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Solution to Reducing Crime

What is the Optimal Solution for Reducing Crime

  • More police and harsher penalties

    Votes: 3 9.1%

  • Invest in infrastructure and education

    Votes: 11 33.3%

  • Something else (please specificy)

    Votes: 19 57.6%
  • Total voters
    33
KevinKohler said:
I'm surprised tobacco lobby hasn't worked some deal out to better control it in those states, if I'm honest.

I'll concede the point.
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The prices are good enough that legal weed ends up on the black market (from a legal state to an illegal state).

Legalizing weed would end spending billions to prosecute people for the general equivalent of beer. There's prosecutors, defenders, judges, court time, jail/prison time, probation and countless other costs to prosecuting people unnecessarily.

Legalizing weed would take profits from gangs. I saw a documentary the other day about the Mexican border and the amount of weed that comes through there. It's staggering, and it's mad profit for cartels, gangs and other criminal organizations and criminals. I'd guess the real money is in coke trafficking, but taking weed profits from criminals would still be a significant blow to criminal organizations.

Legalizing weed has produced a tremendous amount of additional tax revenue in states with recreational legalization.


That's 3 major impacts, 2 economic and 1 regarding crime. It's a shame it's taking so long.
 
KevinKohler said:
Doesn't matter how well kids are raised....if crime pays better than legitimate jobs, or, those job simply don't pay enough to survive, or there none to begin with, crime is to happen.
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I'm not buying that. If this were true, they'd all be sellers rather than users.
 
Jesse Booth said:
Yeah, screw the 8th amendment, let's put people away for life without consideration for what they actually did! Not like our prisons are overcrowded already or anything...
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That's just it. We keep on letting criminals out over and over because we don't want overcrowded jails? If someone proves themselves to be nothing but a habitual career criminal and we should let them back out to do it yet once again? How stupid is that?
 

A lot less stupid than putting someone in prison for life over shoplifting.
 
decriminalize cannabis possession & sales; this will drop the arrest & incarceration rates by 50% plus .............
 

I think big tobacco would try to dominate the weed market if weed was legalized nationwide. There would still be a Camel brand, but he'd be depicted a little different in his picture on each package. He'd be red-eyed, sitting on the couch watching cartoons with a big gulp in one hoof and a bag of doritos in the other!
 

I voted something else. While the first 2 choices need lots of work I don 't think they are going to solve the root problem.

I think the vast majority of criminals have mental issues. Prisons and jails do not address the mental issues but make them worse.

A minor problem leaves prison as a much worse problem. I have had friends who went to prison (mostly drugs). They were screwed up before they went in but I was not concerned about them being a danger to me or society. When they came out that became another story. The level of danger to society after they came out was easily a 100 times worse. There is no question in my mind that prison takes a minor problem and turns them into a very dangerous monster.

Prison and jail does not solve the problem of people doing things wrong. It does make the problem worse. Much worse. After thousands of years of jails not solving the problem you would think we would be trying something else. Isn't insanity the doing of something over and over and expecting a different result. Anyone who thinks jails and prisons are a solution are nuts as well.
 

Do you think the fact that many prisons now are privatized and that more occupancy = more profit has anything to do with legislative reluctance to ease up on harsher penalties and shorter sentences for non-violent crimes?
 
Random thoughts on the topic... Liberals tend to say poverty causes crime. Conservatives tend to say crime causes poverty. They are probably both right. Our society tolerates higher prison costs to get people off the streets. European societies tolerate higher taxes to provide a dole to keep people out of prison.

Our history shows that our newest urban dwellers commit a lot of crimes: Irish in the 1800s (there is a reason we call them "paddy wagons"), Italians and Jews a hundred years ago, blacks and Latinos more recently.

I believe in the European solution, as welfare in its various forms is cheaper than jails. But such a position swims upstream against the Puritan influence in our society, that not just crime but poverty itself is seen as a moral failing. Many people still think jails are country clubs, yet I visited 28-30 of them professionally and found them all to be miserable places, scattered in isolated areas, a jobs program for our rural population, who might have little in common with their urban guests.

