CA Appeals Court Rules San Francisco Cannot Ban Tenderloin Drug Dealers
californiaglobe.com
californiaglobe.com
SFC has very-overpowered tools to remove heroin dealers from society, within the due-process framework of criminal law. For them to claim they can't do their job without giving themselves essentially *administrative* powers over peoples' lives, I think that's a false and stupid dichotomy.
Therein lies the problem. The district attorney refuses to seek jail time for drug dealing or most any other offense not involving direct, physical violence. Thus the gambit by the city attorney, who handles the city's civil administrative matters.
The SF district attorney finally published statistics on case disposition. He's long been claiming that his case prosecution rate (as judged by the filing of charges) remains high and comparable to his predecessors. (Note that his immediate predecessor, Gascon, was perhaps the 2nd most liberal district attorney in the country.) But that says nothing about case disposition. It turns out that, as suspected, the percentage of cases resulting in jail time have dramatically dropped over his tenure. In particular, the percentage of criminal cases shunted into pretrial diversion programs has nearly doubled under his tenure. 43% of criminal cases are diverted. But things could be even worse than that because 1) for convictions we don't have metrics on punishments and sentencing, which by most accounts have been significantly softened, and 2) the data says "successful diversion", yet all numbers add up to 100%, so we can either assume that "non-successful" diversions end in convictions, or the definition of "success" is extremely loose. Also note that because diversions don't result in convictions they have less weight on subsequent charges--particularly less weight under this city attorney, by most accounts.
To those who say that less jail time is good, I would point out a fallacy in the common criminal justice reform narrative. If you compare person prison years, the U.S. is an extreme outlier. However, by prison admittances per year, we're actually not extreme at all, even compared to Europe. (Unsurprisingly by that metric we look alot like other Anglo countries, modulo crime rate.) IOW, what was extreme about the U.S. was the duration of jail sentences (i.e. severity), not the rate at which we used jail time for penal purposes. That fallacious narrative is leading us down a perverse, equally extreme road--we're swinging from extreme amounts of jail time to no jail time. Just another manifestation of a classic American dynamic, I guess. Neither the people nor their institutions are very good at modulating their behavior--it's all or nothing with us.
To the extent that's true, the solution is to replace the DA. The DA not prosecuting the way other city leaders would like does not empower those leaders to assume dictatorial power and impose arbitrary punishment without due process.
While Boudin can't be faulted for all the contributive policy problems, over 1300 people have died from drug overdoses over the past two years (his tenure began January 2020) and the rate is increasing. It's a humanitarian crisis with a legitimately astonishing body count which city hall is trying to get a handle on despite the Board of Supervisors' political paralysis and denial, and the District Attorney's counterproductive, ideologically extreme policies.
It's a rare, extreme situation where it's not hyperbole to say that practical matters of life-and-death are bumping up against abstract principles. And it should go without saying that it's not helpful to point out that "the city" (as an abstract entity) is reaping what it sowed. The city is slowly coming to that realization, and unwinding those horrible policies to the extent it can will take time, especially in the context of democratic governance, while in the meantime the body count is accelerating. In such situations it's not uncommon for the law to give some temporary allowance for dealing with exigent, extreme situations with clear outcomes that are undeniably horrible (i.e. it's not a matter of, say, racking up a monetary debt for bad finances, or losing a few prosecutions--we're talking daily deaths). And in that sense the strategy of seeking injunctions isn't as objectionable as it might seem on its face. We should be careful about applying a national policy lens on a very local matter. The folly and hubris of applying abstract, nationally-framed narratives to local matters is part of how city ended up in the situation it has.
Irrespective of timeline, “we don't like the way the elected prosecutor is doing his job” does not justify “so we are going to deny people their rights without due process as an end run around the criminal justice system.”
> it's not uncommon for the law to give some temporary allowance for dealing with exigent, extreme situations
There is no “exigent, extreme citcumstance” without clear legal process that doesn't involve ignoring people's due process rights. The California DoJ has supervisory authority over all criminal prosecution in the State and may intervene, positively or negative, in any criminal matter. That is the course of remedy for a crisis attributed to defective prosecutorial decisions, not imposing broad loss of liberty on the basis of supposed crimes without criminal process.
> We should be careful about applying a national policy lens on a very local matter
The prohibition on public officials denying people rights without due process required by the federal and state constitution isn't a “national policy lens” that is inapplicable to “very local matters”.
