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Comment by AussieWog93 | Hacker News Reader

The problem is that there's no real evidence that being tough on crime is a very effective way of solving the problem.

You look at jurisdictions that are "soft" on crime - Scandinavia, New Zealand etc. and invariably all of them have figured out non-punitive methods of crime reduction that are far more effective than jail. This is reflected in crime statistics.

(and before you mention Singapore, it's worth pointing out that they have many, many policies in place to alleviate poverty and social unrest - government housing, world class education, a strong economy, national service etc. in addition to their strict laws. I'm not arguing that the laws do nothing, but you can't just beat an uneducated, poor, fatherless person with a stick and expect them to be a productive member of society.)

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You're making so many assumptions. First, that crime rate is linked to policy. Further, it's bizarre to me that you think comparing San Francisco to Scandinavia makes sense but comparing past San Francisco to present San Francisco doesn't. Neither experiment is particularly good but the latter is better.

Leaving that aside for a moment, if there was "evidence" that not punishing murderers was the "best thing for society" (in terms of rehabilitation, crime rate, etc) would you support that policy?

For most people, a society that doesn't punish criminals is simply uncivilized. I tend to agree.

> For most people, a society that doesn't punish criminals is simply uncivilized. I tend to agree.

Punishment is one thing, and it certainly is good for a feeling of justice. But the real problem San Francisco is experiencing is lack of deterrent. That's related, but not quite the same.

If there is a way to keep up the deterrent, but sacrifice some punishment to get more rehabilitation then that's worth discussing. That's what Scandinavia is trying to do (in addition to other policies that affect crime rate). A prison turns out to be a good deterrent even if you don't get raped there.

In comparison, just not prosecuting theft at all is removing not just the punishment, it's also removing the deterrent, and I don't see how it's going to rehabilitate anyone. Obviously punishing the theft as a misdemeanor was supposed to be the deterrent, but without enforcement all that's left is a total failure.

No amount of deterrent is going to remove the motivation of petty thieves. Give them better means to live a dignified existence without resorting to crime and the problem disappears. Such solutions implicitly demand rethinking housing policy, social welfare and jobs programs. A couple other equally effective, on paper, solutions would be imprisonment and slavery of petty thieves, or murdering them (capital punishment, near genocide, crime against humanity). It's important to consider the privilege, assets, and what people stand to gain or lose when considering solutions. I've got no dog in the fight over problems in California. What's clear is that these problems are systemic and demand a federal solution. The people responsible to enact a federal solution are beholden to the people who stand to lose the most if these systemic issues of housing, healthcare, income, and the like are solved. Tech workers have more in common with the homeless people they step over to get to work than the f500 CEOs telling paying Congress to stall and distract. Bridging this class divide and building solidarity with people we've been taught to think ourselves better than is a foundational step in building the grassroots needed to force change.

Wow that's a lot of buzzwords in one post!

Is a federal solution more likely to be effective for thefts under $950 or is a tailored localized solution?

Federal courts generally aren’t overloaded the way state courts are, and federal prisons generally aren’t overcrowded the way state prisons are. But if theft of less than $1000 in property became a federal crime that would certainly increase the number of federal cases and federal prisoners.

There’s also a question of how to shoehorn smaller theft into a federal crime. It can be done — any bank robbery is a federal crime regardless of how much money is stolen — but it isn’t straightforward.

Where I am in California there’s signs up everywhere begging for employees. The wage restaurants need to pay to have a dishwasher in some part of Los Angeles is $21/hr as of a couple weeks ago.

We don’t need deterrent to stop petty thieves. We can just escalate prison sentences exponentially so that we get O(log n) crime instead of O(n).

> if there was "evidence" that not punishing murderers was the "best thing for society" (in terms of rehabilitation, crime rate, etc) would you support that policy? For most people, a society that doesn't punish criminals is simply uncivilized. I tend to agree.

This is a pretty interesting and concise way to frame this, because I definitely would support such a policy.

