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Comment by LAC-Tech | Hacker News Reader

So you need military, not police?

One prevalent narrative in NYC is that there’s an epidemic of people being pushed onto the tracks. We need more police in the subway to prevent this from happening.

I was in Singapore recently. Most people there take the subway. Yet no one gets pushed onto the tracks. Why is that?

It has nothing to do with cops — you rarely see them on the subway there. Instead, they have a wall between the platform and the tracks.

So many problems like this have non-carceral solutions. The reactionary reach for police to solve ever problem we see is inhumane. It makes society worse.

I'd be very happy for western cities to emulate Singapore

By extremely punishing petty offenses, or by harboring billion-dollar financial criminals, or by being dictatorships?

So we should use public caning and ramp up the use of the death penalty for illegal drug possession?

Kindly point out where I'm advocating for anything remotely like what you're describing here.

The idea that lawlessness or criminal behavior is inhibited by a short wall in the subway between the platform and the tracks is absurd. There are broader cultural forces at play, in particular the "non-carcerial" alternatives that Singapore employs- harsh punishments for small crimes. Giuliani's "broken windows" policies on steroids.

If we wanted to emulate Singapore to make our subways safer, we would have to do much, much more than put up a little wall on the subway platform.

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