Arguably these injunctions aren't too different from spousal abuse or harassment restraining orders, ignoring some technical legal issues regarding scope and cognizable claim. There is process--whether it's "due process" is the question. Certainly there seems to be greater due process than gang injunctions, which are constitutional under current Supreme Court precedent, as the requested injunctions were on named individuals with a history of drug dealing that would need to be satisfactorily shown in court. Compare to gang injunctions, which AFAIU merely required a showing that a particular person was in an enjoined gang. From opinion synopses, the injunctions seem to have been rejected primarily because of their scope--geographic area encompassing important regional government services, and excessive duration. The appellate opinion, contrasting with the trial court, says this specifically--"we are not prepared to hold that a stay-away order could never be a potential remedy...."
I won't dispute that as an end-run around the DA (i.e. but-for the DA, everybody agrees the proper course of action would be to seek an injunction specifically as part of conviction), it's barely defensible, if at all. But the fact the city is seeking them is not evidence of a fundamental shift in San Francisco city official's criminal justice reform efforts writ large. Yet that's exactly what Boudin will claim and is claiming as part of his campaign to defeat recall--that everybody but him is committed to meaningful reform, and all those opposing him (especially those supporting his recall) wish to return to the tough-on-crime policies of decades past.
I’m not really clear how this restraining order helps what you’re describing. Do you support the ability of the police to impose jail time in a way that circumvents the (elected) prosecutor’s office?
>If you compare person prison years, the U.S. is an extreme outlier. However, by prison admittances per year, we're actually not extreme at all, even compared to Europe.
This is factually wrong. It entirely hinges on extremely warped interpretation of data that can only be generated by a person or organization that starts with a desired version of reality and works backward to justify that position.
Out of curiosity, in general do you view yourself as somebody that could at some point —in any way whatsoever— piss off a cop? I’ve noticed that people that advocate for longer jail sentences and does the whole “humans won’t adjust their behavior unless every cop gets a rocket launcher and a teleporter to send criminals directly to prison forever” bit answer “No.”
There are absolutely better policies. The injunctions are an act of desperation in the face of a mounting death toll.
> > If you compare person prison years, the U.S. is an extreme outlier. However, by prison admittances per year, we're actually not extreme at all, even compared to Europe.
> This is factually wrong. It entirely hinges on extremely warped interpretation of data that can only be generated by a person or organization that starts with a desired version of reality and works backward to justify that position.
Care to point out how its factually wrong. (EDIT: I said person years, but I meant per capita. But if you're even the least bit charitable it's the same thing.) For the record I'm not reciting some Heritage Foundation policy paper. In fact, I discovered this factoid on a whim as it occurred to me that the incarceration rate metric was ambiguous. In doing so I found only a single partisan research paper, which hasn't seem to garnered any attention. I also went back into some criminal justice literature I've read over the years and was also surprised to see this gap--plenty of scholars have pointed out issues with the severity of U.S. sentencing, but don't seem to have given much analysis to this particular aspect of the data. I also have a formal legal education and likewise don't remember anyone pointing out this distinction--professors and law students alike never seemed to appreciate that there might anything meaningful about the details of the popular metric, probably because for the past 20 years the narrative regarding the need for criminal justice reform has been largely universally accepted across the political spectrum, at least in academia--there was no disputing that too many people were in jail.
Prison admittance data exists, however, from various primary government sources in both the U.S. and Europe; it just hasn't been assembled properly for convenient, comparative consumption. If I was a paid researched I would absolutely spend the time to assemble it properly and make the case. Instead I spent one night on it and, well, I can't even say I was convinced of anything--it's just a simple matter of numbers. If you give a moments thought, the metric is problematic, and when you look at the admittance numbers there's simply nothing to seriously dispute. There's inconsistency regarding whether pretrial detainment is included in various statistics--for many, it seems to be included, but I can't confidently say that's true for all the sources I found. That said, countries, like France, have pretrial detainment rates similar to the U.S; and even in the most pessimistic scenario least favorable to the U.S., admittances couldn't even begin to create a gap of the size the U.S. has regarding per capita--at best a fractional difference, not large multiples!
It's also entirely intuitive and sensical when you stand back and look at things. Consider that in most countries, especially in Europe and the Americas, murder has a maximum penalty of 20 years jail time. In the U.S. life sentences are not uncommon. And consider the effect of things like three-strikes laws, which during the 1990s and early 2000s could turn a serious of felonies into life sentence. Or drug laws--if someone spends a year in the U.K. for a drug offense (not a real figure), but 5 years in the U.S., it's not at all surprising that per capita incarceration for drug offenses would be 3-5x greater in the U.S. even when both the U.K. and the U.S. have the same jail sentencing rate for drug offenders.