Punishments carried out by justice systems are a means to an end. It's sad that even today it's considered the most effective tool for general safety and protection of society.

It strikes me as really strange to consider punishments for crimes as a sort of state-sponsored revenge.

It's the fundamental question here. Is justice a "means to an end" or "an end in itself"? You're with the former, I'm with the latter.

I would also attack the notion of "evidence" here. The previous poster is not making an empirical argument at all, he's only pretending to. If Scandinavia had more crime than SF, he would pick another example (notice how he dismisses Singapore for...reasons). He's defending an a priori belief, as am I. Empiricism fails us here, we're arguing over values.

> It strikes me as really strange to consider punishments for crimes as a sort of state-sponsored revenge.

Justice is carried out by a disinterested third party (the state), revenge is not.

>notice how he dismisses Singapore for...reasons

My point wasn't that punishment doesn't deter crime (it clearly does), but that crime rates are far more dependent on social and economic factors.

Singapore and Scandinavia are quite similar in this regard (socially harmonious and prosperous, with a well educated lower class), even though they differ completely on attitudes towards crime and punishment. Both nations have low crime.

America and Brazil (for example) both have a poorly educated, struggling-to-survive underclass whose needs are broadly ignored by the rest of society. Both have high crime rates.

Give me a country with a despised underclass and low crime and I'll gladly concede.

> Give me a country with a despised underclass and low crime and I'll gladly concede.

China?

Fair cop.

China has a low rate of violent crime and shoplifting. But corruption is off the charts.

And China also executes more people than any other and has the harshest penalties for crime.

https://www.amnesty.org/en/latest/news/2017/04/china-must-co...

Westerner: "Did you see that drug bust in Shanghai China yesterday? Two pounds of marijuana!".

Chinese National: "Yes. I hear they received 2 days."

Westerner: "2 days! That isn't that bad. You can do a lot more time in the states -- well at least in Texas. It's legal now on the entire west coast."

Chinese National: "No. No. 2 days to live."

I’m not sure China fit the bill “despised under class”. It would seem to me that China’s (Han Chinese) underclass, at least in urban cities, have a lot more access to welfare, like the GP was saying about Singapore

In China, the underclass are literally second class citizens who risk being exiled from major cities should they get into trouble. Social services are not available to them.

>Give me a country with a despised underclass and low crime and I'll gladly concede.

Literally Singapore has a massive underclass of migrant workers from South Asia, who are given limited visas that don't allow them the rights of even a normal work visa. In 2020 hundreds of thousands of them were locked in tiny dormitories for over six months straight while covid spread like wildfire through them (the vast majority of Singapore's 60k covid cases were in migrant worker dormitories). Their salaries are less than $500/month.

Nope, they weren’t “locked in”. They were in fact moved out by the government into a large number of alternate accommodations ( hotels, schools, apartments, under construction sites, barges) to space people apart. Everyone was tested for free, hospitalised and treated for free. Neither workers nor employers were charged any fee. The workers have free wifi at their dorms now and a mobile app via which their report issues directly to the Ministry of Manpower. I’m commenting only on “locked in” and not about their salaries, or other matters.

(Edit: replaced “work“ with “wifi”)

Most of them weren't allowed to roam freely in the community until around December/January, that's what I meant by locked in.

Roaming around has been highly discouraged in any case. Social distracting, limited table booking at restaurants, limited admissions to public places, group sizes at five, limits of how many can attend the office in person - all these were restrictions in place until a few months ago. The restrictions were replaced slightly a few weeks ago. With a recent upsurge, restrictions have been reintroduced.

There aren’t that many places for dorm workers to roam. The most popular place is Little India, where they can procure goods that they are familiar with. I do see dorm workers regularly buying provisions at the same neighbourhood stores that I go to.

"justice ... Empiricism fails us here, we're arguing over values."

Values can depend on descriptive background assumptions and in such cases value arguments can improve by making progress on factual topics. In the case of the justness of punishment: the topic of determinism. The recent discussion by Daniel Dennett and Greg Caruso in their book "Just Deserts - Debating Free Will" is a useful read.

