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The point of the author is that non violent crime can get people jailed (or their freedom very severely restricted) if they are a certain skin color. Tagging ha

by norswap 13y ago

The point of the author is that non violent crime can get people jailed (or their freedom very severely restricted) if they are a certain skin color. Tagging hardly qualifies you as a gang member. Living in a city isn't a crime and shouldn't make result in you being treated differently than anywhere else.

rayiner 13y ago
> Tagging hardly qualifies you as a gang member. In a suburb, probably not. In a city, I'd bet it's statistically likely that a tagger has a gang affiliation. > Living in a city isn't a crime and shouldn't make result in you being treated differently than anywhere else. Policing strategies must take into account the realities of living in cities versus living in suburbs. At the end of the day, nobody wants to go back to the 1970's where New York or Chicago were dangerous places (which was a major cause of the suburban exodus to begin with). Just because you live in a city doesn't mean you should live in fear of getting mugged, raped, etc. When I lived in Chicago, there were flashmob attacks in my neighborhood: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2011/06/06/chicago-flash-mobs-appare_n_871924.html http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2011/06/06/chicago-flash-mobs-.... Shit like that just doesn't happen in the suburbs, and requires commensurate police response.
- runako 13y ago
  >> In a city, I'd bet it's statistically likely that a tagger has a gang affiliation. There are laws on the books for tagging and laws on the books for gang affiliation. Specifically, laws indicate what can and can not be legally done by an individual or group. They specifically do not talk about the statistical likelihood that since an individual is alleged to have done X they likely also did Y and so we can prosecute for Y. One of the neat things about the law is that we are not supposed to apply laws based on the facts and not our superstitions of the types of associations we attribute to a person who looks a certain way or who lives in a certain place. Similarly, police don't get to do whatever they want to protect an arbitrary group of citizens from another arbitrary group of citizens. Legislatures don't get to decide that certain citizens have more rights, or more claim on the justice system, than other citizens, for any reason at all. One of the great things about America is that over time, we get closer to achieving a usable reference implementation of a usable system of justice.
- norswap 13y ago
  Thanks god we do not use statistical correlation in justice. I would not like to live in that world. And I'm not arguing for laissez-faire, but simply for justice, which should be the same for everyone.

by norswap 13y ago

rayiner 13y ago

> Tagging hardly qualifies you as a gang member. In a suburb, probably not. In a city, I'd bet it's statistically likely that a tagger has a gang affiliation. > Living in a city isn't a crime and shouldn't make result in you being treated differently than anywhere else. Policing strategies must take into account the realities of living in cities versus living in suburbs. At the end of the day, nobody wants to go back to the 1970's where New York or Chicago were dangerous places (which was a major cause of the suburban exodus to begin with). Just because you live in a city doesn't mean you should live in fear of getting mugged, raped, etc. When I lived in Chicago, there were flashmob attacks in my neighborhood: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2011/06/06/chicago-flash-mobs-appare_n_871924.html http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2011/06/06/chicago-flash-mobs-.... Shit like that just doesn't happen in the suburbs, and requires commensurate police response.

runako 13y ago
>> In a city, I'd bet it's statistically likely that a tagger has a gang affiliation. There are laws on the books for tagging and laws on the books for gang affiliation. Specifically, laws indicate what can and can not be legally done by an individual or group. They specifically do not talk about the statistical likelihood that since an individual is alleged to have done X they likely also did Y and so we can prosecute for Y. One of the neat things about the law is that we are not supposed to apply laws based on the facts and not our superstitions of the types of associations we attribute to a person who looks a certain way or who lives in a certain place. Similarly, police don't get to do whatever they want to protect an arbitrary group of citizens from another arbitrary group of citizens. Legislatures don't get to decide that certain citizens have more rights, or more claim on the justice system, than other citizens, for any reason at all. One of the great things about America is that over time, we get closer to achieving a usable reference implementation of a usable system of justice.
norswap 13y ago
Thanks god we do not use statistical correlation in justice. I would not like to live in that world. And I'm not arguing for laissez-faire, but simply for justice, which should be the same for everyone.