When judging per capita (which is absolutely the metric used in all public policy discussion numbers, and absolutely the one used for the infamous 7x outlier statistic), the incarceration rate is undeniably horrible. There's also an obvious curve that matches the history of the most recent "tough on crime" phase. By this unit the U.S. peaked at 7x about a decade ago, but today is now down to around 4x. However, prison admittances have remained much more consistent, at least on average across the country. There's are definitely some interesting questions regarding relative effects of absence of prosecution vs lighter sentencing, and how it might relate or not relate to policies preferences between, say, SF and Texas, but for a first-order approximation and in the context of the magnitude of the huge per capita incarceration rate discrepancy between the U.S. and elsewhere, it's all really irrelevant. The takeaway is that the primary factor in the unacceptably high per capita incarceration rate in the U.S. is duration of sentencing, not the prevalence of incarceration as a penalty.
>There are absolutely better policies. The injunctions are an act of desperation in the face of a mounting death toll.
My question was simple yes or no. Can you take another crack at answering this? (repeated below)
> Do you support the ability of the police to impose jail time in a way that circumvents the (elected) prosecutor’s office?
As for this… > Care to point out how its factually wrong.
Nope, not my job. If you haven’t bothered to cite literally any sources other than walls of text about how you understand things better than everybody else, I doubt my efforts to educate you would be considered.
I pointed out that you are factually wrong because you posted some factually wrong nonsense. I did not do that for your benefit. I did that for the benefit of genuinely curious people that might read your ridiculous screed and mistake verbosity with understanding or cleverness.
Anyway I asked two yes or no questions and got nothing but some Dickensian-length mental gymnastics in response.
1. Yes or no, do you support the ability of the police to put people in jail in a way that circumvents the elected district attorney?
2. Yes or no, do you view yourself as somebody that could at some point —for any reason whatsoever— piss off a cop?
Total new prison admittances (i.e. excluding parole violations) per 100000 in 2019 (pre-pandemic). Sources: https://www.gov.uk/government/statistics/offender-management... and https://bjs.ojp.gov/content/pub/pdf/p20st.pdf (TABLE 8).
* England & Wales: 121.42 <- (72172 / (56286961 + 3152879)) * 100000)
* United States: 120.67 <- (395827 / 328000000) * 100000
* Texas (top 10 state): 166.05 <- (48156 / 29000000) * 100000
* California: 75.35 <- (29764 / 39500000) * 100000
* England & Wales: 141/130
* United States: 698/664
* Texas: 891/840
* California: 581/549
You can find additional numbers for various European countries at http://www.elpueblodigital.es/wp-content/uploads/2020/04/SPA... (admittance tables from page 95) and https://wp.unil.ch/space/files/2021/04/210330_FinalReport_SP... (admittance tables from page 97). Interestingly, the England & Wales numbers therein seem to double count pre-conviction and post-conviction admissions of the same prisoner for the same offense, which seems to be how they arrived at an almost double total admittance rate of 215/100000 in 2019, which likely accounts for England & Wales being in the top 25% of EU countries by admittance rate (see elsewhere in that report). That seems problematic--perhaps related to definitional treatment of common law vs civil law detainment procedures?--or maybe indicative of other comparison issues.
There's also the issue of parole. In the U.S., "33% of all prison admissions nationwide are due to parole violations." (https://californiainnocenceproject.org/issues-we-face/recidi...) That's why total prison admittances in the U.S. are 175/100000 (see BJS source). But in England & Wales, the share of readmissions is ~20% (see SPACE report), so not dramatically different. That also might be a relevant source of inconsistency across jurisdictions generally, especially considering that it seems most EU jurisdictions don't have an equivalent concept of parole if the SPACE table is taken literally. But ultimately it can't effect my point as it couldn't remotely account for the sheer magnitude difference in incarceration rate in the US, and fundamentally is a matter of sentence severity--longer incarceration durations creating a larger total incarcerated population, which is precisely my point. (There's a scholarly argument--preexisting, not my own--regarding common law countries adopting more severe sentences to compensate for more procedurally rigorous criminal law protections, whereas punishment in civil law jurisdictions tends to be swift and short, but there's no reason to go there.)
> However, If you look at the pre-trial graph for Texas at https://www.prisonpolicy.org/profiles/TX.html, which incidentally also includes local jail (not prison) post-conviction confinement numbers, it could only hypothetically double the admittance numbers if we assume worst case.
“Maybe it’s double, *shrug* that supports my data-based opinion because that’s how I choose to interpret the importance of the difference between 1x and 2x.”
That was certainly a lot of words about England and wales!
> But ultimately it can't effect my point as it couldn't remotely account for the sheer magnitude difference in incarceration rate in the US, and fundamentally is a matter of sentence severity--longer incarceration durations creating a larger total incarcerated population, which is precisely my point.
This is precisely the opposite of the point you attempted to make at the beginning of this conversation.
Why was it so important to point out that the prison problem isn’t that extreme and that people are falling for a fallacy yesterday, but not today?
In either case, I’m not going to spend any more time trying to debate one of the many methods you’ve used to justify handing cops more power than the DA.