Even with different values, there’s room for common ground.

For instance, you could both support programs to prevent people turning to crime (proactively), without changing the strictness of enforcement. Assuming they were effective, that would make progress on both the safety and social justice angles.

This is how you create effective change at scale - not focusing on the points where your values guarantee conflict, but finding approaches that can have broad support.

If you learned that punishment produced no useful benefit to society, and you want to punish anyway, then what you’re seeking is revenge, not justice.

I would think the state is a very interested party

Crime rate is strongly related to poverty. Stronger punishments don't change that and in fact have the opposite affect. If we work on that we can make some progress.

The US has the largest prison population in the world by a large margin and we still have a relatively high crime rate overall, especially when it comes to violent crime. Putting more people in prison is not a solution to our problems as we can clearly see.

It really helps to look at the numbers to wrap your head around it, but here is a lot of good data to start understanding the issue. https://www.prisonpolicy.org/reports/pie2020.html

There is a lot of data and research out there regarding these issues, that's the good news. The bad news is that few people want to take the time to read it.

One more: https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/do-prisons-make-u...

The two approaches are not mutually exclusive

No one wants to put more people in jail.

I think poster is saying instead, policy should not encourage more criminals.

If you have X pool of existing law breakers, policy goal is to keep a % subset of X out of the prison system.

However, policy is increasing the size of X, to X+1.

I don’t think there’s any evidence that most people agree with your perspective. Unless there is evidence, please don’t try to bolster your argument this way.

My question, then, is this: if punishing people for crimes was shown to be ineffective for society, you would continue to support punishment?

I think I must be misunderstanding. It sounds like you are saying that you’d prefer to cut off your nose to spite your face. (Punish criminals despite punishment being a net negative.)

This isn’t to boost any particular flavor of justice. I am just curious about your perspective.

> My question, then, is this: if punishing people for crimes was shown to be ineffective for society, you would continue to support punishment?

> I think I must be misunderstanding. It sounds like you are saying that you’d prefer to cut off your nose to spite your face. (Punish criminals despite punishment being a net negative.)

No, you're not misunderstanding. To me your question makes no sense. By definition, a society that does not punish criminals is no society I want to live in. It is uncivilized.

If you mean, "if punishing people for crimes increases the number of crimes, would you still support it?" then my answer is yes, of course (though I don't accept the premise). Reciprocity is part of human nature. If you do something bad, you deserve to be punished in porportion.

To the extent that we adopt your perspective, the value of human beings will be lost. When you punish a criminal, you are treating him with respect. You respect that he made a choice, you are showing that he didn't have to make that choice and that he could refrain from making it in the future, and that by accepting his punishment he can pay his debt. I believe that this perspective will result in less crime but even if it doesn't, I'm still in favor of it because justice is an end in itself.

To be clear, I didn't put forth my perspective, which is that crime and punishment and society is a very complex issue, and one that I'm not particularly well versed in. From what I do know, there are different theories of justice - utilitarian, retributive, justice, karmic, etc.

Drug laws might be an interesting litmus test. Their enforcement is pretty clearly bad for society, and causes all kinds of problems. Yet, because this health issue is mistakenly categorized as a moral failing, we all suffer the effects.

I'm curious to hear what you think about drug laws, especially in America.

> To be clear, I didn't put forth my perspective, which is that crime and punishment and society is a very complex issue, and one that I'm not particularly well versed in. From what I do know, there are different theories of justice - utilitarian, retributive, justice, karmic, etc.

You did put forth your perspective.

> I think I must be misunderstanding. It sounds like you are saying that you’d prefer to cut off your nose to spite your face. (Punish criminals despite punishment being a net negative.)

This is utilitarian thinking, period.

"It sounds like you are saying" is a very different statement than "here is what I believe". For some reason, you want to project my beliefs on me - perhaps for the sake of an argument? Regardless, I don't think this is a fruitful thread for either of us.

