From my (cursory understanding) the “tough” portion only works if you’re utterly draconian. E.g. if you want to stop jaywalking and put a minimum of two to five years in prison on it, you probably will cut jaywalking by more than 99%.
The level of human rights abuses you’d need to get rid of gangs by merely being draconian would simply not be reconcilable with European laws. For reference: They summary executed/murdered thousands in the Philippines and it didn’t work..
If you’re classically tough, you have all the side-effects of prison. Prison essentially teaches people to become criminals. After all they get to network with other criminals and also they get traumatized (yes, Swedes prisons are more humane than others, but a cage is a cage).
Basically, what you want it is to make crime an irrational decision but making sure that it doesn’t pay of. By that you get all rational people. Against the rest deterrence doesn’t work anyway. And in that context it’s more important to make sure no one gets to keep any drug money than to jail people.
El Salvador shows how it can work, of course what went down there also wouldn’t fly in Europe but crucially they didn’t actually go around and murdered people en masse – they rather humiliated them and dished out long prison sentences left and right not particularly caring whether they put away innocent people.
Well, in El Salvador it currently looks like it’s working. But, as you said, we haven’t really seen the outcome yet. I’ll give it a few years until I actually admit that it’s working.
That alone isn’t enough, you also need to provide alternatives or people are going to take their chance.
Before making crime a bad solution you first need a non criminal solution to survival. People don’t choose criminal violence over a well paid job and a peaceful life, never.
People don’t choose criminal violence over a well paid job and a peaceful life, never.
Well, there’s a lot of sociopaths in prison. About a third of the incarcerated population here in Germany iIRc. Those are a little harder to stop since they don’t really care much about the peaceful part. But apart from them, yeah people don’t tend to chose crime for fun.
From my (cursory understanding) the “tough” portion only works if you’re utterly draconian. E.g. if you want to stop jaywalking and put a minimum of two to five years in prison on it, you probably will cut jaywalking by more than 99%.
The level of human rights abuses you’d need to get rid of gangs by merely being draconian would simply not be reconcilable with European laws. For reference: They summary executed/murdered thousands in the Philippines and it didn’t work..
If you’re classically tough, you have all the side-effects of prison. Prison essentially teaches people to become criminals. After all they get to network with other criminals and also they get traumatized (yes, Swedes prisons are more humane than others, but a cage is a cage).
Basically, what you want it is to make crime an irrational decision but making sure that it doesn’t pay of. By that you get all rational people. Against the rest deterrence doesn’t work anyway. And in that context it’s more important to make sure no one gets to keep any drug money than to jail people.
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Well, in El Salvador it currently looks like it’s working. But, as you said, we haven’t really seen the outcome yet. I’ll give it a few years until I actually admit that it’s working.
Absolutely.
Before making crime a bad solution you first need a non criminal solution to survival. People don’t choose criminal violence over a well paid job and a peaceful life, never.
Well, there’s a lot of sociopaths in prison. About a third of the incarcerated population here in Germany iIRc. Those are a little harder to stop since they don’t really care much about the peaceful part. But apart from them, yeah people don’t tend to chose crime for fun.
Yes, they do.