It’s a great distraction from “What I want is to give the power to arrest and jail people to the police over the elected officials tasked with due process. I want to do this even more than I want to replace the DA or seek remedy from the state, because I believe that police should fundamentally have this power to protect us from hippie prosecutors in the future.”
But, uh, I don’t have a short attention span. I haven’t forgotten what we’re actually talking about here. Good job with some funfacts about England and Wales though!
No. But an injunction doesn't put these people into jail. Let me flip it around: do you support restraining orders for abusive spouses if not part of a criminal conviction for abuse? Obviously it poses some dilemmas, but do you oppose the entire notion categorically?
> 2. Yes or no, do you view yourself as somebody that could at some point —for any reason whatsoever— piss off a cop?
I'm very respectful of cops, partly because I grew up in an environment where cops arrested people around me, including family, and cops were to always be avoided. I learned to 1) fear cops (e.g. avoid unnecessary contact, keep excessively polite when approached, hands at 10-2 if pulled over, etc), but also 2) avoid doing all the shit and anything tangentially related which people around me did to get arrested. On my paternal side most of the men--excepting myself, a cousin, and a nephew--have been to jail, several on convictions (i.e not merely pretrial detainment). Objectively speaking I'm not at all at the same risk as many other populations of men; OTOH, I have far more direct experience with the system than the vast majority of people otherwise in my risk cohort. More importantly, I have far more direct experience living in the types of violent environments which unfortunately necessarily require the intervention of law enforcement (regardless of whether that intervention is too heavy handed or not), and understand that there are unavoidable trade-offs to be made when it comes to maximizing the safety of communities. And the hyperbolic, metaphorically-pearl-clutching attitude regarding liberty issues, expressed at least numerically largely by activists which have no such experience--either with community or police violence--nor face even a substantial risk of that experience is... bothersome. Communities experiencing that violence tend to have more nuanced and complicated opinions, especially when they're facing concrete choices with potentially immediate consequences; when there are no direct consequences to policy choices, people tend to become more extreme and ideological.
> No. But an injunction doesn't put these people into jail.
Literally lol. What are you talking about? If the cops are able to arrest you on sight, that means they take you to jail on sight without you having to have committed an actual crime. That is literally the intent of this injunction. The SFPD huffed and puffed about their inability to secure a conviction so they tried to reduce the burden of proof to justify a “crime” has been committed to “a cop saw you on the wrong street.”
It is a blatant and shameless attempt at a power grab, nothing less.
Serious question: Where do you think the police take people after arrest?
Anyway, so for question 1 your answer is “Yes.”
As for question 2, your answer is “No.”
Your entire view of this situation is that you support police power overreach because you don’t think it’ll be used against you. It’ll only be used against criminals and bad guys! And you could never even be mistaken or accused of that because you’re just so gosh darn polite to the cops (a sign that you’re more intelligent and a more productive member of society than anybody that could _ever_ be targeted by police.)
Third yes or no question: Do you work in law enforcement?
This sort of huffy propaganda tends to come directly from cops and the sycophants that tend to surround and idolize them.
Absolutely not, but when the courts and the police can’t act together, you can understand why the police reach desperately for some sort of enforcement — any enforcement.
A few months ago I drove through the area and it’s ridiculous. It’s a real life recreation of hamsterdam from The Wire, with all the problems that existed in the show. So many people nodding face down on the sidewalk that genuinely look like dead bodies.
Is that what progressive and empathetic drug law looks like? There are certain drugs like weed where the main risk 15 years ago was the legal risk. But the main risk for heroin isn’t the legal risk, it’s the risk that you find yourself face down nodding out on a sidewalk in the tenderloin from fentanyl. Not enforcing reasonable drug laws is good for who? The drug users? No. The drug dealers? Who cares. The city? No.
I'm a bit confused. I read the above poster as advocating for shorter prison sentences, but not to overcorrect in making the change. Did you misread the person you're replying to?
> To those who say that less jail time is good, I would point out a fallacy in the common criminal justice reform …
At another part in that post this person brought up issues with lack of prosecution (which by definition means less jail time) and diversion (ditto).
So… in your estimation the author was… advocating for more people to go to jail but also supporting the idea of shorter sentences while pointing out that people that say that advocating for shorter sentences means to fall for a fallacy?
This poster wants to point out that the push for less jail time is the result of a fallacy, but thinks it’s good??
Did you read the post I responded to? What did you think was trying to be expressed?
The author likes to write opaque walls of text. But in subsequent comments, it's become very clear that he is saying:
* The US sends a similar number of people to jail as other jurisdictions, but is an extreme outlier on sentence length. He's provided (weak) factual support for this, and I find this point believable-- not an idea to outright reject like you have.
