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Comment by DebtDeflation | Hacker News Reader

>I’ve reached the point where the problem is more than just the equipment, it’s the culture.

This is absolutely true, but the problem goes much deeper than just the police force itself. We seem to want to solve every imaginable social problem with police/courts/prisons. Drug abuse needs to be viewed as a public health problem, not a criminal problem. Homelessness as a housing and mental health problem, not a criminal one. Many other issues as economic problems not criminal ones. Address the root cause, rather than sending people with badges and guns. I realize this is easier said than done, but it's clear the old approach is no longer acceptable to society.

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Maybe "the right not to be prosecuted for a victimless crime" should be an amendment. Then homelessness/drugs-whatevers/prostitution can no longer have laws against them.

"Address the root cause", exactly, and the root cause is the unjust laws. Though cops pretty much never being found guilty for unjust use of violence is a big one too, and I wonder what law changes can solve that issue.

> the right not to be prosecuted for a victimless crime

So if I'm driving drunk, then I'm not prosecuted until there's a victim?

Hm...

I wouldn't necessarily say that DUI is a victimless crime. you might not hurt anyone, but you've exposed everyone on the road to excess risk, which could be argued is a type of harm. I'm not sure jail time is necessary for DUI. having your license suspended is already a severe punishment in places where you really need a vehicle to get around. requiring an interlock whenever the person is allowed to drive again also mitigates the risk to others in the future. of course, then you would have to decide what to do with people who just drive a friend's car or drive on a suspended license...

I think this might be a good example of a larger structural problem. culturally, we accept that going to a bar with friends or having a few glasses of wine at a restaurant is a reasonable thing for an adult to do. but a large portion of the US is set up in a way that bars and restaurants are not within walking distance of homes, and the public transit is poor or nonexistent. if I, a 145 lb male, have a cocktail and a glass of wine at dinner, I'm pretty likely to be above the legal limit by the time I leave. I don't do this; I either drink less or arrange a different way to get home, but I do think the combination of law, culture, and (lack of) infrastructure pushes people towards committing a crime here.

Well, here we step on a slippery slope of defining a "victimless" crime.

Many illegal drugs have a potential of causing harm.

Should the harm be purely physical?

Homelessness is a public nuisance, which we can choose to ignore, but so is walking naked in a school yard, which will be seen as a much more controversial subject.

tbh, I'm in favor of treating DUI more as a liability thing (ie, automatic fault in the case of an accident and multiplied damages) rather than a crime itself, but that's a pretty controversial position that I didn't want to bring into the debate. plus it has its own issues; liability is not much of a deterrent for someone with minimal assets and/or income.

Making DUI a liability thing is such a simple, clean and straightforward thing to do that I wish it worked.

But: - for it to work people should estimate the risks correctly - most people caught DUIing apparently are quite bad in understanding the risks involved

> Many illegal drugs have a potential of causing harm.

To the user, which is a risk they chose to take.

Now you could argue that the illicit trade is causing harm, but that's the direct result of criminalization and not of people choosing to consume substances.

sure illegal drugs only affect users. and the user affected by illegal drugs don't loose any notion of right/wrong and can harm other people

Totally agree. Making victimless behavior to be crimes creates the trade wars. Those laws cause so much harm on society, they are also the reason a significant group is locked up (especially when counting violence resulting from trade as well).

I agree that DUIs and speeding are not victimless and should be punishable, to deter that behavior. It is also well studied to be "risk inducing" and "fixes with fines".

Drugs, prostitution and being homeless (a.k.a. being poor/ in need of support). Should never've been even considered for crimes. Hence I proposed to have those laws made unconstitutional by some amendment.

DUI is mostly deterred with civil penalties. This argument is not fully applicable to the question of victimless crimes.

This isn't too far afield of the status quo.

I mean, if you've had a few drinks and get in your car, you're not going to be automatically stopped and ticketed. Instead you're weighing the risk that a cop is going to just happen to catch you.

If the laws are changed so that driving drunk isn't presumptively a crime, but rather that if you're in a crash and found to have high levels of alcohol in your blood, then the crash is assumed to be your fault and will have extremely high penalties, then the difference is just in the details. You'd be balancing a lower risk, but of a much higher cost.

That might not work as well because of some people having poor skills at discounting future risks, but it's not obvious that's the case. It deserves further investigation.

The problem is the notion of victimless.

