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Comment by mkl | Hacker News Reader

Logicslave said: "Its my opinion that violent crime, and especially brazen violent crime is just flat out more common."

The data don't seem to support that.

Obviously violent crime still exists in the USA, and from my point of view in NZ the rates seem scarily high. That doesn't mean they haven't decreased.

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@mkI In San Francisco where I am violent crime has absolutely exploded since theft under $950 per day has been reduced to a misdemeanor. Adding fuel to this fire are opioid addicts stealing to feed their habit, a toxic combination of extremely violent attacks coupled with endless petty crime. The big Walgreens drugstore chain Walgreens has closed ten stores in SF primarily due to rampant crime, with a lot of small retailers also closing to protect staff.

https://www.criminaldefenselawyer.com/resources/criminal-def...

Except more harsh policing is not the answer to this, especially the opioid crisis. If you want to see less crime and drugs, you improve the conditions that lead people to crime and drugs and then increased social work when people do run afoul.

The current police system in the US does not do that, and the prison system is purely set up to incarcerate folks and then ensure they will fail when they get out so that they end up going back in because gotta grease the wheels of prison capitalism.

https://youtu.be/F2zt8XLh23g The activist and media agitator version of reality is very different to the banal every day disaster.

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