* The US has a political system that tends to drastically overcorrect on problems, especially in individual locales.
* Sentence lengths should be reduced, but this doesn't mean jail should be eliminated or deterrence effects should be completely lost.
Which is pretty close to my initial read.
I'll admit some motivated reasoning on my part: I'm uncomfortable with the US's incarceration rate but have also been uncomfortable with excessive use of prosecutorial discretion in places like SF to basically ignore a huge fraction of "quality of life" crime. The author proposing a lens to look at this which could lead to policy that reduces the incarceration rate but doesn't give up on petty crime is appealing-- it's just time to think about whether it's true.
What he hasn’t addressed (I think, I haven’t read every tome he’s posted) is that this DA is who the people of SF voted for.
When people complain about “prosecutorial discretion” without talking about campaigning and voting for another DA, it’s common to hear loads of drivel that boils down to “I know the people of this city want these prosecution policies, but I disagree with them. Rather than try to change minds, I support a unilateral transfer of power to a group that says they have my approved ideology.”
The problem with that line of thinking is that it puts the cops above the electorate in terms of influence. It’s a terribly slippery slope, but it’s very common in America.
“Freedom and liberty means that the police arrest people that I don’t like! Even if society in general doesn’t want the police to have that much power, who cares? I, Supreme Understander, am more worthy and human than them!”
Edit: Oh wait the author did respond to another poster that brought up replacing the DA or seeking a remedy from the state. Sounds like they would like that, but for whatever 700-word reason it’s important to shift unilateral power to the police either way. Just in case.
* I don't think he's said quite that
* I don't agree with what he's said entirely. I believe civil injunctions have a place in law enforcement, but they need to be used carefully. I suspect you support them in some circumstances, too.
* Even if he did say that, it doesn't invalidate the rest of what he said. It's worth looking at rates of admission to prison vs. prison terms to better compare US jurisprudence to the rest of the world.
> When people complain about “prosecutorial discretion” without talking about campaigning and voting for another DA
I think these people are looking forward to voting for another DA and advocating for other policy approaches being used by DAs.
BTW, prosecutorial discretion makes me super uncomfortable for other reasons. Often it means the good-ole-boys club being immune to prosecution for offenses. Sometimes its use is conducive to justice and the rule of law, and a whole lot of time it's not. At least here it is being used in ways that are not reinforcing power structures.
> “Freedom and liberty means that the police arrest people that I don’t like! Even if society in general doesn’t want the police to have that much power, who cares? I, Supreme Understander, am more worthy and human than them!”
Parodying someone else's point and extending it to hyperbole is not conducive to productive discussion, but it's great as a tool to mock people.
If no: Why are they posting?
If yes: Do you believe that the author supports the restraining order but does not expect or want it to cause any of these people to go to jail in the case that they need to access healthcare, treatment, employment or otherwise fully lawful resources within the Tenderloin?
What do you think* is the outcome that the author seems to want, out of your careful reading of these posts?
If your answer is “I refuse to believe the author has any desired outcome because it would be indecorous of me to take them seriously at face value“ then… okay. A strategic conversation killer doesn’t erase what people advocate for and explain away. It’s not some high brow checkmate.
> * Even if he did say that,
Lol. I just wanted to say that to how you began this thought. Seems like you might agree with me about what he’s saying! Anyway, back to the rest of the quote:
> it doesn't invalidate the rest of what he said. It's worth looking at rates of admission to prison vs. prison terms to better compare US jurisprudence to the rest of the world.
Why? Because the author brought it up in support of some ridiculous expansion of police power to jail people that haven’t committed a crime?
I am intellectually responsible for chasing down every patently silly interpretation of data because… why? This person is using every trick possible to try to justify giving the police power above elected officials and I’m fully aware that they have decided that a narrow definition of “extreme” coupled with a very narrow focus is a useful tool. I’m not clear why anybody should be expected to chart out this quixotic version of “reason” that’s so obviously flawed.
“Prison isn’t so extreme based on this 20 minutes of research I did after stating my predisposed opinion, therefore cops should be given a whole new type of power to jail people that the city doesn’t want to jail.” is something worth entertaining… why?
> BTW, prosecutorial discretion makes me super uncomfortable for other reasons. Often it means the good-ole-boys club being immune to prosecution for offenses.
What is the difference between prosecutorial discretion and the direction that would be afforded to police officers? As far as I can tell, in this situation the difference is the social and political ideology espoused by one group (the DA’s office which was elected by the city) and another (1,500 officers with a $600,000,000 annual budget with very little accountability).
This entire conversation is simply about power and who wants to allocate it to. The author of the previous posts is advocating for power to be allocated to the police rather than the electorate (the DA), on ideological grounds of “that’s what I want.”