> If you mean, "if punishing people for crimes increases the number of crimes, would you still support it?" then my answer is yes

As a thought experiment how many more murders per year would you accept as a cost of keeping "punishment-respect" around? 10? 1000? 100K? Limitless?

To me respect for others is primarily about caring, promoting health and reducing harm. To prevent someone from getting murdered is very respectful of them and their life. We can also show respect for all the choices a person will make in the future by adopting the policy that prevents them getting murdered today.

> if there was "evidence" that not punishing murderers was the "best thing for society" (in terms of rehabilitation, crime rate, etc) would you support that policy?

Yes, if the "best thing .. in terms of .. crime rate" includes fewer murders. I prefer the package (fewer murders + higher percentage of murderers unpunished) over the package (more murders + lower percentage of murderers unpunished). Where unpunished does not mean "no reaction" but rather treatment, medication and rehabilitation.

Of course, this is a ration position to hold until yourself or someone you care about is the victim.

But you or someone you care about could become a murder victim in both packages. Indeed the likelihood for that unwanted outcome is higher in the second package. I prefer the policy alternative that lowers the risk of people being murdered.

Except in SF there's no "non-punitive methods of crime reduction". They just declared that it's OK to rob grocery stores or pharmacies, as long as you take less than a grand. At least that's what it looks on the ground - whatever the initial design was, both the criminals know they can steal with impunity, and the cops know it's no longer their business to catch the thieves. And so the thievery thrives, and the stores are collapsing under this assault. We may talk about Scandinavia all day but I don't think that's what is happening there. Whatever nice theory they had about it when proposing it, it is clear from the result that it is a complete failure if reducing crime were any of their goals.

I come from Norway in Scandinavia and I think you are confusing helping people rehabilitate with being soft on crime.

Norway is actually tough on shoplifting. It is not tolerated, and its mitigated by arrest and the police spend resources tracking down sales on online platforms etc. The government also track down the source of money/income that look suspicious, and have the means to do so due to widespread government oversight of all aspects of society.

Police will actually help shops or shopping centers remove non-rehabilitated people that have committed thefts in the past.

This is the main difference. We have relatively poor social safety nets in the US and no real regard for rehabilitation. We keep trying to put bandaids on a broken system and it just compounds the suffering.

It does, but the Norwegian system is not perfect. It does not work as a mitigation against Eastern European “theft tourists” that come to Norway to steal. This is because Norwegian jails pay inmates per day in addition to being setup for rehabilitation, so they are not a disincentive for “theft tourists” from very poor countries.

The Eastern European mafias take advantage of this and ship busses of thieves to Norway.

Basically, Norway system of rehabilitation assume strong borders so that you can limit how many you need to help and Schengens free flow of people from some poor Eastern European countries violate this assumption.

That makes sense. The tough part is that the real solution is uplifting Eastern European countries, but that's a huge challenge. In the short-term, is the cost of property theft worth creating a more draconian society? That's the absolute worst possible solution, imo.

To protect the capability to rehabilitate Norwegians the Norwegian people is struggling to find a way to stop this “theft tourism” as it does victimize people (private citizens through home breakins and businesses that already tax high to support socialism), and unfortunately the mitigations in some ways create a tougher society.

The solutions are tough trade offs: One of the solutions is to make deals with their country of origin to serve time in jails back home, tighter border control to stop “theft thieves” from entering and prohibiting begging again as the Eastern European mafia bring in beggars to serve as mules. Especially the one around begging feels culturally difficult and it makes people sad to have to prohibit begging again as it was legalized a couple of decades ago.

> This is because Norwegian jails pay inmates per day

Do they pay them more than typical software developer salary is in Eastern Europe? Asking for a friend.

Absolutely not, but that is a demographic that is better off working from Eastern Europe than pursing less noble means :D

"Tough on crime"/"soft on crime" are terms used in Australia, the UK and probably elsewhere to describe policies of prescribing harsh/lenient punishments. It's not about how effective the police are at stopping crime but what society feels is "right".

