This is an odd example to make an anti-defund point because you could just as easily argue that this is an example of why the police aren’t actually helpful at deterring crime unless there happens to be an officer right there at the moment of a crime occurring. And warehousing the mentally ill in prisons conclusively doesn’t help anybody. Seems like the solution here is exactly what abolitionists have been proposing (as Freddie notes): vastly more resources diverted from policing to mental health care, social housing, nonviolent emergency response, etc etc.
Removing police and abolishing prisons is the definitional "luxury belief". The people most impacted as victims of crime are those who are already in disadvantaged groups, and it's disgusting how many "compassionate" people on the left are willing to throw them under the bus.
(See also the condemnation of women who want domestic abusers or sexual predators locked up as displaying "carceral feminism". In this case too there seems to be among the responses a vein of thought that the victim should somehow "take one for the team" and ignore the crime, to be a good liberal).
Are there police forces that need cleaning out? 100%. Should some offenders be diverted away from incarceration? No doubt. That doesn't mean there aren't some people who Deserve Prison. The system by which we punish offenders is not just about sticking it to criminals (or enforcing racial systems, etc). It's about the dignity of victims, and showing that we take their suffering seriously - and that we recognise the right of the average citizen to want to be safe.
Yeah. I actually think the folks who say we need MORE police, not fewer, are onto something. There are a few people working in this vein, but some of the key arguments are summarized in this pair of posts by Alex Tabarrok:
The basic argument is that criminals actually respond better to a greater likelihood of being caught than they do to increased prison sentences. But we’re doing it backwards: instead of moderate penalties applied consistently, we let a lot of crimes go unprevented or unsolved, but when we DO catch someone we put them in prison for a long time. Because criminals don’t have a strong sense that a penalty is coming, prison is not a very effective deterrent. But we do nonetheless end up with a ginormous population of people who spend their prime years in prison.
And even if you think some policing should ultimately be made unnecessary by mental health treatment, poverty reduction, etc. — those things would take years or decades to become effective, and you still need to protect people in the meantime. (And if we need a social justice sweetener — victims of crime are disproportionately black, poor, mentally ill, homeless… pick your favorite.)
So, IMO — more and better policing is the place to start.
True - we need to punish and incarcerate more criminals.
2. That we are a vastly over-incarcerated nation.
False - we are a vastly high-crime nation. There is no material number of non-criminals that are being incarcerated. We can ask if the punishment is fair, but the rate of incarceration correlates with the rate of crime.
3. That existing police departments exhibit endemic racism, corruption, unequal enforcement, and impunity from consequences.
False - If based on statistics. Cops are more prevalent and attentive in areas of high crime. Cops are no more racist, corrupt or biased than is the general population, and are likely much less so today given the consequences. I do think there is class-bias with police. They are upper-middle class professionals and they deal with the dregs of society. I don't know what to do about that in an era where uppity upper class liberals do the same.
4. That those who are mentally ill deserve special dispensation within the criminal justice system, as their condition complicates questions of culpability.
Yes - build facilities for them and commit then to care.
5. That ordinary citizens should be careful about when and why they contact the police, and should do so understanding the potential for violence and racism that so often stem from police interactions with people of color.
Huh? This does not seem good advice. People need to contact the police if they believe that there is a crime or threat that warrants law enforcement. It is up to the police to decide what is appropriate or not.
"I know serious lefties who believe that we can abolish the police, but only after the end of capitalism."
Wow. The "end of capitalism" really is like heaven for these folks.
Of course they won't ever write down the rules for what should happen if somebody does beat a dog to death in one of their magical utopias. They just assure us that it will all be peachy keen.
The word "serious" really should not be used to describe such people.
Everyone needs to understand that they are on their own now. No one is coming to save you when you are attacked. You had better take your obligation to be your own first responder seriously. Our city has started going downhill after it became clear that crime was no longer going to be punished. After every serious crime, our local young lefties talk about how "we cannot tolerate this". Well, what does no toleration look like, angry posts on the neighborhood facebook or nextdoor pages? A hard stare for the dude who murdered my neighbor in front of his toddler and wife while he was taking out the trash?
Sadly, long after I left an occupation that involved carrying a gun for living; I bought a recent, improved model of CCW pistol (talk about innovation!!); joined a range; and now regularly practice combat pistol and shotgun for home defense. I am always armed now with spectrum of force options when in public. Spray (always), often an impact weapon, and pistol. It is amazing how quickly this just becomes second nature.
Homeless lunatics are everywhere around here now. They have potent recreational drugs and no one will stop them. They wander around an menace people routinely. Many knife attacks also. You do not want ot be on the wrong end of one of these knife attacks by a mentally ill person. They just keep stabbing.
