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Comment by local_crmdgeon | Hacker News Reader

This. The problem is that Baltimore treats crime as being separate from criminals.

Almost all crime is committed by a tiny, tiny group of people - in NYC, 327 people commit 1/3rd of all shoplifting. https://www.nytimes.com/2023/04/15/nyregion/shoplifting-arre...

We used to just warehouse people like this, and we stopped because that was mean and did not get us likes on Instagram.

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There is a theoretical limit to the rate at which a society can digest unsocialized people, and this is affected by the exposed surface area of the clumps of unsocialized people. Where by “unsocialized” I mean with respect to that particular society - people in any society are “unsocialized” with respect to any other sufficiently separate society. We seem to have run into a case of serious indigestion. Traditionally we warehoused people who weren’t being digested successfully. Why we stopped is a really interesting question.

I absolutely agree. I hate that "lock up criminals" has become a race-loaded statement, because in Baltimore (and in my neighborhood) the victims are Black/POC. This doesn't impact Becky on IG, it impacts the older people who spent their lives turning America's urban areas around.

It's really, really unjust.

Do you have any tangible data to back up the first sentence or is it just a desire to avoid facing hard reality?

You mean the hard reality that a society can digest an infinite number of unsocialized people instantaneously?

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