Right now your post is coming off like someone from Paris visiting Pocatello, Idaho, and saying aloud in a bar, "why is drunk driving even a problem here? In Paris, we just take the metro home after we drink!"
If someone is found out to get there, escape, and get there on and on, then it's a criminal offense (sounds like 'systematic homelessness') then they are sent to normal gulag-style forced labor camp (as in Russia, there are almost no prisons as such in Belarus, almost every institution which looks like prison is in fact a jail - people are kept there only prior to being sentenced).
That system sounds like well-balanced and fair to me, even if is not perfect. Being a (chronic, i.e. semi-permanent or permanent, as opposed to someone who just happened to get in a tough life situation) homeless, is an obvious crime against public order. Crime difficult to effectively punish without resorting to terror, and yet a crime. Belarusians have built a well-balanced, working system which lets good law-abiding citizens feel safe in the streets.
Or consider how easily you could end up “useless” for society: if you get cancer, or into a car accident, would it be ok for society to just let you die? After all, the treatment is certain to cost far more than the taxes you would eventually pay after recovery.
I also feel quite safe here in the streets of Berlin, and part of that is that nobody is going around dividing people into useful and useless.
Among the consequences are, for example: the right to a fair trial even for the worst (alleged) criminals; the right to receive medical treatment, even if you were injured doing something rather stupid; the tendency to no longer kill vast swaths of people because you don’t like their last name or whatever — and, of course, not to consider a problem “solved” when the solution involves the police collecting people never to be seen again.
In fact I’m not entirely sure if your blatant ignorance as to the fate of the homeless in your country wasn’t maybe intended as sarcasm.
Your reasoning showcases the authoritarian mindset and moral framework, where other people are judged based on rigid ideas of right and wrong, with no interest in or understanding of their individual problems, abilities or past experiences. People are good or bad, and bad people should be punished until they become good. The problem with this moral framework is that it is disconnected from reality. Punishment doesn’t help a woman who uses alcohol or heroin to soothe a brain and nervous system that is damaged by trauma from childhood abuse. It adds more trauma, and more incentive to continue numbing her pain. Someone who hasn’t experienced real trauma cannot possibly understand how this feels, and it’s easier to just label her a bad apple and get her out of sight and out of mind
>Punishment doesn’t help a woman who uses alcohol or heroin to soothe a brain and nervous system that is damaged by trauma from childhood abuse
No it doesn't, but in Belarus case, she will be sent (forcibly, but probably without a criminal conviction) to a rehab to try to fix her addiction, not to gulag or a gas chamber. And of course if she has kids, they will be taken away and put for adoption. I can't see what's wrong with this, or at least how it can be done better.
Being a bum is not the same as being poor. It is the kind of a criminal behavior and/or mental disorder. It is especially so in the deep welfare state which leaves very little chances for someone to fall out, such as Belarus is (it is a poor welfare state in the sense that most of its inhabitants are poor, but yet, it works in a way ensuring that no one is left without ways to make basic means for existence, it is not a dog-eat-dog society in any way).
Ah. There is no lawful way of becoming homeless in Belarus. Everyone is obligated to have an address of registration by law and government ensures everyone has a place (in nothing else works, it will be a bed in adult dormitory, but still). Bums are very rarely actually homeless (although their place may be a dilapidated house in a countryside in a place with no work).
My 'rigid system of right and wrong' is pretty simple: society should follow the interest of law-abiding, working, tax-paying citizens.
They might turn out to be one of the rare categories of people who prison actually fixes - one motive of being a bum is having absolutely no bosses, no mandatory routine, and being able to completely disrespect any kind of rules or authority - being in prison where you are forced to do otherwise for a number of years might actually change that habit (while i am not criminologist, this one admittedly might be bs).
And if you meant the forced labor as an administrative sentence, it's not something horrible, these are not gulags. Aren't people forced to do community work by say, cleaning the streets or assisting nurses in hospitals/nursing homes for misdemeanors such as drunk fights or driving drunk in Western countries? This is same kind of thing.
If you don't like the idea of LTP, then well, i don't like it either, but you have probably little idea of what's called an alcoholic in Belarus - where most adult male population are alcoholics, clinically speaking, and under 1% are risking getting into these LTPs (and most of them are not bums, typically police would send someone there once they realize that he's one binge away from stabbing his wife to death).
Sure, in the West where most people aren't forced to live where they were born because of being dependent on relatives network safety net and/or can afford to buy or rent homes, simpler solution is segregation (soft: basically not trying to artificially slow down market forces that tend to naturally increase the poor/rich communities split) and better policing of poorer areas, but this is what liberals are strongly against, so i'm not really suggesting it.