What Is The Point of Criminal Justice?
It’s probably always best to begin with the stuff that isn’t in dispute in cases like these.
On July 1st, there was an altercation in a bodega. There was a declined charge for some food, the woman whose card was declined said that her boyfriend would confront the bodega worker, the boyfriend went behind the counter and confronted the bodega worker, there was a scuffle, the bodega worker stabbed the boyfriend, the boyfriend died.
Then the DA charged the bodega worker with 2nd degree murder. There was a public outcry. The mayor expressed support for the bodega worker. The charges were dropped.
There. I think that that’s all stuff that is not in dispute.
Here’s how the Washington Post tells it:
What we know of the incident comes from surveillance footage and edited clips from inside the bodega, released by local media outlets, as well as the criminal complaint filed against Alba.
According to the complaint, Simon’s girlfriend — whom police have not identified — was inside the Blue Moon Convenient Store in Hamilton Heights around 11 p.m. on July 1 when she tried to pay for a bag of chips for her 10-year-old daughter with an electronic benefits card that was declined. She told police that Alba reached over the counter and took the chips from her daughter’s hand. Footage shows her and Alba arguing before she can be heard shouting threats to bring her boyfriend in and have him hurt Alba.
Simon then walked into the bodega, went behind the counter to confront Alba and “attempted to steer [him] out.” Simon did not appear to have a weapon: According to the complaint, he “was carrying a small white towel in his left hand and his right hand was empty.”
Alba later told the police that Simon “wanted me to come apologize to the girl.” A video shows Simon shoving Alba into a wall inside the bodega. As the two fought, Alba grabbed a knife and stabbed Simon in the neck and chest at least five times, according to the complaint. “Simon fell to the ground, face-down and bleeding,” it said.
“I took the knife we use to open boxes and I stabbed him,” Alba told police.
The police, who reviewed security footage at the scene, said in the complaint that Simon’s girlfriend tried to pull Alba off Simon and “held the defendant’s right arm but the defendant continued to stab [him].” She then took out a knife from her purse and stabbed Alba in the arm, the complaint says.
There are a number of articles from about two weeks ago from CNN and CBS and NBC that show stills or footage from the altercation (CW: stills or footage from the altercation).
There are more recent stories that get into the Mayor’s expression of support for the worker. Stories that talk about the charges being dropped.
Did Fox News or the New York Post have articles about this incident? You betcha! I’m not linking to them, though. They were filled with a lot of, shall we say, editorializing.
But the whole situation of the incident and then the charges being pressed against the bodega worker and then being dropped… well, perhaps that’s the best possible way that this could have gone. When the information was fuzzy and not all of the evidence had rolled in, it made sense to charge the guy for murder. Then, as evidence showed up and gave more context for what was done and said prior to the altercation and during it, enough evidence came in to drop the murder charges.
Or there was a clear case of escalation of an (admittedly unwise) altercation started by one person that resulted in a death and then appropriately had murder charges filed and then the DA backed down following political pressure and public outcry.
But the point of Criminal Justice, you’d think, would be to handle situations like this one and, if we’re lucky, prevent the next one. Or, hey, maybe it’s not.
So I’m looking at this awful situation and stuck wondering what is the point of Criminal Justice?
True that.
And without a justice system everything gets solved by lynch mobs.Report
This video shows what happened the 60 seconds before the stabbing.
https://nypost.com/2022/07/09/nyc-bodega-clerk-jose-alba-tried-to-avoid-confrontation-that-led-to-his-arrest-video/Report
Austin had previously served his sentence for killing a police officer and beating him. Additionally, he has been arrested eight times before, including for robbery, assault, and violence during a domestic quarrel.
https://247newsaroundtheworld.com/crime/did-austin-simon-have-a-criminal-record-and-murder/Report
Let’s be fair, Alba probably didn’t know that. If we shouldn’t be bringing up the violent history of people that police kill (when the officer could not have known that history at the time), it’s only fair.
I think an older man being cornered and battered by a much younger, fitter man, is more than enough disparity of force to warrant violent self defense.