> Parodying someone else's point and extending it to hyperbole is not conducive to productive discussion, but it's great as a tool to mock people.
Hiding behind politeness in order to strip others of their basic human rights is considerably uglier than making a joke that actually maps 1:1 to what the author supports.
“I reject your appeal about basic human rights like due cause, a right to a trial, and protection against illegal search on the grounds that you said a mean thing!” is another hilariously American thing that some intellectually uncurious people say (in whatever words they can summon, of course)
I don't know if it's because you don't understand what I'm saying, or are just choosing to be mean. I don't really agree with the other guy, but I don't think you've read him correctly, either.
To try one last time, and constrain it:
* If the US admits people to prison a comparable rate as countries with better outcomes, but keeps them there longer
* Perhaps the correct solution is to put the same number of people in prison, but keep them there for shorter times
* Policies that instead divert and prevent putting people in prison in the first place are not the ideal intervention to be more similar to these model countries.
* Because then we would be putting fewer people in prison for too long, instead of the right number of people in prison for the right length of time.
GP wants the cops to be able to arrest and jail people despite what the electorate has voted on.
The author has in various posts brought up: their interpretation of jailing statistics in a generalized way, the concept of restraining orders for abusive spouses (this is supposed to be equal to banning a person from a large portion of a city), prosecutorial overreach, the imminent overdose deaths that the cops are already framing as being the DA’s fault, and so on.
You will notice that each and every supposed carefully-reasoned chain of logic ends with “The cops should have the power to arrest and jail people despite the representative of the electorate or policies voted on by the majority.”
I understand that you would prefer that this conversation were about abstract mathematical concepts of jailing. That is a fantastic way to abstract away the human cost of allowing cops the ability to arrest and jail people without them having due process. It definitely makes the idea of sacrificing the concept of basic human rights seem more palatable.
So let’s try this again: Use your math concepts of jailing to justify giving the police unilateral power to jail people despite the policies voted on by the people of San Francisco (or not!) If that’s not interesting to you, then I would refer you to the OP, which was about the SFPD seeking the ability to put 28 individuals in jail if spotted on the wrong street.
I decline your invitation to entertain nonsense philosophical or mathematical conjecture to avoid talking about the SFPD’s failed attempted power grab.
Which again, is the topic of the article and the subject of my conversation on this topic.
> So let’s try this again: Use your math concepts of jailing to justify giving the police unilateral power to jail people despite the policies voted on by the people of San Francisco (or not!)
Again, this is so far over the line. It's not something I've talked about. Indeed, no one except you is talking about arbitrary police powers to jail, as far as I can tell, but instead talking about the appropriateness of civil orders.
I don't really want to talk about civil orders, because my answer is: it's complicated! I do think civil restraining orders are often good, which are a power of the police to jail if you go certain places or near certain people. One that covers a 50 block area to prevent broad sets of possible criminality is probably bad. But that has never been what I've been talking about in this thread.
You talked on the other topic, which I responded about, and you've refused to talk about any more.
What is the exact thing you are trying to achieve here? Are you trying to convince people? Are you trying to make yourself feel good by making other people feel bad? I had hoped to share ideas and really discuss, instead of being lambasted for other peoples' words.
The commonly held belief is that drug dealers, especially street-level, are basically fungible and quickly replaced. There's clearly truth to that. But now this belief is being tested to the extreme. It's also true, as any student of economics would tell you, that there's always some marginal effect to a policy, even a crappy one; the real question is the magnitude of the effect. (And to avoid muddying the equity waters, I'm ignoring the fact that the threat of incarceration provides leverage when trying to get street-level dealers to flip; FWIW, I do agree coerced plea deals is a legitimate problem, but notably also an issue where scope and severity matter, not simply nominal existence of an incarceration threat.) Usually in public policy debates we stick to qualitative aspects rather than quantitative, justifiably or not. But Boudin's radical anti-incarceration policies has made SF a fascinating experiment where the precise magnitude (whether as deterrence or simply as removing a criminal temporarily from the population) could make a signifiant difference; it's the only relevant question left, at least in the short-medium term.
The present situation in the city is a difficult one for Boudin, politically speaking. It's becoming clear (at least to me) that Boudin is hiding behind the ambiguity in incarceration statistics. I also think this must be willful, because Boudin is also committed to shorter incarceration sentences for violent crimes, so he clearly understands there's a meaningful, consequential distinction between some jail time and none. (FWIW, I support a lighter sentencing policy for violent offenses, and if this were his only policy I'd be glad someone with the backbone--or at least intransigence--of Boudin were in office. Most other viable SF district attorney candidates would have a similar policy, at least nominally, but might not have the wherewithal to follow through to the same extent.)