There are crimes that put people at risk but don't always create a victim. Do we allow for crimes that have a risk of a victim even if there isn't a direct victim?

There are crimes where we say that someone is a victim despite their own feelings of being victimized or having suffered a crime. Do those stay as well?

We have crimes where there isn't someone physically hurt and not a direct theft, but there is a reduction in value of items. Do those crimes stay?

Take zoning laws. Is violating a zoning law victimless? If I open a foul smelling poultry factory in the middle of a downtown commercial zone, it could greatly negatively impact that commercial zone to the point where businesses would not be able to afford to stay open. But if that makes it a victim crime, then what about when homeless people living in that same area also drive away customers to the point it no longer functions as a commercial zone?

As for drugs, what happens when companies start selling direct to users? Antibiotics and opioids without needing a doctor's prescription. We already have seen the problems even when doctor prescriptions are required, imagine what happens if drugs are declared a victimless crime and no longer prosecuted.

I think the notion that some crimes are victimless is based on looking at specific incidents that don't have victims and not considering it at scale. Which is to say that the example by the other poster of drunk driving might be a much more fairer comparison than what people originally took it as, because while the relation between the risk and possible victim is easier to understand, the question is if such a relationship is consistently used to justify a victim, not if the relationship is easy to understand.

To most of these I'd say: make 'm offenses not crimes. As I see it: crimes make it punishable by jail time, offenses not.

That's reasonable, but how do we punish (or otherwise deter) offenses?

The most obvious answer seems to be to fine the offenders, but really, how do you fine a homeless person?

You might start by providing them with a home.

This is indeed the right thing to do.

But I can easily imagine that out of 8 million people living in New York City, a certain number does not want to live at home and actually prefer staying outside.

This is an issue about which I happen to have some direct knowledge. I once made a documentary film about homelessness:

http://graceofgodmovie.com/

And you're right, there are some people who are homeless by choice, but they are a tiny, tiny minority, probably less than 1% of the homeless population.

So, I've just checked the HUD report [1] and apparently in NY about 5% of homeless are what they call "unsheltered".

I sincerely wonder why.

My "off-the-top" theory would be that these people are either indeed homeless by choice or they are such assholes that not a single shelter would tolerate them.

How wrong am I?

[1] https://www.hudexchange.info/resource/5948/2019-ahar-part-1-...

> How wrong am I?

Very. Did you actually read the report? The answer is right there:

"On a single night in 2019, roughly 568,000 people were experiencing homelessness in the United States. Nearly two-thirds (63%) were staying in sheltered locations—emergency shelters or transitional housing programs—and more than one-third (37%) were in unsheltered locations such as on the street, in abandoned buildings, or in other places not suitable for human habitation."

So being unsheltered has nothing at all to do with being voluntarily homeless. These are completely orthogonal matters. In fact, the HUD report does not deal with voluntary homelessness at all, almost certainly because the number of such people is so small that they can be safely discounted for public policy purposes.

It is also really hard to assess whether someone is voluntarily homeless. My film was shot in Santa Monica, CA. One of the subjects I interviewed had reliable income, enough to pay the rent somewhere, but not in Santa Monica. Given the choice between being on the street in Santa Monica and being in a low-rent apartment in some random place far from home, he chose to stay in Santa Monica. But all else being equal he would have preferred to be inside. Is that person "voluntarily homeless"?

Good question. But note that the status quo answer has been proven to be woefully suitable.

Fining the homeless seems silly, and unlikely to serve as either a deterrent or as workable compensation for society at large.

Throwing them in a jail is even worse; it is unlikely to deter (part of the problem is that there are mental issues at work which are likely going to make _any_ deterrence ineffective, you need complete solutions for individual cases, or systems in place that reduce the incidence of homelessness and the mental issues strongly correlated to it) - and it is a giant cost to society, not a gain.

There are _NO_ easy answers, that's part of the problem. We can point at the elephant all day, but the current plan of 'lets squawk like a bird loudly' has proven ineffective at chasing the elephant out of the room and also makes no logical sense as to why that should lead to the desired result either. It makes sense to stop the squawking like a bird immediately, even if there isn't yet a plausible plan in place to chase the elephant out.