It’s a reasonable person standard. Like how you wouldn’t fault a frail old woman from shooting a young punk who was knocking her around.Report
Real lawyers can way in I guess, but Alba was assaulted by Simon. Simon defended himself. Was his defense VASTLY disproportionate to the criminal act being committed against him? You could argue it was, especially if Simon was on the ground and not defending himself while Alba repeatedly stabbed him. You could also argue not.Report
Not sure about NY but some jurisdictions recognize the doctrine of imperfect self defense:
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Imperfect_self-defenseReport
“But the whole situation of the incident and then the charges being pressed against the bodega worker and then being dropped… well, perhaps that’s the best possible way that this could have gone. When the information was fuzzy and not all of the evidence had rolled in, it made sense to charge the guy for murder. Then, as evidence showed up and gave more context for what was done and said prior to the altercation and during it, enough evidence came in to drop the murder charges.”
Is this what happened though? And, if so, why did it take so long for the evidence — which seems to be the videotape of the incident — take so long to come in?
The outcome of the situation seems to make sense given what is offered here. But the process seems off and I’m left wondering what role the mayor played in it, since — to the best of my knowledge — the mayor doesn’t really have a role in such proceedings. THAT is what I’m curious to learn about.
If the DA genuinely felt like new evidence justified dropping the charges, so be it.
But why was the videotape “new”? Or what other new evidence emerged?Report
He needs to just thank God this was caught on tape.Report
Agreed. Again… seems like the right outcome. But why’d it take that long? It’s not like they had to go on a wild goose chase.Report
But why’d it take that long?
20 days is FREAKING FOREVER on the internet.
But, like, for government work? It’s pretty good. That’s like 15 business days. 14, given that one of them was a Federal Holiday.Report
Did they indict? What does it mean to “press charges?”Report
Okay, fine. I’ll link to the New York Post. From the very first paragraph:
At the very least, he made it to the first bail hearing where he was deemed a flight risk (he apparently had a trip scheduled to the Dominican Republic from a while back… like, scheduled before the alleged stabbing incident).
So I’d say “press charges” means to officially enter the whole court proceedings thing and explain to the judge that the guy should be held at Rikers until he posts bail because there is going to be a trial.Report
I’m not trying to gotcha. I’m trying to understand what actually happened.
If he sat in jail for 20 days while the evidence needed to show he shouldn’t be in jail was sitting there the whole time, someone messed up.
If he sat in jail for 20 days because they had the evidence and thought he belonged in jail and only after public pressure did they reverse course, someone messed up.
If something else happened, maybe no one messed up.
This reminds me of the Ray Rice situation in the NFL. The League had the video tape of him hitting his girlfriend and, based on that, decided on a fairly lenient punishment. That video was then released/leaked and there was massive public outcry. The League then “re-reviewed” the video tape — which they had the whole time — and decided on a harsher punishment.
Maybe the harsher punishment was ultimately right but the process was fished as heck.
It seems like the right decision was finally made but the process seemed fished as heck.Report
Well, here’s the wikipedia page for the DA. I could see someone argue that the DA originally went for what he thought was just but then there was a lot of backlash and so he turned down the heat in order to not get Chesa’ed.Report
Feels like the DA screwed the pooch on this pretty badly. Unless, for some reason, the cops took that long to get the video tape. At which point, they screwed the pooch.Report
Perhaps you are unfamiliar with Rikers Island, but 20 days there is longer than freaking forever.
Your post lacks context. This is the DA that Philip celebrated when he took the job.Bragg sent that infamous memo declaring his intentions to stop prosecuting a variety of serious crimes and despite some backtracking, this case became emblematic of his philosophy. Perhaps these cities will learn to stop electing Soros-backed progressive DAs who end up doing exactly what they say they are going to do. Or, more accurately, NOT do.Report
I can only assume that you think this DA is responsible, or should be responsible, for the attacker being on the street despite his many convictions. I doubt he was in office when any of that went down, so holding him to account for prior actions of other DAs is a really long and unfortunate shot.
As to not doing what he said he would not do – don’t you find it refreshing to see a politician actually keep his word? I do.Report
It seems weird that you can kill a cop and be out on the street while in your 30s.