Oh well, we all get to enjoy our rich and vibrant neighborhoods now.
Every inch of New York City is covered by NYPD and business cameras. If the police gave a shit about catching this guy, they would have. What "Crystal in a community meeting thinks about crime being a construct" or whatever has literally 0 bearing on police practices. The dog's owner wants to press charges. Nextdoor has no bearing on this process.
We should defund the police because the VERY amply funded NYPD hasn't been able to catch a mentally ill, violent, dreadlocked man, in Park Slope, where they have nothing to do all day since there's almost no crime compared to the rest of the city.
Defund is not about thinking we can solve violent crimes with wishful thinking. It's about pointing out that in the absence of any mechanisms of accountability, police will keep doing what they do, which is not much to prevent or solve violent crime.
The cops did not give a shit about solving this because in Compstat metrics, there is no category for "killing a woman's dog," so if this guy were caught, the worst it'd clock in as is misdemeanor assault because he apparently flung piss at the woman.
Yes, it's funny to poke at dumb ass progressives blathering with a high-school stoner's understanding of social justice.
But the headline of that story should have been, "WTF do cops in Park Slope do all day?"
First off, the headline: 573 per 100,000 US residents are locked up. If I can remember how to do basic algebra, that works out to 1 in 175 or so.
My high school graduating class size was about 300. I went to school in a boring, middle-class suburb of a smallish city. We did not have a major gang or drug problem. And yet I can think of way more than two shitheels I went to school with that I have no trouble imagining doing something as adults that they should be locked up for, for the benefit of the rest of us.
A lot of hay is made out of the fact that the USA incarcerates its citizens at a higher rate than any other country, and it's always blamed on racism, or capitalism, or some combination of both. Why doesn't anybody ever consider the null hypothesis - that the United States simply has more violent, misbehaved people than other countries? Is that really so hard to believe, when you consider things like our ongoing love of guns, and the fact that our most popular spectator sport has been described as "violence punctuated by committee meetings"? Is there any other country in the world whose public schools are known for the kinds of violence and open defiance of authority that America's are?
The other big takeaway from that website is, boy howdy, has the left been telling fibs with the "most people in jail are there for non-violent drug offenses" talking point. Only 40,000 people are in state prisons for simple drug possession, which I think is 40,000 too many, but that's not a significant portion of the 1.9 million people incarcerated. Even eliminating all drug-related convictions would only move the needle so far.
I happen to live and work in the "Murder Capital of the US" right now. The crime in New Orleans appears to be out-of-control. And while the crime rate started rising in 2020, it's been on a rocket to the moon for the last 2 years. Louisiana also leads the nation in its incarceration rate, which means that what little justice reform that does take place occurs around the edges of an over-whelmed judicial system.
The biggest problem in addressing crime at the moment, at least as most of the city can agree, is fixing the understaffed and underpaid NOPD. But it requires more than just a pay raise. Training the police to be proactive on violent crime in poorer neighborhoods and less over-policing in those same neighborhoods for minor stuff like loitering and public intoxication.
NOLA and Louisiana as a whole, has long had a spectacularly underperforming education system (both public and charter schools) and the job opportunities offer little in the way for many young black men & women to overcome long-term socio-economic problems. Beefs are solved with easily accessible guns in a state with liberal gun laws in a state with a long history of violence.
There was some traction gained here in NOLA with regards to reform but it was primarily focused on not policing and prosecuting non-violent crimes. But just led to revolving doors for many offenders who then escalated. The most heinous crimes get prosecuted. Car jackings and random drive-by shootings are the biggest issues it seems right now.
There was a fairly recent incident where an elderly lady was dragged to her death by a group of young kids who carjacked her. Her arm got caught in the seatbelt as they threw her out of the car. They were caught and now face murder charges as adults.
If anything, the last 2 years has taught the New Orleans metro area & Louisiana as a whole, that fighting crime and criminal justice reform are far too complex for the jingoism of the "abolish the police crowd." Not even the most liberal people I know here in NOLA advocate for that because they know its just outright dumb.
There’s a lot of things conservatives do to cause people to distrust them. This is one of the biggest for the Left - an abject refusal to see the realities of crime and the way it effects people who live in the communities it affects.
Second to last paragraph typo - should have been entirely UNclear
This is an odd example to make an anti-defund point because you could just as easily argue that this is an example of why the police aren’t actually helpful at deterring crime unless there happens to be an officer right there at the moment of a crime occurring. And warehousing the mentally ill in prisons conclusively doesn’t help anybody. Seems like the solution here is exactly what abolitionists have been proposing (as Freddie notes): vastly more resources diverted from policing to mental health care, social housing, nonviolent emergency response, etc etc.
