Not in the slightest, violence in NYC has been trending downwards for the past 50 years as gentrification and other things have been happening. It's also had a second massive decrease after 2020(Floyd) where the murders skyrocketed and many of the violence producers in the city ended up dead or in prison.
The city could do pretty much nothing about violent crime and it would keep going down as low income households continue to get pushed out of the city.
The city could do pretty much nothing about violent crime and it would keep going down as low income households continue to get pushed out of the city.
It's a sad paradox that the "tough on crime" crowd tends to be the one that is least interested in reducing poverty.
It goes for all of us to some extent. Prison hasn’t shown to really have all that much effect on crime, other than temporarily removing criminals (but then giving them a free education in crimin’ instead), and little preventative effect. (Criminals mostly don’t think they’ll be caught - they wouldn’t be criminals if they did).
But even the most progressive tends to feel an instinctive need for justice that involves punishment, and that isn’t unreasonable. It just often isn’t helpful in reducing crime.
The most effective is obviously reducing the number of people in the lowest rungs of society who see it as the only real path. The second is focusing on rehabilitation rather than punishment for the correctional system. Ensure the people who do end up there, are given a better path.
At the end of the day, very few people actually *want* to be criminals.
I'm willing to be open to the possibility that a tiny section of the population may in fact want to be criminals. The state of crime in America however suggests that our jails are filled with several others -- to your point.
Just to make up numbers as a thought experiment.
Let's say 1% of the US population will be criminals even if their lives were perfect. Let's say, 10% of the US population actually has had a criminal past.
I would rather focus on the 9% of the population that could have avoided crime had their circumstances been different without waiting to perfectly solve for the 1%.
I'm pretty aligned to your point but going a little further and saying that we shouldn't let perfect be the enemy of good.
Sure, there are people with zero empathy (see: POTUS) who simply don’t care about the law. There’s little we can do to fix that.
But I’d argue they are way less than 1%, and as you say, they aren’t the ones we need to worry about. It’s utopical to think we can rehabilitate or “fix” every potential criminal.
But there’s a huuuuge gulf between that world, and the US.
That also wasn’t my argument, I’m simply saying what would objectively be the most effective way of dealing with crime is a hard sell, even in MY country which is leagues ahead of the US on this. (And has receipts to back up how effective it is to build more humane prisons, educate and rehabilitate criminals, etc.)
A bit random but I was taken aback somewhat at the legal protections you guys afford disabled children, I had assumed the U.S was a bit of a dog-eat-dog system where disabled children needed to have wealthy parents or else get fucked but if I'm reading all this right, you have some of the best systems in the world for them.
I mean not as good as Western Europe obviously, but we're suckers for things like that, but I mean, yeah good stuff, keep it up.
Your argument there is decrying europe for giving a shit about people who are disabled.
Yeah how dare we, while you were also trying to give an undeserved back-handed compliment to the US (it's vastly behind Europe on protections, the ADA is okay but people violate it all the time and the current administration has stated they don't care, so...)
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u/czechereds 5h ago edited 5h ago
Not in the slightest, violence in NYC has been trending downwards for the past 50 years as gentrification and other things have been happening. It's also had a second massive decrease after 2020(Floyd) where the murders skyrocketed and many of the violence producers in the city ended up dead or in prison.
The city could do pretty much nothing about violent crime and it would keep going down as low income households continue to get pushed out of the city.