I’ll second that.Report
Generally I agree, but there’s not enough information here to really tell us why that happened and on whose watch. My Spidey sense says it was a previous DA, so hanging it around this guy’s neck is just dirty pool.Report
All very true.Report
I mean, Bragg wasn’t elected until January 2022, so barring the arrest, trial, conviction, sentence, and release for killing a cop all happening in six months, I think we can all safely assume it wasn’t due to Bragg.Report
“Bragg in March set no bail for and freed an offender with a long rap sheet who was charged with beating a 67-year-old man to death. In the past two months, he has twice released offenders before trial who have gone on to be charged with murder. One was released from jail the day before he struck. In another case, Bragg twice freed a gang member without bail, even though the gang member was charged for a series of stabbings.
The Manhattan district attorney’s office initially requested $500,000 bail for Alba, but a judge struck that down as excessive. The Soros prosecutor dropped it again on Thursday to $50,000 following public outcry over the case, but is retaining a charge for murder.”
Bragg has proven he is more interested in protecting the rights of criminals than he is victims. The people of Manhattan made a gigantic mistake in electing this fool.Report
And an important point: The memo that revealed the extent of Bragg’s radical agenda was issued when he took office, not when he was running for it. I don’t remember any campaign ads with a “if elected I will no longer prosecute many violent crimes” message.Report
Wait, are you _complaining_ that this DA sent someone who was charged but had not yet been convicted of a crime to Riker’s and that was very bad while _at the same time_ complaining that this DA released people who had been charged but not yet been convicted of a crime?
Which is it? Do you want pre-trial detention or not?
“I demand people are tough on crime and stop releasing possible criminals without bail!”
“No, not like that! I wanted that guy out!”Report
I don’t normally read your comments, and this silly response is a prime reason why.
The was the one time Bragg threw the book at someone and goes for an absurdly high bail – and its directed at a law abiding citizen who was defending himself.
So, yes, keep those criminals off the streets and not Mr Alba.Report
The only one who knows is the prosecutor.Report
This article suggests that it took as long as it did because only Alba had a weapon and Simon didn’t. All just speculation of course.
https://www.cbsnews.com/newyork/news/manhattan-das-office-to-dismiss-charges-against-jose-alba-bodega-worker-accused-of-murder/Report
Perhaps an excellent counter-example that we could ask the question about:
From the story:
The alleged robber from the story remains at large. He’s the one that will get charged with the death of young Arlene Alvarez.
So I’m looking at this awful situation and stuck wondering what is the point of Criminal Justice?Report
I will say that bringing the charges were not dropped prior to going to a grand jury.
It was the grand jury that declined to bring charges. Not the DA.Report
I posted this on 10 second news the other day.
I wonder what the DA said to the grand jury that made them return no bill. Must not have been a very good ham sandwich.Report
Many jurisdictions recognize that legitimate self defense may hurt an innocent bystander and the defender should not be held legally responsible.
Once an armed criminal is fleeing, the argument for self defense gets much weaker.
I sincerely hope that the police found evidence that the robber had shot at his victim, otherwise the GJ has just decided to bless some seriously irresponsible behavior.
But then, given how often GJs decline to indict cops for similar piss poor gun handling, I shouldn’t be surprised.Report
“well, perhaps that’s the best possible way that this could have gone”
I think there might be at least one person who would disagree. And me. I also disagree.
To me, this feels and looks like what happens when police (1312!) “interact” with people who are not wypipo.
YMMV.Report
Hey, I put a paragraph after that one.Report
Yet, the paragraph after that one didn’t speculate about “the best possible way this could have gone”. More of a counter-argument, both-sides-ing, from my standpoint. Careful.
It seems that your mileage varied. That’s cool.
Peace.
(though, there’s a discussion!!: The Importance of Ordering and Distribution of Arguments in Arbitrary Systems and the Development of Game Theory as a Stochastic Model in an Understanding of Quantum States. Yep, serious.)Report
I suppose you’re right.
What if the old guy went outside, apologized to the girl, and then gave her the chips? Everybody could have gone home happy, nobody would have gone to Rikers, and we’d have never heard of this story in the first place.
