and_foe 3y ago
        > I'm confused by your proposals and by your questions. Not questions plural, question singular. > What would you do with a naked guy who hasn't showered in 3 weeks walking around the library with a piece of glass in his hand threatening to potentially cut someone? I don't like jail either, but I'm at a loss as to what you do with them. What do you have in mind? I think we have already agreed on helping homeless people that aren't taking a shit in the foyer.
        lapcat 3y ago
        > What would you do with a naked guy who hasn't showered in 3 weeks walking around the library with a piece of glass in his hand threatening to potentially cut someone? What would I do in one hypothetical case that you invented, with no other details about the situation and person? I don't know. Is that really the question you're interested in here? What I think is that as soon as a situation becomes really bad, it's likely already too late. There's no magical solution, certainly not jail. The jail proponents often say "We shouldn't tolerate this behavior", but we don't tolerate murder, for example — we arrest and jail murderers — yet murder continues to be a problem, for which jail has demonstrably not been a solution. You might ask, "What then should we do with a murderer?", and we could talk about that at length, but I don't think the answer to that question would actually be a solution to prevent murder. We have to look at the conditions that result in increased murder rates, and do what we can to prevent those conditions from arising in the first place. And the question here, relevant to the linked article, is why do homeless people end up at libraries? It's because they have nowhere else to go. What we do with the homeless once they end up at libraries is already missing the point, in my opinion. Jail is not a solution, it's at best a bandage for a gaping wound.

lapcat 3y ago

> So you think those of us normal people using those facilities should tolerate violent behavior to save money? No. From the article: "building more social housing, hiring more social workers, investing in mental health workers, schools, community centres, and everything else needed to address problems before they reach the library’s doors." > Why do we even have jails then? Good question. They don't seem to be working very well. https://worldpopulationreview.com/country-rankings/incarceration-rates-by-country https://worldpopulationreview.com/country-rankings/incarcera... Top 10 Countries with the most people in prison 1. United States — 2,068,800 2. China — 1,690,000 Top 10 Countries with the highest rate of incarceration per 100,000 population 1. United States — 629 2. Rwanda — 580 How many more people do we have to lock up to "solve" our social problems?

friend_and_foe 3y ago
I'm responding to your examples of cheaper than jail options, specifically homeless shelters, libraries, schools. Those spaces, including homeless shelters, are for us regular, normal, nonviolent people to use when we need to. I'm not responding to the article, I'm responding to you. I'm not worried about your average homeless guy. A shelter, some housing, something like that will do fine. We need to do something about those problems and help those people. What would you do with a naked guy who hasn't showered in 3 weeks walking around the library with a piece of glass in his hand threatening to potentially cut someone? I don't like jail either, but I'm at a loss as to what you do with them. What do you have in mind?
- lapcat 3y ago
  > I'm not worried about your average homeless guy. A shelter, some housing, something like that will do fine. We need to do something about those problems and help those people. You should be worried, though, because there aren't even enough homeless shelters. People are going to the library because they have nowhere else to go. From the article: "Some branches are open later than other social services, and most shelters in Toronto had been full anyway, so library workers were often asked to do the impossible—find shelter for someone in a system that often had no room. “When people come to us at the eleventh hour, when we’re closing, and they say, ‘Can you help me find a bed for tonight?’ we call Central Intake, and they’re at 100 percent capacity."
  - friend_and_foe 3y ago
    1) when I said "I'm not worried about your average homeless guy" I didn't mean that I don't care what happens to him, I meant that I don't think he's the one people are worried about jerking it in the kids section at the library, I was pretty sure that was evident in my sentences I wrote (you even quoted the part where I said we need to help those people), and 2) you didn't answer my question.
    - lapcat 3y ago
      I'm confused by your proposals and by your questions. People who commit violent or lewd acts are arrested and jailed. But that obviously doesn't prevent the actions. Homelessness itself isn't currently illegal. But if it were made illegal, and all of the homeless were rounded up and permanently jailed, that would actually prevent any homeless people from harassing other people in libraries (assuming that the police could find all of the homeless, which we can't assume in reality, but let's assume it for the sake of argument). However, this mass jailing of the homeless would be obscenely cruel and also obscenely expensive. Jailing a person prevents that one person from committing crimes outside of jail (but not crimes inside of jail) for as long as that person is jailed. Otherwise, though, there's very little empirical evidence to show that jailing people in general reduces crime in general, as proved by the statistics I gave earlier.
      - friend_and_foe 3y ago
        > I'm confused by your proposals and by your questions. Not questions plural, question singular. > What would you do with a naked guy who hasn't showered in 3 weeks walking around the library with a piece of glass in his hand threatening to potentially cut someone? I don't like jail either, but I'm at a loss as to what you do with them. What do you have in mind? I think we have already agreed on helping homeless people that aren't taking a shit in the foyer.
        lapcat 3y ago
        > What would you do with a naked guy who hasn't showered in 3 weeks walking around the library with a piece of glass in his hand threatening to potentially cut someone? What would I do in one hypothetical case that you invented, with no other details about the situation and person? I don't know. Is that really the question you're interested in here? What I think is that as soon as a situation becomes really bad, it's likely already too late. There's no magical solution, certainly not jail. The jail proponents often say "We shouldn't tolerate this behavior", but we don't tolerate murder, for example — we arrest and jail murderers — yet murder continues to be a problem, for which jail has demonstrably not been a solution. You might ask, "What then should we do with a murderer?", and we could talk about that at length, but I don't think the answer to that question would actually be a solution to prevent murder. We have to look at the conditions that result in increased murder rates, and do what we can to prevent those conditions from arising in the first place. And the question here, relevant to the linked article, is why do homeless people end up at libraries? It's because they have nowhere else to go. What we do with the homeless once they end up at libraries is already missing the point, in my opinion. Jail is not a solution, it's at best a bandage for a gaping wound.