We seemed to have realized that we overdid it the past few decades, then comes our current Attorney General with his mandate to prosecute away. And of course there are guns, making our crimes more life threatening. And we somehow think the death penalty has something to do with crime, when societies that left that crazy liturgy behind have fewer murders.

The wonderful, miserable chaos that is the USA.
 
You won't reduce crime until people change their attitudes and that ain't gonna happen...things will get much worse before they get better...
 
lurchadams said:
Do you think the fact that many prisons now are privatized and that more occupancy = more profit has anything to do with legislative reluctance to ease up on harsher penalties and shorter sentences for non-violent crimes?
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Private prisons take overflow from state facilities. If there was a shortage according to contract, state prisons can simply transfer prisoners thereby relieving overcrowding at the state facility. Given the overcrowding problem, there is no need or motive to create additional prisoners, or maintain unjust sentences, resulting from private contracts.
 
lurchadams said:
Do you think the fact that many prisons now are privatized and that more occupancy = more profit has anything to do with legislative reluctance to ease up on harsher penalties and shorter sentences for non-violent crimes?
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This isn't even true. Of the total jail population of almost 2 million people, less than 150,000 are in private prisons.
 
Harshaw said:
Legalize drugs. End the drug war.
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if you could do only one thing that would be it

we need to try to discourage people who are not competent parents from having more and more children. single parent homes are the single biggest factor of a child ending up a mope.

there are more complex issues-such as the entitlement mentality many criminals have and the anti-education mentality that exists in certain segments of society.
 

two puffs or one?
 
lurchadams said:
Do you think the fact that many prisons now are privatized and that more occupancy = more profit has anything to do with legislative reluctance to ease up on harsher penalties and shorter sentences for non-violent crimes?
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No. It should not. The people that own the prisons are not judges and do not sentence people who break the law.

If anything the private sector will provide whatever we determine is needed to rehabilitate people who do not obey our laws and/or isolate dangerous people from society.
I need government to govern. I need government to raise taxes to pay for what we need. Private industry should provide the goods and services needed by the people.
 

Actually most weed would be grown by a lot of the users. I think instead of subsidizing farming in this country allow farmers to dedicate a certain percentage of their fields to weed. The profit margin on weed would be a cash cow from hell. Even at $100. a pound (wholesale) an acre of land would make a farmer rich. It would easily offset any loses incurred that the government currently subsidizes. Instead of the government subsidizing farmers they could be taxing the profits from weed.
 
Jesse Booth said:
If they stole a couple candy bars, I don't want to pay taxes to feed and house them for the rest of their lives.
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I said FIVE strikes and you're out. That would be five separate occasions of theft. In my scenario this person would have only had five different occasions of theft. In your scenario this person would have had hundreds or thousands of ocasions of theft with most of them being a whole lot more than just candy bars.
 
jobs, more jobs, less poverty, more infrastructure, more retraining in jail, not punishing ex cons with demeaning extra conditions, not giving such long first punishments for starters.
 
Moderate Right said:
If they are career shoplifters they are of no value to society and shouldn't be among us.
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That's a short bus ride to capital punishment. Who makes the judgement that "they shouldn't be among {us}?"
 
lurchadams said:
Do you think the fact that many prisons now are privatized and that more occupancy = more profit has anything to do with legislative reluctance to ease up on harsher penalties and shorter sentences for non-violent crimes?
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Anywhere there is a dollar to be made, there are people figuring out how to maximize the potential, and anywhere dollars are involved greed takes hold.
 

Interesting that you mention the Puritans. My theory on the morality of the US is that when the lights are on, we are the most prim and proper people. Tsk tsking those immoral people who go off the rails, but when the lights go down, Katie bar the door, we are as perverted as everyone else!
 
Rexedgar said:
That's a short bus ride to capital punishment. Who makes the judgement that "they shouldn't be among {us}?"
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Criminals should not be among us. By the way, I am against capital punishment.
 
I remember my parents talking when I was young...they said that the day would come when there would be so many criminals and mentally ill, that we would have to lock up the honest, sane people in order to protect them...at the time I thought "How silly"...now I think that day has come...
 
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