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"Incredibly unclear"? Really? Not the OP, but let's spell it out: Manicuring a lawn is expensive and serves no useful purpose, so most practitioners have disp

"Incredibly unclear"? Really? Not the OP, but let's spell it out: Manicuring a lawn is expensive and serves no useful purpose, so most practitioners have disposable income and/or spare time, and care about keeping up appearances. Putting a car up on blocks implies it's being used for spare parts, which is generally not something the well-off need to engage in (they buy new and use professionals for repairs as needed), and having one on your front lawn in particular implies that you value spare parts more than appearances. So both are reasonable proxies of wealth, and wealth correlates inversely with the kind of violent crime you could detect with gunshots.

jakelazaroff 3y ago
The reason it’s unclear is that nothing either of you have said has anything to do with policing. Edit: you added the correlation bit after I replied, but why do you believe that to be the case? If you have more police in an area, of course they’ll hear more gunshots there. That doesn’t necessarily mean there actually are more gunshots. What you’re actually saying is “poor people need more policing”, which is A) offensive and B) counterproductive.
- resolutebat 3y ago
  Why? Let's imagine a city divided in two halves of equal population. West City is poor and has a high crime rate, East City is rich and has a low crime rate. Should police resources be allocated equally to both? How about public health facilities or welfare payments?
  - jakelazaroff 3y ago
    In the real world, wealth is relatively easily measured and crime rate is not. The question no one seems to be willing to answer is: why do you believe poor people commit more crime?
    - resolutebat 3y ago
      It's not a matter of belief, there's a well known link between poverty and crime. The ultimate reason is that if you are poor, the proceeds of crime (theft, burglary, robbery etc) are comparatively more meaningful than to somebody who is wealthy, while the cost of getting caught is comparatively less. A rich professional does not steal loaves of bread to feed their family, because they don't need to and they risk losing their entire livelihood if they do. If you're poor, unemployed and your kids are hungry, the risk/reward calculus is very different.
      - jakelazaroff 3y ago
        The most costly form of theft — by far — is not burglary or robbery but wage theft. That is a crime overwhelmingly committed by rich professionals and rarely enforced. So if we really want to get serious about stopping theft, we should allocate much more resources to investigating businesses than putting beat cops on the street. There’s not actually a well known link between poverty and crime in the way you imply. We’ve just decided that we only care about some people committing some crime some of the time.
        resolutebat 3y ago
        Ah, so this is what you were so keen to steer the conversation to. Alas, despite the name, wage theft is not considered a criminal act (misdemeanor/felony) in most US states, so enforcement is left to the Department of Labor and the IRS, not police. Now I'd agree with you that society should be putting more resources into combating this, but I'm still going to ask you to respond to my earlier question: for the hypothetical city with high-crime and low-crime halves, which should the police focus on?
        jakelazaroff 3y ago
        I’m not really steering the conversation anywhere. Wage theft is a felony in many states. Which is the point I’m making: crime is socially constructed, and two big reasons that some areas are “low crime” and some are “high crime” is that we’ve decided to A) selectively criminalize things and B) selectively enforce those laws. As to your question: if you are playing SimCity and you have a little number in your omniscient UI that reads “crime rate” and police are your one lever to address that, by all means add more police to the area. But in the real world that’s not how things work.
- krisoft 3y ago
  > If you have more police in an area, of course they’ll hear more gunshots there. That doesn’t necessarily mean there actually are more gunshots. So let me get your point straight: your worry is that since wealthy areas have less sensors gun-crime in those areas will go under reported? Idk about your neck of the woods but where i live if I hear a gunshot I call the police with a high probability. If i see someone brandishing weapons i do the same. And of course i call the police/emergency services if i see someone with a gunshot wound. These all create the statistical evidence independent of the sensor systems.
WalterBright 3y ago
When I was little, the family a couple doors down had cars up on blocks in front. My mom lamented that, she thought it was awful. Enter my teen years. I had cars up on blocks in the driveway. My poor mom!

jakelazaroff 3y ago

The reason it’s unclear is that nothing either of you have said has anything to do with policing. Edit: you added the correlation bit after I replied, but why do you believe that to be the case? If you have more police in an area, of course they’ll hear more gunshots there. That doesn’t necessarily mean there actually are more gunshots. What you’re actually saying is “poor people need more policing”, which is A) offensive and B) counterproductive.

resolutebat 3y ago
Why? Let's imagine a city divided in two halves of equal population. West City is poor and has a high crime rate, East City is rich and has a low crime rate. Should police resources be allocated equally to both? How about public health facilities or welfare payments?
- jakelazaroff 3y ago
  In the real world, wealth is relatively easily measured and crime rate is not. The question no one seems to be willing to answer is: why do you believe poor people commit more crime?
  - resolutebat 3y ago
    It's not a matter of belief, there's a well known link between poverty and crime. The ultimate reason is that if you are poor, the proceeds of crime (theft, burglary, robbery etc) are comparatively more meaningful than to somebody who is wealthy, while the cost of getting caught is comparatively less. A rich professional does not steal loaves of bread to feed their family, because they don't need to and they risk losing their entire livelihood if they do. If you're poor, unemployed and your kids are hungry, the risk/reward calculus is very different.
    - jakelazaroff 3y ago
      The most costly form of theft — by far — is not burglary or robbery but wage theft. That is a crime overwhelmingly committed by rich professionals and rarely enforced. So if we really want to get serious about stopping theft, we should allocate much more resources to investigating businesses than putting beat cops on the street. There’s not actually a well known link between poverty and crime in the way you imply. We’ve just decided that we only care about some people committing some crime some of the time.
      - resolutebat 3y ago
        Ah, so this is what you were so keen to steer the conversation to. Alas, despite the name, wage theft is not considered a criminal act (misdemeanor/felony) in most US states, so enforcement is left to the Department of Labor and the IRS, not police. Now I'd agree with you that society should be putting more resources into combating this, but I'm still going to ask you to respond to my earlier question: for the hypothetical city with high-crime and low-crime halves, which should the police focus on?
        jakelazaroff 3y ago
        I’m not really steering the conversation anywhere. Wage theft is a felony in many states. Which is the point I’m making: crime is socially constructed, and two big reasons that some areas are “low crime” and some are “high crime” is that we’ve decided to A) selectively criminalize things and B) selectively enforce those laws. As to your question: if you are playing SimCity and you have a little number in your omniscient UI that reads “crime rate” and police are your one lever to address that, by all means add more police to the area. But in the real world that’s not how things work.
krisoft 3y ago
> If you have more police in an area, of course they’ll hear more gunshots there. That doesn’t necessarily mean there actually are more gunshots. So let me get your point straight: your worry is that since wealthy areas have less sensors gun-crime in those areas will go under reported? Idk about your neck of the woods but where i live if I hear a gunshot I call the police with a high probability. If i see someone brandishing weapons i do the same. And of course i call the police/emergency services if i see someone with a gunshot wound. These all create the statistical evidence independent of the sensor systems.

WalterBright 3y ago

When I was little, the family a couple doors down had cars up on blocks in front. My mom lamented that, she thought it was awful. Enter my teen years. I had cars up on blocks in the driveway. My poor mom!