NetQuarterLatte

NetQuarterLatte t1_ivgemr1 wrote

>Also, with regards to the deterrence point. I don’t really think criminals are doing illegal things because they’re like “the DA won’t prosecute he’s too weak on crime.” I’ve seen you discussing your issues with Bragg below, how does that tie into your view on this issue?

Messaging/signaling is a big deal. And I suspect that's at the root of more crimes than we give it credit for.

For example, leave some property unattended, and it'll signal that no one cares about it, and it will increase the likelihood of it being stolen/defaced etc. The other way around works too: if it's credible that someone cares about it, it can be a deterrent for crimes.

One concrete example was in the use of street lighting at night: https://www.newsnationnow.com/us-news/northeast/nyc-used-street-lighting-to-cut-crime-without-more-arrests/

>“What I take from that is that it’s not just about lighting. There is some kind of demonstration and signaling effect here that you’re letting people know this is an area that’s being watched. This is an area that’s being cared for,” he said. Additionally, they monitored communities around the public housing developments and did not find that crime was being displaced to other locations.

Another concrete example is how the increased enforcement of misdemeanors (in the 90s) led to the decrease of felonies: https://www.nber.org/system/files/working_papers/w9061/w9061.pdf

With Bragg specifically, both of the issues I had/have with him entails messaging:

  • In his first day of office he decided to wholesale downgrade armed robberies to misdemeanors. That was quite a slap in the face given the rise in gun violence that was going on around that time.
  • In the Trump's case, he didn't even try to present the case to a grand jury and had the lead prosecutors resigning in protest. That's another slap in the face given that such outcome would've only be expected from a republican DA, and that it helps perpetuate the lack of accountability of the powerful.
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NetQuarterLatte t1_ivg78zm wrote

>This the same clown that made post about removing Alvin Braggs by any means.

Any attorney in NY can be fired for any reason, at any time. Firing the DA should be no different than firing any other attorney in NY, considering that the district is the client here.

District voters should have the right to express their will to fire the DA.

The lack of such right is causing a distortion in our elections. If Manhattan had the right to vote for that, it would be a heck lot easier for people to vote for Hochul.

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NetQuarterLatte t1_ivg5sz6 wrote

I saw the twitter threat. There's a lot of fear-mongering in his retorts filled with "anti-cop" political agenda.

Filtering out the fear-mongering/political stuff, the main logical gap in the counter-argument from Alec Karakatsanis is that he's trying to count any law-enforcement as "police". We all know that the typical border patrol officer is not investigating murder cases in our communities, for example.

The second gap: he points out the undercounting of "private police" as problem in the study. It's actually the other way around: the emergence of "private police" only bolsters the study argument that many locations in the US are severely under-policed.

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NetQuarterLatte t1_ivg37mz wrote

I don't only post about crimes, actually.

For example, I've been posting a lot about the housing supply problems.

Does that change anything? I've been noticing a positive shift in the public debate about housing supply and NIMBY in NYC. Both here in this sub and in the public view on our city politicians. But I don't think I can take any credit for that.

I post primarily to learn more from thoughtful replies by fellow redittors. I don't only post to shout my views, but to also elicit meaningful/intellectual challenges to my views.

I learn a lot from truthful conversations here (when the other person is debating in good faith) and that has genuinely shaped my views many times.

After all, how should I know what to support in reality?

IF the dominant mainstream discourse was sufficient, we wouldn't be observing those issues in reality, or at least we would have an intellectually sound explanation for it.

That's just coming from my desire of educating myself before throwing myself behind any solution in ways that go beyond just understanding the mainstream opinion.

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NetQuarterLatte t1_ivfq98g wrote

>What policies do you support?

I support the obvious: economic improvements, better wages, better life-quality, better education, access to health-care, mental health care, etc. All of which already receive plenty of attention (even if they don't receive effective implementation, like De Blasio's failed mental health care plan..)

What I don't support: advocating for above shouldn't devolve into a "crime denial" bliss where we just blame the media and "far-right people", and then pretend that there's no issue.

I also oppose the nihilist view that we can't do anything about crime ("we are just at the mercy of a nationwide trend", "it's a pandemic we have no control of", ...). The nihilist view is not supported by evidence.

What do I think has been missing from the debate?

An honest conversation about the role of policing, and how America is severely under-policed compared to other developed countries, and how that's actually one of the root causes of mass incarceration (longer and more severe sentences as a way to compensate for under-policing)

Understaffed police departments also tend to employ more violence.

