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Comment by LordDragonfang | Hacker News Reader

>One City Hall insider suggests that San Francisco overreacts to issues that are in the national news, and designs solutions to the country’s problems rather than its own. For example, when Mr Boudin ran on his platform of less punitive justice, San Francisco already had one of the lowest incarceration rates in the country. In 2019, 106 adults were in prison for every 100,000 people, one-fifth the rate in California and the nation. If the rest of the country behaved like San Francisco, the prison population would decline by 80%, says James Austin of the jfa Institute, a think-tank that evaluates criminal-justice policies.

This seems like a very reasonable hypothesis

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Are incarceration rates low because people behave or are they low because SF police don’t bother to arrest people?

I think that's irrelevant to the point which is that in electing a candidate campaigning on criminal justice reform SFs voters are reacting more to national issues than local ones. SFs criminal justice system is already quite "reformed" and probably the issues that people are seeing aren't primarily in SF

If you look at the property crime rates, it’s certainly not because people behave.

It depends - are they 5x worse than cities with an average incarceration rate?

I think your factor of five is on the “wrong side” of the equation here you’re thinking of. Ie if the crime rate were 5 x that of other cities AND the incarceration rate were 5 x lower, that would mean criminals were 25 x less likely to be prosecuted in SF.

SF's incarceration rates are consistent with its demographics.

Low because they don't arrest anyone. But that isn't on the police - they don't arrest anyone because the DA doesn't prosecute anyone.

Property crime is sky high... if you happen to get caught breaking into a car the penalty is a warning. That is the policy. You have to break into many cars and be caught (which is hard to do) many times for any action.

Boudin has indefensibly ignored violent criminals, too. Like a woman being assaulted while trying to open the door to here condo, fully on video and there was no prosecution. Even a few cases of murder from repeat offenders who were let go repeatedly after violent assault.

If you live in SF, try the Citizen phone app for alerts near you. There is some crazy stuff happening all around the city. Lately, cars keep inexplicably flipping over on city streets.

The craziest update I've seen was an alert about man dressed like a clown wielding a sword-cane.

>But that isn't on the police - they don't arrest anyone because the DA doesn't prosecute anyone.

This always struck me as a BS excuse, because if you're trying to demonstrate that the DA is the problem, wouldn't you want to be making arrests and creating a paper trail to prove your point? Apathy by the police just makes them look bad to anyone who's on the receiving end of it.

And getting arrested is still a deterrent without charges. Hell, even "A cop might begin asking me some questions" is a mild deterrent.

I assume they would feel that sticking their neck out like that would put themselves at personal risk, either literally or figuratively.

In what way would doing there job put them at risk that they didn’t sign up for with the job itself?

You’re not going to convince me to pay you more if you do a shit job. Same issue as with the SF school district.

You're asking them to publicly humiliate an office that is politically incentivized (in SF) to throw them under the bus if they see the opportunity to do so, opportunities which might come along more frequently the more they actually arrest people.

I'm asking them to stop publicly eroding our trust in their ability and willingness to do the job we pay them for.

Making an arrest is not risk free for a cop, the career lowlifes who have been arrested dozens of times aren’t afraid of anything (including incarceration), and burnout affects even tech workers, of course it affects cops who want to make arrests to get people in jail, and can’t find the motivation when it’s to “create a paper trail.”

Except no one takes life threatening risks to assemble a paper trail.

Indeed. The behavioral science would agree with you. There is no theoretical framework backed up by evidence that would suggest that prosecution and prison works as a deterrent. For punishment to actually work as a behavioral modification tool, it has to be consistent and immediate. Prosecution is neither. At lest getting caught red handed is immediate.

It’s also a BS excuse because by any reasonable definition the DA is part of the police.

It’s also demonstrably false. You can look at clearance and prosecution stats from both the PD and DA and you’ll see little too no change from pre and post Chesa.

https://www.sanfranciscopolice.org/stay-safe/crime-data/clea...

https://sfdistrictattorney.org/policy/da-stat/

Some court activity dropped in 2020, but filing rates are higher in 2021 already, highlighting the impact closed and reduced court capacity has had. Filings, even in 2020, though lower that 2021, were not out of the norm of the last decade. This year, rates are at 2018/2019 levels and close to a high for the decade.

Lots of people come out and like to point a finger at our new DA when the data just doesn’t support it. If there is a problem with prosecutors in SF, it’s existed before Chesa.