Almost everyone agrees that incarceration rates (i.e. per capita rates) are too high, at least at a national level. (I haven't found good per capita incarceration rates for San Francisco specifically, but almost certainly it's substantially below national levels, and likely has been for awhile given San Francisco has been at the forefront of criminal justice reform decades before Boudin. But let's just say they're still unjustifiably high.) As long as people don't or can't distinguish between no jail time vs lesser jail time, Boudin can sustain greater support than he could otherwise. Most voters are strongly committed to improved criminal justice equity, even when it comes with real negative costs. Boudin has been able to position his [extreme] policies as a choice between pursuing or rejecting meaningful reform, full stop. But if the prospect of achieving all or most of that improved equity without some of the extreme and deadly costs currently demonstrated in SF, then what remnants of local support Boudin enjoys would quickly crumble. (National support for Boudin would likely be sustained as after holding Boudin up as an archetype, national reform advocates are afraid a Boudin loss would benefit their opponents. For the same reason they're also afraid of the consequences of allowing any debate over this distinction in metrics, period. In America that's why we can't have nice things--so much, including acceptable policy alternatives on an increase array of policy areas, is radically polarized.)
I think it's important to make these distinctions. I think they matter. And in SF, they might even matter to the sum of demonstrably, significantly reduced deaths. But I admit that's not at all guaranteed. The marginal effect of pursuing even short incarceration for repeat offending street dealers might indeed be de minimis--either intrinsically or simply dwarfed by the negative effects of the city's broader so-called "harm reduction" strategy wrt drug use.
No. It literally is not.
This article is about: “CA Appeals Court Rules San Francisco Cannot Ban Tenderloin Drug Dealers”
Subject: California Appeals Court Verb: rules (against) Object: San Francisco(/SFPD)
What has happened in this news article was an accounting of how multiple courts in California have ruled that this injunction violated people’s rights. The SFPD suffered an embarrassing loss because they tried some absolutely bonkers loophole-building as part of a petulant tantrum, and multiple courts struck it down for good reason. That’s what the article is literally about.
You would like drug dealing to be the topic, or overreach by prosecutors (but not police), or a weird bad-faith equivocation with protections for abused spouses, or some abstract concept of what’s mathematically optimal or acceptable for jail populations.
However, the article about how multiple courts have ruled that the silly baby attempt at Judge Dredd was unconstitutional is about… how multiple courts have ruled that the silly baby attempt at Judge Dredd was unconstitutional.
Anyway, you can buy fentanyl in prison! Or order it off the dark web and get it sent to your mailbox. I am assuming you know this, which means your request for a wild expansion of police powers, despite courts ruling that is terrible for human rights, is something that you would advocate for anyway.
If you compare person prison years, the U.S. is an extreme outlier. However, by prison admittances per year, we're actually not extreme at all, even compared to Europe. (Unsurprisingly by that metric we look alot like other Anglo countries, modulo crime rate.) IOW, what was extreme about the U.S. was the duration of jail sentences (i.e. severity), not the rate at which we used jail time for penal purposes. IOW, what was extreme about the U.S. was the duration of jail sentences (i.e. severity), not the rate at which we used jail time for penal purposes. That fallacious narrative is leading us down a perverse, equally extreme road--we're swinging from extreme amounts of jail time to no jail time.
Per the World Prison Brief:
- The Highest in Europe on that chart is Turkey, at just over half of the US rate (368 vs 629 per 100k).
- It's not clear what "Anglo country" is referring to specifically but if we look at CANZUK for comparison, we can see the next highest rate of the entire group is Australia at 165. I'm not sure how that's comparable. You mention modulo Crime rate but for example Canada has more total crimes per 1000[2] than the US, just less violent crime. It's not as easy as an off the cuff answer because there are so many different cultural factors even between former British colonies in regards to laws that the data will generally skew wildly.
[1] https://www.prisonstudies.org/highest-to-lowest/prison_popul...
[2] https://www.nationmaster.com/country-info/compare/Canada/Uni...
? If the US puts X/100000 people in prison per year, and country B puts 1.1X/100000 people in prison per year... but the US imprisons people for 5x as long, then the US incarceration rate would be 4x higher, even though country B puts people in prison more often.
This has happened before. One year it was a clean city, then they announced they wouldn't prosecute quality of life crimes like defecating on the street... and the next year you couldn't walk a single block without having to avoid human feces. The amount of short-sightedness in the leadership of that city is astounding! At least don't announce it!
That's not a mistake they are making, because:
(1) No one was convicted of a crime, so there are no “criminals” involved, and
(2) It doesn't make deprivation of rights without legal basis acceptable that it is done to deter people other than those being immediately deprived of rights.
> Rulings like this will have a very predictable outcome
Yes, and that outcome is “law enforcement will need to charge people with crimes and prove them to the criminal standard of ‘beyond a reasonable doubt’ before depriving them of liberty on the basis that they are criminals.”