I suspect a bit of causation-correlation mixup whenever this topic comes up. I have the feeling that the reason why they don't need much punitive measures is because they have so many social safety nets that erase the need to commit crimes in the first place or help people get back in to society after committing a crime. If anyone has any data about whether this is indeed the case or not, I'd love to read about it.

Same with violence and gun policies.

Which is the cause and which is effect?

Or even COVID deaths and lockdowns.

Policy can be as much as outcome as a cause.

Is there any evidence that being soft on crime has been effective at reducing crime or improving quality of life in San Francisco?

Our DAs promised “restorative justice” but in practice criminals get caught in released without consequences or rehabilitation. Is there evidence that this approach hasn’t emboldened organized criminals and contributed to the rise in property crime in recent years?

Is there any research that being tough on crime in San Francisco reduces crime or improves the quality of life?

The soft-on-crime approach taken over the last decade under Gascon and now Boudin coincided with San Francisco having highest property crime rate of any major US city.

Maybe that’s coincidence, but the onus is on those who brought us to this point: Where are the results that were promised? Where is the evidence that we should continue down this path, when by all metrics, it appears to be a disaster?

https://www.ojp.gov/pdffiles1/ojjdp/grants/250872.pdf

> The problem is that there's no real evidence that being tough on crime is a very effective way of solving the problem.

But this article was just arguing against your point. The crime enforcement laws were relaxed and the crime rose. It is obvious that allowing law enforcers to enforce the law reduces crime. Some people in SF are losing their jobs when the stores close you know? These crimes are not victimless.

> The crime enforcement laws were relaxed and the crime rose.

A police officer claimed that technically.

I don't know that police officers are the best at making such correlations.

Management says stop wasting time on testing, just write code and ship it no matter what. Tons of bugs start coming in for things that should have been caught by just trying to run the program.

But can you really trust the engineer who is telling you there is a correlation? What are her motives?

There’s been a noticeable decline in rule of law and quality of life since prop 47 and prop 57 passed. I disagree. Many of these people are prolific criminals but there is no cash bail either so they are arrested, released, and then not put on trial for 6-9 months all the while committing more crimes and for the most part the DAs don’t even bother to prosecute.

> You look at jurisdictions that are "soft" on crime - Scandinavia, New Zealand etc. and invariably all of them have figured out non-punitive methods of crime reduction that are far more effective than jail.

You're assuming what works for X works for Y as well, without accounting for an insanely large difference between the culture in the United States and those countries. People are very different here, the education level, the moralities of the society, the concept of "I, me and myself first", the economic conditions, the violence, the mental health issues and many more things.

There is a reason why despite having liberal gun laws in Switzerland, there are way less mass shootings than the United States. But what works there won't work here.

Switzerland doesn't really have liberal gun laws. Ex-conscripts can keep their service weapon at home, but it's tightly regulated (ammos are sealed and aren't to be open except in case of need). You can't buy a gun in a supermarket the way you can in a Walmart in the US, or open/conceal carry a gun.

Gun ownership is high due to more or less half the population serving in the army, and the laws are probably more liberal than in neighbouring European countries, but you can't compare it in any way to the US.

You remind me of the infamous NYT headline, the the effect of “incarceration levels still high despite low crime”. facepalm

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fox_Butterfield#Criticism

In Scandinavia and New Zealand people are different.

In terms of realised outcome, maybe. In terms of potential, though, the only difference between a Kiwi baby and an American baby is the fact v that the American baby is expected to fend for itself.

Genetics is one thing, but there are also environmental differences we don't even know of. One example is lead banned in 70s for its neurological effects. Water in Scandinavia may contain 0.1% less zinc than in SF and that makes a big difference on some neuron properties that we don't know much about.

Higher levels of lithium in drinking water seem to reduce rates of depression and suicide.

https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/the-british-journal-...

The difference -- besides any genetic factors -- is thousands of years of religious, historical, and cultural differences.