A much better ending.Report
It’s not that WWJD type arguments don’t have merit, it’s the complete dearth of people with standing to make them.Report
WWJD arguments don’t have merit because it’s a power grab disguised as an ethics lesson. J is on all sides of all ethical arguments.Report
Heh that’s non-denominational strip mall Jesus you’re thinking of. And hey, nothing against him, just not where I’m going if I want advice on ethics from people who have read books before.
But none of that is really my point. A person can make a principled ethical argument that Alba should just look the other way on a bag of chips. They could even make such an argument for turning the other cheek in the face of Simon’s totally unjustified aggression. There are major world religions and coherent enough secular philosophies grounded in these kinds of ideas.
My point is simply that if your ethical framework says something like the above but nothing about tantrums over not getting a freebie from an aging merchant, to say nothing of cornering and violently attacking said aging merchant, then no one will or should take you seriously.Report
It’s just another form of Monday morning quarterbacking. Or victim blaming. It’s easy to be critical of Alba when looking in hindsight.Report
The point of criminal justice is to establish boundaries and expectations to our actions so that every encounter with another person is not something out of the Walking Dead. That we as individuals are not the sole arbitrs of our actions, that we are governed by laws.
Whether Alba made the correct call or not, I don’t have a strong opinion either way. So far it looks like maybe he did, maybe not. But the point of criminal justice is that the final verdict is a from a jury, not Alba or Simon’s relatives.Report
Thanks for this, Chip. Human justice is never perfect, but its better when it is public and the result of a process that involves all citizens, and strives to be consistent.Report
True all that. Well said. Fully agreed.Report
Once upon a time, it was an agreed upon principle that self defense had to be proportionate. You could punch a guy back if he punched you, but you couldn’t stab him. And if he started to run away, the fight was over so if you hit him in the back, you were the bad guy.
Not anymore though.Report
The dead guy was 30 years younger and much bigger. The GF had told him she was going to send her n***** in to f*** Alba up. He went behind the counter, corning Alba, and started assaulting him.
What is the logical end point for all that? Is Alba expected to take a beating and just hope it stops at that because he wanted the chips to be paid for?Report
There you go again, putting the value of multiracial white property above black lives.Report
:Amusement:
To be fair, I expect the GF had a lot to do with this. Dead guy wasn’t there for the start, she went back to the car and told him [something] to get him spun up. Odds are [something] wasn’t the truth.
The violence coming Alba’s way probably has little to do with the chips and a lot to do with her being vindictive.Report
Yea, I’d imagine the altercation was more about perceived disrespect to the girlfriend than the bag of chips. I just couldn’t help myself.Report
“multiracial white”
just want to make sure we emphasize that part of your postReport
This is true but you were allowed to use disproportionate force if your life was in danger or if the attack occurred in your own home.Report
Or if it is not physically possible for the defender to use proportionate force.Report
If all the facts were in to begin with why was he charged in the first place, doesn’t seem like alba would be a flight risk, even his Bale amount seemed kind of outrageous. I think they charged this guy for political reasons. And then backed down. Just thinking about the recall election in San Francisco.Report
We need to assume the GF was lying to the cops about who did what and how it started.
Add to that Alba having a preexisting plane ticket to his home country, and “flight risk” seems reasonable. At that point “the system” had made it’s default choices and it gets harder to change it’s mind.Report
So, let me put in my two cents, because I’m someone very opposed to pre-trial detention in general, and especially the system of bail. In my mind, whether or not someone is released should be binary, not ‘if they can afford it’, and should almost entirely be based on ‘Do we think they will show up in court?’.
But here, we have someone who might not show…I’m not sure if ‘already had a ticket home’ really qualifies, but there certainly are such circumstances. So let’s just say this does, that this man is legitimately a flight risk, so even under my position, he should be detained.
This man was, subsequently, sent to Rikers for pretrial detention, which is horrible. Rikers seriously is…I’m not going to get into how horrible it is.
But it’s worth pointing out: It’s horrible for everyone there, and that’s the actual problem. No one deserves it, the point of criminal justice (See, I was going somewhere!) is not to be tortured.