Removing police and abolishing prisons is the definitional "luxury belief". The people most impacted as victims of crime are those who are already in disadvantaged groups, and it's disgusting how many "compassionate" people on the left are willing to throw them under the bus.
(See also the condemnation of women who want domestic abusers or sexual predators locked up as displaying "carceral feminism". In this case too there seems to be among the responses a vein of thought that the victim should somehow "take one for the team" and ignore the crime, to be a good liberal).
Are there police forces that need cleaning out? 100%. Should some offenders be diverted away from incarceration? No doubt. That doesn't mean there aren't some people who Deserve Prison. The system by which we punish offenders is not just about sticking it to criminals (or enforcing racial systems, etc). It's about the dignity of victims, and showing that we take their suffering seriously - and that we recognise the right of the average citizen to want to be safe.
Yeah. I actually think the folks who say we need MORE police, not fewer, are onto something. There are a few people working in this vein, but some of the key arguments are summarized in this pair of posts by Alex Tabarrok:
https://marginalrevolution.com/?s=under%20policed&utm_source=substack&utm_medium=email
https://marginalrevolution.com/marginalrevolution/2015/09/what-was-gary-beckers-biggest-mistake.html
The basic argument is that criminals actually respond better to a greater likelihood of being caught than they do to increased prison sentences. But we’re doing it backwards: instead of moderate penalties applied consistently, we let a lot of crimes go unprevented or unsolved, but when we DO catch someone we put them in prison for a long time. Because criminals don’t have a strong sense that a penalty is coming, prison is not a very effective deterrent. But we do nonetheless end up with a ginormous population of people who spend their prime years in prison.
And even if you think some policing should ultimately be made unnecessary by mental health treatment, poverty reduction, etc. — those things would take years or decades to become effective, and you still need to protect people in the meantime. (And if we need a social justice sweetener — victims of crime are disproportionately black, poor, mentally ill, homeless… pick your favorite.)
So, IMO — more and better policing is the place to start.
1. That we badly need criminal justice reform.
True - we need to punish and incarcerate more criminals.
2. That we are a vastly over-incarcerated nation.
False - we are a vastly high-crime nation. There is no material number of non-criminals that are being incarcerated. We can ask if the punishment is fair, but the rate of incarceration correlates with the rate of crime.
3. That existing police departments exhibit endemic racism, corruption, unequal enforcement, and impunity from consequences.
False - If based on statistics. Cops are more prevalent and attentive in areas of high crime. Cops are no more racist, corrupt or biased than is the general population, and are likely much less so today given the consequences. I do think there is class-bias with police. They are upper-middle class professionals and they deal with the dregs of society. I don't know what to do about that in an era where uppity upper class liberals do the same.
4. That those who are mentally ill deserve special dispensation within the criminal justice system, as their condition complicates questions of culpability.
Yes - build facilities for them and commit then to care.
5. That ordinary citizens should be careful about when and why they contact the police, and should do so understanding the potential for violence and racism that so often stem from police interactions with people of color.
Huh? This does not seem good advice. People need to contact the police if they believe that there is a crime or threat that warrants law enforcement. It is up to the police to decide what is appropriate or not.
I don't even like dogs, but I agree.
"I know serious lefties who believe that we can abolish the police, but only after the end of capitalism."
Wow. The "end of capitalism" really is like heaven for these folks.
Of course they won't ever write down the rules for what should happen if somebody does beat a dog to death in one of their magical utopias. They just assure us that it will all be peachy keen.
The word "serious" really should not be used to describe such people.
Everyone needs to understand that they are on their own now. No one is coming to save you when you are attacked. You had better take your obligation to be your own first responder seriously. Our city has started going downhill after it became clear that crime was no longer going to be punished. After every serious crime, our local young lefties talk about how "we cannot tolerate this". Well, what does no toleration look like, angry posts on the neighborhood facebook or nextdoor pages? A hard stare for the dude who murdered my neighbor in front of his toddler and wife while he was taking out the trash?
Sadly, long after I left an occupation that involved carrying a gun for living; I bought a recent, improved model of CCW pistol (talk about innovation!!); joined a range; and now regularly practice combat pistol and shotgun for home defense. I am always armed now with spectrum of force options when in public. Spray (always), often an impact weapon, and pistol. It is amazing how quickly this just becomes second nature.
Homeless lunatics are everywhere around here now. They have potent recreational drugs and no one will stop them. They wander around an menace people routinely. Many knife attacks also. You do not want ot be on the wrong end of one of these knife attacks by a mentally ill person. They just keep stabbing.