And, this not being Brave New World, the baby will be subject to them.

Thousands of years? Get a grip. The US and New Zealand were only colonized by Europeans within the last few hundred years, and all three countries have generally similar cultural/religious backgrounds.

There's one very important difference, though.

Religions and culture indeed date back thousands of years.

And while the US and NZ we both colonized by Europe (primarily Britain), the latter has a much stronger dose of native and non-European heritage...to an extent such that Maori is actually an official language.

This is true. Their success in life is generally valued by their governments.

For that matter, UAE is doing equally well and have low crime rates with a policy that’s completely opposite of Scandinavia. UAE has one of the lowest crime rates in the world.

Hmmm then again, what proportion of crime against domestic staff goes unreported in the UAE would you say? 99%?

I have difficulty believing that a mais being taped by her employer in Dubai will ever go and make a police report

> "soft" on crime - Scandinavia,

Whats does it mean soft? Sweden has no parole you go straight to jail.

It's not the same because the culture is different.

What's interesting is we have a sort of 'natural experiment' in the US, where a significant fraction of the population in Minnesota, the Upper Peninsula of Michigan, and the Dakotas, are descended from Scandinavians.

They have a very low crime rate, several times lower than the white average. There was a study on this, and Swedish-Americans and Norwegian-Americans commit crime at about the same rate as Swedes and Norwegians, which is to say, not often.

I would really love a link to that paper. A quick google search didn't turn up what I was looking for.

I'm quite sure I'll never see it again. I save papers relevant to my profession and hobbies, and US crime statistics are neither.

I did manage to dredge this link up, which says that in 1973, Minnesota had the lowest high school drop-out rate in the nation, and the third-lowest crime after Iowa and Maine.

http://news.minnesota.publicradio.org/features/2003/08/12_cu...

Which is no smoking gun, but is suggestive. I'm sure someone could do a deep dive on academic literature in criminology and turn it up, but it won't be me I'm afraid.

I've often theorized that what we call "American exceptionalism" (and similarly Canadian, Australian, and New Zealandese) is made up of the fact these countries are very heavily populated with early-generation, by-choice immigrants.

The population was effectively self-selected for those ambitious enough to emigrate, and in many areas, tame a new frontier and/or start businesses. They were then dumped in an environment highly supportive to it (cheap land and natural resources, rapid technical advancement providing huge vistas of economic opportunity) That probably has a significant ripple effect for a few generations. (The "Grandpa had to swim across the Atlantic and learn English and sweep floors to get started, so he's going to ride his kids to make sure they get the most of their education" pattern)

On the other hand, I suspect there's some toxic counterfactors in that; the celebration of bootstrap-pullers tends to encourage "I've got mine" attitudes and may end up underserving parts of the community that would benefit from more social support and community services.

Not Australia. That was a penal colony.

I suspect there was a point where the immigrant mix turned by-choice though.

Not a historian, but I believe this wouldn't have been until either the good rush of post-war migration boom. Either way, several generations after the convicts first arrived.

> invariably all of them have figured out non-punitive methods of crime reduction that are far more effective than jail

Well.. large segments of our populations commit very little crime. But when crime is committed, the police and the justice system are useless. Convicted for the 350th burglary? They'll be let out again and maybe be back tomorrow, if the prosecutor even bothers prosecuting them since it's pointless.

So DO look at us for crime prevention but NOT for managing crime when it happens.

Personally I think there should be escalating punishments for crimes to avoid the "350th burglary" and I thought often history was taken into account but I don't know California or San Francisco's laws. So, first time caught shoplifting should be a fine, second should be community service, third some jail, fourth could be more jail, etc. That doesn't really address the danger involved in actually catching a shoplifter. You really just need more police or a way to recognize shoplifters (facial recognition?) at that point so that regular individuals don't have to become enforcers of the laws. It seems most of the tools that could be most effective are being banned or defunded in certain areas of the US. There should be ways to account for false positives, such as confirming a facial recognition software's results, that the person actually was in the area etc.

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