In the case of homelessness there have been pilot programs that actually show the cost of just giving chronicly homeless people permanent housing and psychological counseling to be dramatically less expensive to society than our current solutions. By providing housing in these cases we reduce the prison population, which is much less expensive than counseling and a small living space. Counseling and access to preventative medical services is dramatically less expensive than the frequent cost of deploying ambulances and treating more severe, advanced and frequent infections/injuries they acquire while homeless.

Additionally, giving them homes has strongly correlated with a reduction in drug trafficking. These programs did not require the participants to stay drug free or to join any programs, but often they were buying/selling for reasons that were addressed by the basic provisions of the programs.

These programs aren't meant for everyone that's homeless. Many people are only homeless temporarily and the existing shelter programs handle those cases somewhat acceptably, but the major contrasting factor with the issues we're currently discussing is that these programs had zero involvement of the police. The police were told explicitly to leave its participants alone and not only did the homelessness issues go away, but their state budgets decreased overall.

You make good points about not being able to fully decriminalize certain things, but there are nuances specific to circumstances that make treating many societal problems as crimes to be less effective and more expensive than properly implemented social programs.

It often goes unremarked in the current discourse about police brutality, but the USA passes an abundance of unnecessary laws. And when you pass a law you are backing it up with the threat of force, which can result in death.

As Americans, perhaps we should be calling for:

1/ Limits on the power of police to protect bad officers and change prosecutorial discretion.

2/ Limits on the number of interactions between the police and citizenry, which means passing fewer laws.

Look at what led to Eric Garner's death. A politician put a tax of $5.85 on a pack of cigarettes, driving smokes underground. When the police enforce this overcrimininalization, it exposes poor people to unnecessary interactions with cops and potentially violent confrontations.

But doesn't this then introduce the problems with fines? They can be disproportionate and can also be viewed as a tax. Making them proportionate has other issues, such as effectively making it a non-punishment for some people who can optimize around it (people working under the table) and can easily lead to situations where corporations can structure themselves so they don't have to pay any significant fine with caught.

Fines that are not income/wealth dependent are discriminating against those with less money, whom are overrepresented, and should thus logically be forbidden in a functioning democracy. I guess little proper functioning democracies according to my standards.

Good point.

I agree that fines are not ideal, and I think these are interesting discussions we need to be having to think of better solutions, but I also want to be clear that fines are several orders of magnitude better than jailing people (and I think it goes without saying, even more orders of magnitude better than summary execution).

I do think there's potential for more mandated community service as a response to antisocial behavior. Structure it so people don't have to miss work.

A very large amount of the crimes we prosecute people for are either drug crimes or crimes because of poverty/economic inequality, and these are best addressed with public health and investment.

Even some of the remaining economic crimes - like selling untaxed cigarettes (what Eric Garner was killed for) if they still happen probably don't need public enforcement. Give those that pay the taxes standing to sue those who don't pay the taxes. If those who are paying it aren't bothered enough to pay for enforcement, I don't see why others should be.

Most of what we do in the name of policing is deal with problems that we'd be better off preventing or dealing with by someone other than a man with a gun. This is the low hanging fruit we should pursue immediately, and when we see what's left the opportunities and alternatives for further improvement should become clearer.

What you're describing here are negative externalities. From an Economics perspective (I was an Econ major) the solution is neither to ignore them (as many libertarians do) nor to ban the activities, but rather to regulate them in such a way that you force the party creating the externalities to internalize the costs that they are imposing on others. Typically through some form of Pigouvian Tax, Cap and Trade scheme, or insurance requirement.

Homelessness/drugs/prostitution has splash and fallout damage to people directly involved and others such as disease-spreading, burgleries, and mental/physical damage. Having laws against them is just one way mitigate or minimize that damage, but of course dealing with the underlying cause should work better, but our country is not sympathetic to that kind of social spending.

So we have a continual cycle of crime-punishment that doesn't mitigate enough, simply because the underlying problems remain, until our country stops with the "you're on your own" mentality and starts supporting social programs better.

> splash and fallout damage

So what? (Two) adults choose to have some interaction that all parties are happy with? Who are us outsiders to claim that their freedoms should be reduced?

The best reason is "splash and fallout" damage? I dont know if you've seen how weed has been used to put people in cages. People in cages! And you come with "splash and fallout" damage as a justification... You lost me.

This! In my country there was a push back by teacher unions because the expectations on teachers has grown over the years. Laws now prohibit many forms of punishment, some schools now have metal detectors at the gate to stop students coming in with knives.

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