Despite this being Hacker News, I see a lot of people here reacting to sensationalist single data points and not a whole lot of discussion about trends on this issue.
And Chesa hasn’t done himself any favors in his response.
The latest issue is pretty disheartening with a women being raped by a guy who had attacked another woman only a few weeks prior.
This is just one example. There is the young woman run over by a driver who had a string of serious crimes in the past. There are others.
https://abc7news.com/potrero-hill-attack-san-francisco-crime...
The safest thing to do would be put everybody in prison, then there would be no crime, but we don't do that. You have to judge the system in a global context. I'm not suggesting that the system is perfect, but measuring it based exclusively on the existence of repeat offenders isn't fair. A lot of people's lives are ruined due to overly harsh prison sentences for minor crimes, and their situations matter as well.