We can look at other developed cities, like London where the police doesn't even carry guns (except for very specialized units), but when they intervene to arrest someone they usually swam the individual with lots of bodies.

Right now, this is what I like to see more in the conversations:

  • Deterrence (likelihood of being caught is more important than the severity of the punishment)
  • Messaging about crime enforcement is more important than punishments.
  • Poverty drives property-crimes but not violent crimes
  • Lack of trust in the police as a root-cause for violent crimes. To address that we need to make sure police misconduct is addressed seriously, but also to not exaggerate that or devolve that into openly spreading of "anti-police" campaigns (which can foster distrust in the police locally, even if the PD who committed the wrongdoing is a completely different PD from another state)
  • Violence spreads like a contagious diseases. Stopping the spread requires a two-pronged approach: prevention (better economics/social) that makes communities less vulnerable), and targeted isolation/intervention (don't let a few people keep spreading it!)

Obs.: I refer to some people as "progressive" between quotes, because the totalitarian discourse/logic they employ and the actual policies they impose are anything but progressive.

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NetQuarterLatte t1_ivfk3et wrote

>Wait wait you do this then blame “progressives” the people who have been advocating for mental health services for inmates are the progressive man

I consider advocating for mental health services an actual progressive policy (not "progressive" between quotes). I have no problems with that and support it.

My criticism is aimed at the people who go around proclaiming that street violence is not a problem, as if criminal violence doesn't destabilize families and communities in ways that are not very different from the consequences of police brutality.

And yet these people somehow call themselves "progressive" (I put in quotes because they are anything but progressive).

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NetQuarterLatte t1_ivfemmb wrote

>Let's start by providing social services, free of charge or strings, to people who need them
>
>Housing reduces crime
>
>Education reduces crime
>
>Healthcare reduces crime
>
>Job opportunities reduce crime

The above are all fair and square and shouldn't be ignored.

But you do know that violent crimes themselves increase violent crimes more than poverty, right?

Among progressives, there's more than enough advocacy for social services and economic improvements.

But there's very little attention to the principal role of criminal violence itself on perpetuating the cycle of violence, which prevent families from lifting themselves out of poverty and perpetuates disproportionally negatively outcomes for minorities/POC.

Why is that?

Edit: my reply below was moderated immediately after I edited it to included citations to academic papers (from the Psychology of Violence journal and the Bulletin of the New York Academy of Medicine).

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NetQuarterLatte t1_ivf44bv wrote

It's a really tragic story on how Guallpa became a first-time violent offender himself (from the article):

>Luz Guamán, Guallpa’s wife, recalled him as a good father, often helping with housework and taking care of the kids. But the former construction worker, who lost his job after an onsite accident, fell into a dark depression after he was robbed outside his home in an assault in which he was hit in the head repeatedly.
>
>After that, Guallpa began drinking more and attacking his wife, who supported their family through her income from a clothing factory.

Considering that robberies are rising by more than 30% in NYC this year, and felony assaults are on pace to hit the record high for this century in NYC (https://imgur.com/a/uYPZgDY), how many more victims like Guallpa do we need before our fake-progressives start taking the issue seriously? Crimes are destroying families.

Edit: if you're outraged with the above paragraph by wrongly equating "taking the issue seriously" with "tough-on-crime far-right policy", you should check yourself for your own biases. While you might have an opposite moral compass, that suggests you have the same narrow-mindedness/lack of imagination as the far-right people you might despise.

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NetQuarterLatte t1_iv2isdo wrote

Comparing races like that is just despicable and I condemn those statements.

It's either ignorant or disingenuous for this professor to make those claims as if asians-americans weren't systematically targeted, incarcerated in concentration camps, and had their properties seized (federally) a long time after the abolition of slavery and even the Jim Crow era.

I'd say Jennifer Lee being a more recent immigrant from Korea may be just oblivious to that and give her the benefit of the doubt, if it wasn't for a fact that as a professor she should've known the history a lot better.

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NetQuarterLatte t1_iuggs6w wrote

It's kind of amazing that De Blasio and others in the party believe that normalizing severe drug abuse is somehow a progressive policy.

In reality, they are implementing policies to bring back the 1800s, when as much as 1 out of 200 people in the US was addicted to an opioid. Then it took us almost a century (with drug trades by colonial powers, opium wars and more) to realize the damage such drug abuse can cause to a society.

There's a valid point on not criminalizing weed and such that I strongly agree with.

However, I disagree with the extreme we have today: allowing severe drug abuse to the point of causing damage to our society (which we are just starting to witness) is anything but progressive. This is regressive as fuck (1800s kind of regressive).

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