6 ms·

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.

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.
    - splintercell 3y ago
      Everything you say, is an attempt to make people look elsewhere, but at the obvious place. Your point is that crime is spread in a manner, unrelated to where society think crime happens, that there is no correlation between crime and poverty of a neighborhood, and that most likely an inverse relationship between race and crime? Oh, and according to you, one important way to arrive at your conclusion is to change our definition of crime.
- WalterBright 3y ago
  Some crimes, like shoplifting, are hard to measure because it often goes unreported because the defunded police don't respond to them. But the murder rate is easy to measure. When people put bars on their windows on the ground floor, it is not the police causing them to be willing to spend the money on that. Crime can also cause poverty. For example, if the family breadwinner goes to jail, the family slips into poverty.
  - jakelazaroff 3y ago
    Is the murder rate easy to measure? As best we can tell, “stand your ground” laws in states like Florida result in hundreds of deaths each year. How many of those would be considered murder in other states? Police killed over 1,300 people last year. How many of those people truly posed an immediate danger to others, and how many were murdered by a trigger-happy cop who was not held accountable by his colleagues? Crime, even serious crime like murder, is socially constructed. It’s not objective; society decides what’s illegal and who gets to do it anyway.
    - WalterBright 3y ago
      > Is the murder rate easy to measure? Yes. The medical examiner decides if a death is homicide or not. > result in hundreds of deaths each year Lacks context - the number of homicides in the same year. > How many of those would be considered murder in other states? They're still considered homicide. > Police killed over 1,300 people last year That figure is for all deaths where police were involved. A subset of that would be the police killing. Furthermore, if someone points a gun at a policeman, and the policeman kills him in response, that is self-defense, not murder. There are officers killed while on duty, too: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_law_enforcement_officers_killed_in_the_line_of_duty_in_the_United_States https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_law_enforcement_office... Less than 10% of homicides result from police action. > how many were murdered by a trigger-happy cop who was not held accountable by his colleagues? In Washington state, each death from a police encounter are investigated by law, and charges get filed if the officer broke the law. That would include being trigger-happy. > It’s not objective It's objective enough. My larger point is there aren't a lot of (or even any) homicides that go undetected in wealthy communities. Furthermore, your figures lack context as you didn't compare with the total amount of homicides. Your figures are not enough to claim that the higher homicide rates in poor communities are the result of police murders.
- 1000bestlives 3y ago
  Because poor people tend to be stupid and only stupid people commit violent crimes

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.
  - splintercell 3y ago
    Everything you say, is an attempt to make people look elsewhere, but at the obvious place. Your point is that crime is spread in a manner, unrelated to where society think crime happens, that there is no correlation between crime and poverty of a neighborhood, and that most likely an inverse relationship between race and crime? Oh, and according to you, one important way to arrive at your conclusion is to change our definition of crime.
WalterBright 3y ago
Some crimes, like shoplifting, are hard to measure because it often goes unreported because the defunded police don't respond to them. But the murder rate is easy to measure. When people put bars on their windows on the ground floor, it is not the police causing them to be willing to spend the money on that. Crime can also cause poverty. For example, if the family breadwinner goes to jail, the family slips into poverty.
- jakelazaroff 3y ago
  Is the murder rate easy to measure? As best we can tell, “stand your ground” laws in states like Florida result in hundreds of deaths each year. How many of those would be considered murder in other states? Police killed over 1,300 people last year. How many of those people truly posed an immediate danger to others, and how many were murdered by a trigger-happy cop who was not held accountable by his colleagues? Crime, even serious crime like murder, is socially constructed. It’s not objective; society decides what’s illegal and who gets to do it anyway.
  - WalterBright 3y ago
    > Is the murder rate easy to measure? Yes. The medical examiner decides if a death is homicide or not. > result in hundreds of deaths each year Lacks context - the number of homicides in the same year. > How many of those would be considered murder in other states? They're still considered homicide. > Police killed over 1,300 people last year That figure is for all deaths where police were involved. A subset of that would be the police killing. Furthermore, if someone points a gun at a policeman, and the policeman kills him in response, that is self-defense, not murder. There are officers killed while on duty, too: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_law_enforcement_officers_killed_in_the_line_of_duty_in_the_United_States https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_law_enforcement_office... Less than 10% of homicides result from police action. > how many were murdered by a trigger-happy cop who was not held accountable by his colleagues? In Washington state, each death from a police encounter are investigated by law, and charges get filed if the officer broke the law. That would include being trigger-happy. > It’s not objective It's objective enough. My larger point is there aren't a lot of (or even any) homicides that go undetected in wealthy communities. Furthermore, your figures lack context as you didn't compare with the total amount of homicides. Your figures are not enough to claim that the higher homicide rates in poor communities are the result of police murders.
1000bestlives 3y ago
Because poor people tend to be stupid and only stupid people commit violent crimes