Oh well, we all get to enjoy our rich and vibrant neighborhoods now.
Every inch of New York City is covered by NYPD and business cameras. If the police gave a shit about catching this guy, they would have. What "Crystal in a community meeting thinks about crime being a construct" or whatever has literally 0 bearing on police practices. The dog's owner wants to press charges. Nextdoor has no bearing on this process.
We should defund the police because the VERY amply funded NYPD hasn't been able to catch a mentally ill, violent, dreadlocked man, in Park Slope, where they have nothing to do all day since there's almost no crime compared to the rest of the city.
Defund is not about thinking we can solve violent crimes with wishful thinking. It's about pointing out that in the absence of any mechanisms of accountability, police will keep doing what they do, which is not much to prevent or solve violent crime.
The cops did not give a shit about solving this because in Compstat metrics, there is no category for "killing a woman's dog," so if this guy were caught, the worst it'd clock in as is misdemeanor assault because he apparently flung piss at the woman.
Yes, it's funny to poke at dumb ass progressives blathering with a high-school stoner's understanding of social justice.
But the headline of that story should have been, "WTF do cops in Park Slope do all day?"
I am going to push back a little on the "we are a vastly over-incarcerated nation" idea.
I'm looking at stats from this source: https://www.prisonpolicy.org/reports/pie2022.html By all appearances, this is a progressive organization that wants to reduce mass incarceration.
First off, the headline: 573 per 100,000 US residents are locked up. If I can remember how to do basic algebra, that works out to 1 in 175 or so.
My high school graduating class size was about 300. I went to school in a boring, middle-class suburb of a smallish city. We did not have a major gang or drug problem. And yet I can think of way more than two shitheels I went to school with that I have no trouble imagining doing something as adults that they should be locked up for, for the benefit of the rest of us.
A lot of hay is made out of the fact that the USA incarcerates its citizens at a higher rate than any other country, and it's always blamed on racism, or capitalism, or some combination of both. Why doesn't anybody ever consider the null hypothesis - that the United States simply has more violent, misbehaved people than other countries? Is that really so hard to believe, when you consider things like our ongoing love of guns, and the fact that our most popular spectator sport has been described as "violence punctuated by committee meetings"? Is there any other country in the world whose public schools are known for the kinds of violence and open defiance of authority that America's are?
The other big takeaway from that website is, boy howdy, has the left been telling fibs with the "most people in jail are there for non-violent drug offenses" talking point. Only 40,000 people are in state prisons for simple drug possession, which I think is 40,000 too many, but that's not a significant portion of the 1.9 million people incarcerated. Even eliminating all drug-related convictions would only move the needle so far.
I happen to live and work in the "Murder Capital of the US" right now. The crime in New Orleans appears to be out-of-control. And while the crime rate started rising in 2020, it's been on a rocket to the moon for the last 2 years. Louisiana also leads the nation in its incarceration rate, which means that what little justice reform that does take place occurs around the edges of an over-whelmed judicial system.
The biggest problem in addressing crime at the moment, at least as most of the city can agree, is fixing the understaffed and underpaid NOPD. But it requires more than just a pay raise. Training the police to be proactive on violent crime in poorer neighborhoods and less over-policing in those same neighborhoods for minor stuff like loitering and public intoxication.
NOLA and Louisiana as a whole, has long had a spectacularly underperforming education system (both public and charter schools) and the job opportunities offer little in the way for many young black men & women to overcome long-term socio-economic problems. Beefs are solved with easily accessible guns in a state with liberal gun laws in a state with a long history of violence.
There was some traction gained here in NOLA with regards to reform but it was primarily focused on not policing and prosecuting non-violent crimes. But just led to revolving doors for many offenders who then escalated. The most heinous crimes get prosecuted. Car jackings and random drive-by shootings are the biggest issues it seems right now.
There was a fairly recent incident where an elderly lady was dragged to her death by a group of young kids who carjacked her. Her arm got caught in the seatbelt as they threw her out of the car. They were caught and now face murder charges as adults.
If anything, the last 2 years has taught the New Orleans metro area & Louisiana as a whole, that fighting crime and criminal justice reform are far too complex for the jingoism of the "abolish the police crowd." Not even the most liberal people I know here in NOLA advocate for that because they know its just outright dumb.
There’s a lot of things conservatives do to cause people to distrust them. This is one of the biggest for the Left - an abject refusal to see the realities of crime and the way it effects people who live in the communities it affects.
I can't believe you have to write this.
What plausible theories have been advanced for decline in crime?