This isn't a mistake. This was not law before they committed their offense, and it's a very restrictive ban: this is effectively adding more punishment to a crime after the fact. Worse, there was no legislation to support the ban.
> This has happened before. One year it was a clean city, then they announced they wouldn't prosecute quality of life crimes like defecating on the street... and the next year you couldn't walk a single block without having to avoid human feces. The amount of short-sightedness in the leadership of that city is astounding! At least don't announce it!
Here, the leadership of the city was trying to take action in excess of what the law allowed against these dealers. So who exactly is fucking up here? The leadership of the city?
A charitable view would state: It’s as if the DA is searching for solutions but always lands on the worst possible one which is both illegal and ineffective.
The one benefit to this solution is that it reduces the DA case load, which it looks like is the real goal.
The city attorney (not the DA-- another official who handles civil matters for the city rather than criminal ones) sought to keep these people out of the portions of the city where drug dealing is most endemic.
But, this turns out not to be legal-- with no legislative support and with it all being post-conviction, combined with it being large in scope compared to similar civil protective orders.
Are people angels who only behave badly when horrible circumstances leave them with no options? I just don't understand how someone could believe this. It would seem to take a very sheltered life where ideology takes the place of real human experience.
There are certainly people who do bad things because they’re bad people. But yes, on average, people who behave badly are doing so because of limited options, not because they’re really keen on crime.
If toilets are sometimes inconvenient, by all means add more, but it won't end the problem.
I am not squeamish about pointing out the nature of self-destructive behavior. I don't think it does anyone any favors to ignore things because we are uncomfortable with perceived implications. We can sympathize with drug abusers and their circumstances while recognizing that they are behaving in a self-destructive and often other-destructive way.
But until we make it reasonably possible for them to not poop outside, maybe we shouldn't assume it's all inevitable.
I’m not a stranger to public defecation, it happens a lot in my country but no one would be so shameless as to actually do it in the middle of a paved street or sidewalk.
A lot of time this would put you in a street, or in a private parking lot where ownership would be trying to chase you off.
> public toilets
Relatively few.
> wooded parks
Just a few. Not close to everywhere homeless congregate.
When it's happening in the middle of the sidewalk, I fear that being inconspicuous is not a primary consideration for those doing it.
Yah, I'm not saying being inconspicuous is a goal. I'm saying avoiding being hit by an oblivious SF car while pooping and avoiding being chased by the lot owner who is right there are motivations. On the sidewalk, it's no specific person's problem.
I think not prosecuting is one part of the solution but it needed to be implement alongside a real solution to the root problem. Many people living on the streets have mental issues of all kinds, and not addressing that while simultaneously removing all boundaries when it comes to what they can or cannot do outside, is quite obviously going to create mayhem. The cynical side of me thinks that could be the end goal, but that's a different matter.
The homeless have always been there, the poop, the needles, and the other trash was less visible - until the plastic bag bans - now there is no ready disposal mechanism.
An opposite experience was I walked by a woman who was pissing between two parked cars. She apologized when I saw her. I walked by her again about an hour later, and she thanked me for not yelling at her. She said she was peeing in public because she had no access to a toilet.
The comment above posits that this removes an effective disincentive and will lead to more drug dealers in the area. My premise is that no drug dealer is factoring in this kind of disincentive at all into their calculus. Studies have shown that even more severe criminal penalties like long-term jail sentences don’t serve as an effective deterrent, because they don’t actually treat the factors that lead to somebody deciding to commit a crime, and once they do, the concept that there may be a harsh penalty if caught isn’t a factor.
Your comment on the feces issue is a ludicrous distortion, and your lack of thoughtfulness on the very real constitutional issue with this case is perhaps even more disturbing.
This is hilarious. It’s literally insane that the SFPD or a halfway-smart DA would think that this would work.
How exactly was this supposed to work? These 28 people could just be arrested on sight? Aside from giving the cops a little dopamine boost by dispensing a ridiculous overreach of power, how would this actually stop the flow of drugs?
If I were one of these big bad drug dealers that terrified the SFPD so badly that they had to beg for extra power to fuck with me more, I’d maybe just sell drugs right outside the arbitrary border. Or just sell drugs to somebody that lives in the TL and is down to resell. Or disregard the order and continue selling drugs wherever. Or set up a drop system.
The police are the biggest crybabies in the world and I’m glad they didn’t get to tremble their liddle-widdle frowns and get to arbitrarily arrest people that haven’t been convicted of a crime.
But they can’t just write down a list of names and ban those people from existing in public spaces to short circuit having to go through the due process of charging/convicting them of the underlying crime.
But then, he won his election, so I guess that's what the people of SF want