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Comment by millzlane | Hacker News Reader

Why would hearing those make you lean to the right? When did putting violent criminals in jail become a "right leaning" thing?

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This became a "right" thing when the Democratic Party--or more succinctly, the people they put on the ballots in liberal cities--have moved so hard to the left that they are unrecognizable to normal classically liberal Americans like myself. When these folks are running in the general election, they say all the right things to keep the votes from normal traditional Democrats who appear to have no idea who they're actually voting for. Once they're in, they go completely radical and do so relentlessly. Some of these DAs appear to be the worst, most evil, least-caring public officials I've ever observed in my life.

I'm familiar with that argument--but my suspicion is the whole "Dem cities are havens of crime" trope, is masking the true issue--in effect creating partisan polarization that distracts and outrages folks, in place of actual clarity, and results that shift the status quo in a more favorable direction (which, by virtue of such change not occuring, seems reasonable to conclude that said change must be imposing on some powerful interest--but what interest that could be, that wants there to be crime, I cannot fathom).

Surely this can't be the blanket cause?

It's partisan but only because of the state of the parties. Democrat-run Austin Texas used to be heaven in the 1970s and 80s. Then radicals took over and somehow got elected and now you have a total sh*tshow.

The data in SF is pretty clear (https://www.sfdistrictattorney.org/policy/data-dashboards/ , "District Attorney Actions on Arrests Presented" for example), and as the trend appears to be everywhere else, arrests are down and rates of charges filed are similar or even higher. In the SF case rates have been higher in the last two years than all of the previous data there back to 2011. Similar story in LA where filing rates did not appreciably change.

Roughly 8 years ago. Trying not to politicize this, but the deliberate act of not prosecuting certain crimes has been a movement driven by the left in recent years. And it's not going well for society at large.

Is there actual data for this or is it simply a feeling?

Everything I've been able to find indicates that crime statistics are trending downwards and are already much lower than historical levels.

Crime trends are well below the late 80's early 90's peak, but are significantly up since covid, which is a reversal of the trend downwards we have seen.

People generally are uncomfortable with crime being up 50% in 3 years, even if it's still down 30% from 1991.

> People generally are uncomfortable with crime being up 50% in 3 years, even if it's still down 30% from 1991.

Where did the 50% number come from?

Q1 2023 appears to be down nearly 10% on Q1 2022 and 25% compared with Q1 2017.

2022 as a whole was lower in most areas than 2017 with 9,000 fewer incidents.

[0] https://www.sanfranciscopolice.org/stay-safe/crime-data/crim...

Numbers are nationwide. My city's crime rates have doubled since March 2020. SF could be an outlier, but based on the melancholia in this thread, people may just not be reporting crime as much any more in SF.

Underreporting seems like a huge problem, even here with our blooming crime rate. I've had to call the police twice since covid, once because by house caught a stray bullet from a car chase/shootout, and the cops said that the only people who bothered to report were myself and the elementary school down the street. The folks in the other house that took rounds had no desire to interact with the police.

Admittedly, it is more feeling than data.

However, I work in the physical security space (eg: cameras, video AI, access control, etc.).

Overall, it does not feel like actual crime rates are down, but there are many things that are simply going unreported. Thus, the stats might look better, but they are not always a representation of reality.

As one example, loss prevention departments have always been busy, but they could usually get a response from the police. Now you have retail theft gangs/rings openly walking out with thousands of dollars of product, getting into a stolen vehicle, driving off, and police more or less just not even returning a phone call in many areas.

This is not everywhere at this point, but a lot of major metropolitan areas are seemingly observing significantly increased "petty" crimes, which are going unreported and unresponded to.

When a city is overwhelmingly Democrat, as most cities are, you'd expect them to elect Democrats. But the people who get in office are actually leftist radicals.

It's a weird social phenomenon. Groups based on trait X will tend to choose the most radical and forceful members for trait X as their leaders. To the point where trait X is actually warped beyond recognition.

Nothing really changed from a right leaning perspective. It’s been my perception that not putting all sorts of criminals in jail has become a left leaning thing over the last decade or so.

The push to shut down private prisons, especially in California for example.

By proxy that made it a right leaning thing.

I’ve heard my more right wing friends suggest that a big Democratic donor has been specifically backing DAs who do this type of thing. I have no references for it at all, but I know that Desantis even mentioned it in the press while discussing the Trump charges in NY.

Opposing private prisons doesn't imply opposing prisons in general. That's a strawman.

Shutting down private prisons without replacing them with public prisons leaves you more limited on your capacity to convict people and keep them off the street though.

Have the private prisons been replaced?

I would support a law that outlawed private prisons and provided funding for replacing/nationalizing them. I think that many on the left would support that.

I think that makes perfect sense. It just doesn’t appear to be what’s happened so it’s just created a new problem.

Logically no, but really that's what they want.

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