Comment by dcolkitt | Hacker News Reader

Comment by dcolkitt | Hacker News Reader

I fully support legalizing all drugs, but don't understand why the latest wave of criminal justice reform tolerates property crimes. Crimes like smash and grabs, purse snatching, bike thefts, vandalism, littering, and shoplifting clearly have defined victims and lower the quality of life for everyone.

It's perfectly possible to be a heroin addict and an upstanding citizen at the same time. The same cannot be said of a bike thief. The vast majority of even hardcore homeless drug addicts do not engage in malicious property crimes. It's only a small fraction, that also tends to be the most violent and socially pathological.

Vigorous enforcement of property crime improves the life for everyone in the city. Doubly so for the otherwise law-abiding drug users, who most often bear the worse brunt of the anti-social property criminals. The best way to sell drug policy reform to law and order conservatives is to redirect those resources to non-victimless crimes. Not just throw your hands up in the air and give up on enforcing any laws whatsoever.

>I fully support legalizing all drugs, but don't understand why the latest wave of criminal justice reform tolerates property crimes.

This so much! You're not a criminal because you're doing heroin or whatever, you're a criminal because you're stealing everything that isn't nailed down, harassing and threatening people in the neighborhood, attempting to break into houses repeatedly.

This is all happening to my neighbors and I. But the police do nothing.

It's pretty frustrating.

Yeah I'm not sure I get it either. The problem was that throwing heroin addicts in prison for 5 years doesn't rehabilitate them or solve anything. That doesn't mean that they shouldn't be held liable for crimes they commit while high.

The alternative is often vigilante justice, which is worse for everyone. Apparently the 'coffee throwing guy' was beaten by the child's father after he threw coffee - certainly an understandable reaction from a father who saw his child assaulted. But that's going to leave a mark on everyone - Calderon included

It's like society has forgotten why prisons exist -- to protect the general populous from people who are dangerous.

Imprisoning someone for using drugs is a terrible way to use the prison system, because they're not harming anyone. However, not imprisoning someone who steals, vandalizes, and harms others, is equally faulty.

I would need quote on the 'vast majority' claim. You can't leave a bike for 10 minutes in downtown Seattle for a reason, homeless heroin addicts gets their drug and resource to procure those drug _somewhere_.

I have left my bike unlocked, and even my automobile unlocked with its keys in it, many time and never been burgled. (Once in Boston my bike accessories were stolen off my bike.)

Even if every bike is stolen by an addict, that doesn't mean most addicts are doing the stealing.

Isn't part of the problem here the consequences of charging / jailing / sentencing / imprisoning people in the us? There largely is no rehabilitation / mental health support happening while imprisoned (with jails being worse on average iirc). Being convicted of a crime increases recidivism in a lot of areas (I assume largely due to the fact that it gets much harder to ever get/keep jobs, and due to network effects). Fees and fines (and then fees/fines for not being able to pay them, for financial, organizational, and other reasons) for justice system contacts also have severe effects on a lot of places.

With that in mind not convicting people of some crimes can make more sense (even if surely not right in all).

Property crime is a symptom of the problem, not the problem itself. Consider this: wage theft results in over double the losses of all other property crimes COMBINED, yet we don't throw bosses who rob their workers of earned pay in jail.

Is this a "just asking questions" post? (edit: haha based on the downvotes it suuuuure was.)

It's not about tolerating property crime, it's about recognizing a) property crime is a symptom of the problem b) people suffering from property crime is a super minor problem c) the real, immediate problem is that we have thousands of homeless/addicts/mentally ill people who are suffering way more than someone who lost their bike d) it is known that you can't arrest your way out of this problem.

So, where to put resources? Obviously, spending a lot of resources on constantly arresting people is a massive waste of money and people will just be back out on the streets eventually doing the same shit. So that's not a good use of police / court system / prison system time and taxpayer money. We need to go after the root of the problem -- untreated mental illness, addiction, homelessness, etc. That is why enforcement of petty crimes is a low concern.

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