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Lessening crime was never thier objective, it’s just a double speak in support of the prison system.
Brought a tear to my eye, yo.
SHOULD be obvious
“Arrgh that would be communism, so we can’t allow that” - 🤡
I mean the first thing the federated mastadon did was ban the socialists to their own little corner. So even “on the left” what you said isn’t a joke, it’s deeply ingrained dogma.
Yes, we did (The Netherlands). It really works! But sadly policies are changing, heading more towards the American system with privatization, where the gap between the rich 1% and the rest is increasing rapidly. But at least we’re still far away from the current American collapse.
The reason why punishment does not deter crime is because people who commit crimes usually do so because they are out of options, or were not given other options to begin with. So if you increase the severity of the punishment, you are merely making it more stressful for the people to commit the crimes, rather than deterring them.
That’s my take. And I don’t have a damn criminology degree to come up with that. (Not to say it’s necessarily true, but it rings true to me.)
There is absolutely a direct correlation between crime and poverty.
It’s just here in America we don’t care about that because crime is business.
Americans: look north you twits.
Gun violence goes hand to hand with poverty.
poverty goes up, gun violence goes up
But if crime declined, the poor private prison corporations would lose money, and that’s not a good thing. They wouldn’t be able to give judges kickbacks to sentence lesser crimes! Please, think of the poor private prison corporations!
/s in case the sarcasm isn’t abundantly clear.
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I got a degree in criminology about 25 years ago and can confirm that there was no dispute in the science at that time that this was the way to reduce crime.
Everything else had been tried and tried again and proven not to work. It was around that time that my (then) field realized that the DARE program increased drug use.
It was almost 25 years after the St. Louis (maybe wrong city, it’s been a while) Crime and Control study proved that flooding the streets with more police officers only pushed crime into other neighborhoods.
When I studied, it was almost a joke to read new research coming out, because every serious study was just confirming what everyone knew. Guest lecturers would come in to talk about their latest theories in criminology. and, it was basically everyone just sitting around saying oh yeah that’s obvious. The field has peaked, and it was up to society then to catch up.
We looked at three strike’s laws, truth and sentencing laws, asset forfeiture laws, mandatory minimums, and every time we found that these policies increase violent crime. They further fracture communities and destroy families at the generational level.
It may not be intuitive to think that, but would a little thought, a little reflection, it is hard to say that this would not be the obvious result.
The methods to reducing and ending recidivism have been well known to science. People who talk about harsh law enforcement and punitive corrections are either ignorant, emotional blowhards, or not serious about reducing crime.
We have in America a well-established cat and mouse model of policing. And indeed it does Trace its history to slave patrols, a reactionary force of violence, dispatched into the community to capture offenders. The entire model does absolutely nothing to prevent future crimes from occurring.
Maybe they catch some guy who’s a serial offender, and get him off the streets. And they call that a win. But until the root causes of crime are addressed, all they’re doing is playing serial offender whack-a-mole; the next one is just going to pop right up. And maybe they’ll say, oh sure, that’s because we have a “catch and release” system.
Well, if we literally did nothing at all to stop crime, and totally abolished the concept of a police force, the science is absolutely clear that most people are going to age out of crime by the time they turn 25, and the rest, save for a few people who are likely mentally disabled, will age out by the time they hit 35. But instead, we’re kicking down doors and locking people out in cage for decades on end, making sure that their families are broken and locked in a cycle of poverty and trauma, and we end up sometimes with three generations of men sharing a prison together.
And while we’re on the subject of prison, the science is also absolutely clear that the way to reduce recidivism to almost nothing is to provide good health care, good mental health care, and to teach people marketable skills, all in a safe environment. When I got my degree, the field was shifting to a program evaluation approach, because we had figured out what programs we needed to have, and the only thing left to do was to fine-tune those programs to get the most out of them.
But then 4 years would go by, or 8 years would go by, and some new tough-on-crime politician would come and wonder why we’re spending so much money to hold people in a cage, and they’d start cutting the programs.
And despite that, and despite the emotional reactionaries who just want to see bad guys be treated badly to make themselves feel better about crime, virtually every type of crime is the lowest it’s ever been in my lifetime.
Trump mandated that lead piping won’t be replaced. That stuff correlates with crime rates, far as location goes. Brilliant. 🤦♂️
Thanks for the thoughtful comment
First, thanks for taking the time to do that writeup!
Second - do you happen to have links to any likely sources that would present that info in a digestible manner? I’m not asking this to challenge you, I’m asking so I have linkable references in future discussion.
Thanks!
Someone else asked for this too and I’m really having a hard time coming up with anything.
All good, no worries, still a great writeup!
yeah. i thought this was common knowledge myself (as a layman) but then i realized i lived in an intellectual bubble, and that most conservatives would reject the idea even when presented with evidence because cruelty is the point.
that’s when i realized that the only solution was to get rid of conservatives.
seriously. none of this will ever change until the vast majority of abrahamic religious minded, protestant work ethic devoted people are gone.
and for those that say, “if you just educate them”, well… they stand in the way of education reforms, so…
the answer remains: [redacted]
Yeah. There was a time that I wanted to believe conservatives were merely misguided. Now I know: they are straight up evil. As dehumanizing and unkind as it is, I have started to mentally replacing them with orcs, goblins, and dragons.
A small part of me is sad about the death of my naivety. Then my brain reminds me what price society has paid for hosting these malicious turds. If there is a Reconstruction 2.0, these words must be followed: “Rip and tear, until it is done.”
