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Comment by wonderwonder | Hacker News Reader

Unpopular opinion. Prisons Should really have at least twice as many occupants. If people are unable to live in a polite society and follow the rules they should be removed until they are willing to.

How many times do we read about someone that killed/ raped/ assaulted someone and it's revealed they have dozens of prior arrests?

Putting them back on the street constantly can only lead to their death or crimes against innocents.

What has happened to crime and specifically the homicide rate since police were demonized? 28% increase in 2020 over 2019. A record increase. This is what happens when you remove police.

No one should have to live in fear when getting on the train or walking down the street. Or have to constantly repair their property due to a smash and grab. Remove these people and house them somewhere they can no longer cause harm.

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"How many times do we read"

It's a known principle that crime reporting has increased far faster than actual crime. And I mean, seriously you look at 2020 and think the major story was the police had bad PR? I'm pretty sure something else pretty big happened that year.

Yes, George Floyd was killed. BLM happened. People rioted. Police stepped back as calls to defund the police began. African Americans began dying due to homicide in massively increased numbers. Did I miss anything?

You are missing a bunch of things, but the truth cannot be spoken on this site.

Rather than answer with something overly sarcastic or assume you're being deliberately obtuse, I'm just going to answer earnestly and mention that there was global pandemic.

There was indeed a pandemic. Are you saying that is what caused homicide rates to spike amongst African Americans and not Caucasians? Has the homicide rate gone down since then? I would posit that police withdrew from high crime / predominantly African American areas and in the void that was created, violence increased. Logically if there is a high crime area and you remove police enforcement from it, then crime will increase. My focus is not on the African American murder rate though, that is just a pertinent example of my overall point which stating that if you remove law enforcement or otherwise cripple them, then crime will increase as is happening in SF which was described in the original article.

That's both speculative and illogical. Police don't prevent crime. They can only arrest after the fact. And that's only if they catch them. And police did not withdraw from anywhere. No city defunded police. The defund movement was predicated on the fact that police are ineffective at preventing crime. That economics plays a much bigger role. Employment in places like NYC took much longer to recover because so many jobs depended on offices being full. And the homicide rate has, in fact, been dropping the last two years. The pandemic peak was less than 1/4 the 1990s peak.

Police and empowered prosecutors prevent crime. Remove a criminal from society and they will not commit a crime again.

The broken window theory is true, arrest and prosecute minor crimes to prevent larger ones.

Perfect example is Jordan Neely who was killed in NYC. He was arrested 40+ times for assault and the prosecutor kept letting him out to continue to terrorize the population. Eventually it ended the only way it could; with his death. Removing him from society would have kept him alive and resulted in a child not being traumatized after an attempted kidnapping and an old lady would not have had her face broken. Daniel Penny was simply the end result of ineffective criminal justice policies.

Cops are an important part of the solution but they can only do so much without a DA willing to prosecute and incarcerate.

You're piling speculation on speculation. Broken Windows has never held up to scrutiny. Neely served jail time for his assault charges and was known to be severely mentally ill. Witnesses also all confirmed he did not attack anyone on the train. DAs and police do their jobs appropriately. You sound like a conservative media bubble denizen who has never been near a city.

"You sound like a conservative media bubble denizen who has never been near a city." :)

voted Dem my entire life (mid 40s) Just realized it doesn't make sense to do so anymore so switched sides a couple years ago. I've lived and worked downtown in a large city for a decade. Drive past addicts every day collapsed in the street that should be in jail for their own benefit and that of others.

You wont admit it but if they took 1% of society and put them in prison we would live in a utopia.

Honestly I just don't believe you. American Republicans have absolutely no answers for anything and are unequivocally harming society in lots of measurable ways. We can stamp out crime tomorrow, but we're approaching a climate apocalypse and they are cheering it on. Putting addicts in jail is less effective than treatment. Every country in the civilized world has less crime than we do and they did it with more socialism, not more libertarianism. Putting the Sacklers in jail is something I'd be on board with. That and banning any and all private gun ownership.

Cool :) Every single one of those countries is a vassal to the united states, free to experiment because they are kept safe under our umbrella. Even Finland and Sweden are desperate for our protection.

As far as climate change, unless you have a way to force China and all emerging economies to sabotage their own economic development then any changes you make is a puppet show.

Addicts? Whatever happened to personal responsibility? It's not my job to give second chances to violent addicts that can't help themselves.

As far as gun control you can't even get illegal guns away from criminals, confiscating firearms from legal owners would just leave them vulnerable.

All cities with the highest homicide rates have Dem mayors. How's that working out for them?

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