This is a pretty bold statement. And as the poet said: “Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence”. Do you have evidence to back up your claim that low prosecution rates actually leads to more crimes?

Your current anecdotes sound like hearsay to me, I would need to see some credible sources before I can start believing them.

Lol. Now it’s bold to suggest no enforcement of the law leads to people violating the law more frequently.

First you’re putting words in my mouth. We are talking about petty crime not the entire law, and we are talking about prosecution not all enforcement. Prosecution is not the only way to enforce the law, so nobody is talking about “no enforcement”.

And the statement is because it is a falsifiable with no evidence to back it up. Wegner’s statement about plate tectonics was bold by the same measure (although he offered some evidence; but apparently not enough).

Police inaction is a long-standing problem that pre-dates the current DA by quite some time. SF police have not responded to garage break-ins or car break-ins for some time. They might show up 5 hours later, very annoyed, and take a report. Even if you have good quality HD video evidence. Even if you have a tracking device on the stolen property proving where it is. They will not gather evidence, collect fingerprints, or bother trying to solve the crime in any way. Even if you had them the case on a silver platter. Forget trying to get a detective involved. This was going on long before Chesa Boudin.

Part of it is housing costs and the department's difficulty filling open positions. Part of it is bad management of the police department: not having competent detectives dedicated to solving quality of life and property crimes. Some part is probably trying to make the current DA look bad because they're fighting.

SFPD has so far resisted any attempt at reform toward community policing or setting up dedicated QOL units. The city's broken NIMBY planning process ensures newly hired officers are not likely to be able to live in the community where they police. Fix those problems, then we can worry about prosecutions.

This response strikes at the heart of the issue. Until the wild distortions in the property market are fixed (imo, specifically until Prop 13 gets repealed or significantly amended) big, expensive cities in California will continue have increasing crime problems.

As you can probably imagine, community policing is difficult if you're not a member of the community. And as the cost of living goes up while property taxes remain artificially depressed due to prop 13, the disparity between what municipalities are able to pay for police (which is partially funded by property taxes), and how much those police will need to afford to live there, will continue to grow. It seems like a slow, self-reenforcing downward spiral that will only get re-set if the quality of life deteriorates to the point where people actually start moving out of these communities.

So take away prop 13, and crime will disappear?

San Francisco has plenty of cops. They like to write tickets, do crossword puzzles, and play chess. (Go to the basement of any precinct.). Let's not forget drinking too much, and lucky if they finished a community college. I imagine those last few sentences are common observations at most Police Squads across America.

It's not prop 13.

As to homelessness---it's bad all over the west coast for obvious reasons. And no it's not because the widow whom rents out a room to a scary stranger so she can stay in the home she raised her kids in. I guess prop 13 is an easy target? There's a part of me that would like you Know it All's whom didn't live through opening a ever increasing property tax bill your wish of repeal.

Let's be real. Tech hate all unions. Many of you guys will be politely shown the door at 50. If you save a bit, and happened to score a home when younger; when you are puttering around the garage ruining the iPad with tools brought from Amazon, while wearing a fishing vest, calling your wife mom; you will cherish prop 13.

I’ve witnessed more SF police doing traffic-duty at Embarcadero parking lots than anything I’ve seen related to crime.

They may also be low because there are no state prisons in SF county, so people with longer terms may be counted in the jurisdiction where they're being held.

This guy stats.

Obviously the latter. Have you read the rest of the article?

"Before covid-19 San Francisco was the car-break-in capital of America; but with fewer tourists, criminals have shifted their attention. Home burglaries are up. Shootings have more than doubled in the past year. Viral videos show daytime heists, with perpetrators sauntering out of stores without consequence. Lax enforcement of drug laws can become fatal when even small amounts can kill."

SF has very high property crime, but fairly low violent crime. Most of the America’s incarceration rate is driven by a small number of prisoners serving long sentences. Usually for violent crime or drug trafficking.

An amazing statistics is that if the the US released every prisoner except the murderors and rapsists, we’d still have a higher incarceration rate than the EU.

A city full of bike thieves, shoplifters, and public defecators isn’t going to have a high incarceration. Even if the police are vigorous about arrests, those people just don’t spend very long in jail.

I had exactly the same thought when I lived in SF.

They’d adopt policies that would make tons of sense in Alabama.

How do they measure that rate? Most people sentenced to prison aren’t going to serve it in SF.

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