Wow, all very insightful, thanks for taking the time write this!
Do you have any recommended sources to read more about this topic / research? I’d love to learn more!
This is why we say “the cruelty is the point”. As you note, these are not serious people trying to reduce crime. They are straight up lying about their goals, possibly even to themselves. The whole mindset is against the idea that crime is something that even can be reduced; rather, “bad people” will always do “bad things”, and it’s up to “powerful men” to protect the rest of society from them. It is rooted in a deeply authoritarian mindset that puts them as one of the “powerful men”. If you were to reduce crime, how can they prove that they’re one of the “powerful men”?
well, the powerful man probably think that covering people’s basic necessities wouldn’t reduce crime. After all, they have those covered in spades, and yet steal billions of dollars each year
Thanks for sharing your experience
This is a spectacular post
To add to that, it’s the same with homelessness. Every 1-4 years, architecture students and urban planning students are asked to do projects on helping to house the homeless or something similar. Every time, they come up with innovative and unique ways to handle it. People forget about and/or realize that no one will try any of them. Repeat.
Thank you for this great insight and information.
emotional reactionaries who just want to see bad guys be treated badly to make themselves feel better about crime
I keep thinking about Dukakis. They asked if he would change his mind/support the death penalty if his wife was murdered. He said no - and folks flipped their shit.
The “left” as it exists in the US is so cowed by the idea of a Willie Horton scenario that it has to lean into that same evil vindictiveness. The 1994 Clinton crime bill which devastated Black communities was Dems trying to show off how “tough on crime” they could be.
Criminals are a safe “other” to hate.
Do you have some beginner friendly references I could look at? I live in a MAGA heavy state and although logic doesn’t always work the more tools in my belt the better!
Thank you for typing that out!
What I keep getting held up on is that if the science keeps pointing toward the same conclusion, how do you actually apply those to society? How to you convince the voting masses to institute these changes? Because the average person won’t accept repealing things like three strikes and minimum sentencing, they just assume that a “tough on crime” attitude is the way to go. If a politician comes along offering justice system reform, he’d never make it into office because people would assume he’d be letting criminals run rampant unpunished.
Related, I’ve heard people argue against UBI by saying that it would just make people lazy and not want to work at all.
Honestly, I think it would require being raised in a society where social welfare is the norm before it can be considered ordinary.
It would take a revolution with people of vision in order to create a social welfare society. Similar to the Founding Fathers of America, where people of intelligence, character, and spine agreed that a change must be made. We will need people who can fight like hell to lead us into battle, and coolheaded types who will spend a great deal of midnight oil on drafting and workshopping a new way of living.
It won’t be easy nor intuitive, but the crisis caused by Yarvin’s Cabal might be the kindling we need for people to give up on the way we have lived. After all, the old ways are dying with the Constitution. When cowardice offers no shelter, all that is left is to fight.
Fantastic reply. Thanks for taking the time to write it out and thanks again for the insight into the very important work you do.
Abolish laws. Then crime will instantly disappear. 🥴
what’s the reasoning ?
Can’t commit crime if nothing is a crime. 🙂↕️
Legalize it! 🌿
ok
I can’t find the podcast. Maybe someone else can post an article about this:
Several years ago, I listened to a podcast that interviewed a man in Chicago who was conducting a study. His team found people with a criminal history(I think maybe drug dealers?) and tell them they’ll get $1000 a month. No strings attached.
There were a few who didn’t use the money well, but most quit crime/dealing drugs entirely. They found steady work and some went back to school.
All they needed was an opportunity to feel financially safe, feed their kids, and pay rent.
Edit: I think I found it? Here’s an article on it. Some of my facts were wrong, but the idea was right overall.
The article also mentions another called the Stock Economic Empowerment Demonstration.
I’m not sure which I heard about but I suspect the interview was with Richard Wallace who is mentioned in the article. Some of his talking points sounded familiar.
They’ve been trying it across the world, it’s called Universal Basic Income. It’s been proven mostly successful every time.
Here’s an old article about the US: https://mashable.com/article/cities-with-universal-basic-income-guaranteed-income-programs
Yeah! I wanted to specifically call out the study on UBI with formerly incarcerated people.
I know a lot of pushback on UBI is that it will make people lazy, or emboldened criminals. It has the exact opposite effect.
I believe that’s manufactured pushback tbh. People who are overworked might think it would make themselves lazy. At first, maybe? To get your thoughts in order, it might look lazy. But most people who feel safe with a steady income want to be productive.
I was talking about it with my GF over breakfast. She’s being worked to the bone, waking up in pain etc. and thought about alternatives.
She had the idea of a cat-bookstore-library-café. Imagine being able to sit down with a nice [beverage of your choice], read a good book, have a curious kitten climb onto your lap… Sure, it wouldn’t be for everyone and probably too expensive to run at a profit, but it might be possible with UBI.
And she’d still want to work her other job part-time too, just not full time anymore. She’d still be contributing, just in a different way.
I hope she gets to do that. Japan has a lot of cat cafes that are successful.
That’s precisely it, there’s lots of evidence which shows that welfare programs are better for creating stable societies.
They don’t want to lessen crime, not really anyway.
They want to increase prison labor capacity by arresting and charging more people
Americans maybe. There’s other countries that don’t have legal slavery.
They don’t want less crime they want more so they can exert force over the population