Now, maybe, dear reader, you’re one of the people that thinks that punishment is part of criminal justice. I think you’re wrong, but there’s a rather large flaw there: The punishment that happens at Riker is literally completely random based on things like gangs, and not anything that is actually given out proportionally by the courts.
Assuming our criminal justice system did give out ‘Beaten by other people’ as a punishment, it must give a _consistent_ punishment…how hard, when they hit, how many times…and now I sound like a crazy person because we don’t do ‘sentenced to 20 lashes’ anymore, and, uh, now we’re at the point of admitting that what happens at Rikers cannot be part of any criminal justice system, aren’t we?
Especially since, as we’ve just noticed, because such punishments are extralegal, we are subjecting _people not convicted of a crime_ to them. Oopsie.
This is the indefensible system we have set up.
It is possible to imagine prisons that are functionally small access-controlled apartments. It is possible to imagine prisons where public areas are actually paid attention to and don’t turn into dominance battles between prisoners, instead of such things literally encouraged by guards. Prisons without rape and violence.
And, no, they wouldn’t be more expensive.
We just don’t want to do it. We want brutality.Report
Well, there are two sides to the story. This is where the stuff that is in dispute becomes important.
From the point of view of the customers, she went into the bodega, put a bag of chips into the kid’s hands, went up to pay, and the machine declined the card even though she’s got plenty of funds and he should have run the card again, instead he grabbed the chips out of the kid’s hands like the kid was stealing. She shouldn’t have been disrespected like that and the kid CERTAINLY shouldn’t have been disrespected like that. So she had her boyfriend go in and get the guy and have him apologize to the child. Because the child deserved to be treated like a human being instead of like some jerk who it is okay to grab chips right from their hands. The boyfriend goes in, tries to convince the bodega owner to treat customers like people and then gets stabbed for it. The DA sees how a man looking for an apology for a child got stabbed to death (the bodega guy even said the guy “wanted me to come apologize to the girl”!) and immediately knows “okay, this is an exceptionally disproportionate response to a man who was on the wrong side of the counter when he was asking for an apology for the child.” So he charges the bodega guy with murder. Pretty straightforward.Report
“From the point of view of the customers” presumably means “what the GF told the cops”.
The video tells a sharply different story.
Getting your story out first lets people invest in your version which makes it harder for them to be neutral because they already believe something.Report
Jaybird, I get it now.
You often cover the latest news stories, which are the part of politics and culture that interest me the least. But they’re pivotal in terms of societal trust, which is your big thing. I’m a theoretician by nature, and I’m almost always going to do what my moral code tells me, so things like societal trust mean very little to me directly. But they’re really important for people with other personality types. A case that makes people think is important because it affects how people think.
It took me long enough.Report
Jaybird’s writing style doesn’t help him if this is his real aim, though I suspect he realy, really just likes stirring the pot.Report
At least in some developed democracies, the right to self-defense has been coming under strict review recently. There was a case from sometime during the Blair or immediate post-Blair years in Great Britain where a man was convicted of either manslaughter or murder for shooting two burglars into his own farm. At least in the past, the common law recognized a near absolute right to self-defense in your own property. These days, at least European countries seem skeptical about it.Report
I remember speaking to a Brit about that incident years ago when I was studying in Germany. He was from Manchester and said the (perceived) result was that property crime and low level assault and battery in the UK was basically decriminalized. Just an anecdote obviously but I was not left with the impression that he thought that was a positive thing, or at least that it was not without considerable drawbacks. I only mention this because I think it may be an example of an elite consensus, not a popular one.
Edit to add, based on my recollection of how he described the facts it would not necessarily be self defense in the US either, the point is only that I was not left with the sense that your average person was exactly cheering the result.Report
Many of the differences between Europe and the United States can be described as a result of an imposed elite consensus. The abolishment of the death penalty is nearly always a result of elite consensus rather than bottom up demand. When there is no elite consensus or it is harder for the elites to impose a consensus, you get the death penalty still being on the books. From what I can tell, many European center-left parties have no issues implementing social legislation that are in advance of the atavistic tendencies of the citizenry and doing a certain amount of shaping. The activist set would like this in the United States but for better or worse, it isn’t possible.
The argument for living with low level property crime and assault and battery is that you really don’t want killing to take place even in self-defense. What is some shoplifting compared to life? Therefore, self-defense and especially lethal self-defense should be seen suspiciously to discourage violence.Report
I think that’s right. And if I squint a little I can kind of see the case for it on paper in the context of a real social democracy where people are much more taken care of and the problems with crime are far less acute to begin with. As you note it would never happen here and IMO not just for political reasons but because the ‘on paper’ case is much weaker as well.Report
There is at the same time an elite consensus for the toleration of white collar crime. Or at the very least, a rejection of the use of violence to curb it.
For example, if a person walks into a Walgreens and picks up a can of soda and walks out, can violence be used to apprehend him?
Yes, I’ve seen it done.
If a person walks into my office and picks up a roll of blueprints and walks out refusing to pay, can I use violence to apprehend him?
Almost certainly not.
From what I can see, the only theory explaining this discrepancy is that some crimes are “low crimes” while others are “high crimes”.
“Low crimes” are generally the ones committed by low people, while “high crimes” are generally committed by high people.Report
The term “high crimes” is typically reserved for office-holders.Report
If “you” are the police or even security, the answer is almost certainly yes.
The difference in your impressions comes from how often arrest is resisted.
The police are trusted, sometimes wrongly, to use the amount of violence needed to control the situation. Normally, and ideally, that amount is zero.Report
I think stealing physical blue prints and not paying for them would be treated as something you can apprehend somebody over. At least if the perpetrator was of lower social status than the architect.Report
It strikes me as something that could be taken before, for example, Judge Judy.Report
And besides, I live in a crime free neighborhood and have a job that doesn’t expose me to this sort of risk. I am therefore able to be morally smug while other people will need to live with beaten up or whatever.Report
Stalinist Russia had some situations that were similar. Solzhenitsyn got into a few of them in the Gulag Archipelago:
Report
In law school, I was taught that criminal justice has multiple aims:
1. Deterrence — both general (meaning to prevent other people from committing crimes in the future) and specific (meaning to prevent someone who has already committed one crime from doing it again).
2. Retribution — punishment, in some semblance of a proportionate way, someone who has done harm, as an inherent part of rendering justice.
3. Rehabilitation — to help someone who feels impelled to commit a crime from succumbing to that impulse again (in a sense, that’s partially specific deterrence).
4. Stability — partially for what boils down to what Chip said above, which I agree with wholeheartedly, and partially to assert that the state holds a monopoly on the use of force and individuals who would usurp that monopoly do not do so successfully or at least so that their use of force is de-legitimated.
#4 was not taught in my criminal law class, although we covered #1-#3 before moving on to address other preliminary concepts like mens rea and actus reus. #4 was taught in the Critical Legal Theory phase of my Philosophy of Jurisprudence class. We then proceeded to spend a lot of time talking about the Talonic Law, reciprocity, retributive justice, and whether those concepts hold up in a world where human beings behave deterministically rather than if they possess what we normally label “free will.”Report
Yeah, just last month, I wrote this:
Now, one thing that keeps showing up is the whole backlash against vigilantism. Like, vigilantism makes the established players look bad.
Now, I’m not talking about stuff like Batman. I’m talking about stuff like Angeli Gomez in Uvalde. She wanted to go into the school and confront the gunman and the cops arrested her. (Notably, they arrested her instead of confronting the gunman.)
Since then, she has complained about the cops harassing her.
I’m willing to take her at her word here.
So I’m wondering “what in the world would possess the cops to freaking do that? Like, *DAYS* after their monumental and catastrophic failure?!?!?”
Well, if you look at it from the perspective of the established players, she’s someone who is making a bad situation (them looking bad) worse. She’s complaining to the press, the press is amplifying her complaints, and, get this, the civilians out there think that *SHE* is more sympathetic than the COPS! THE COPS WHO PUT THEIR LIVES ON THE LINE EVERY DAY!!!!!
And so, therefore, she needs to be pushed back against. Because she’s acting as a vigilante against the established players.Report
Stability is a bit beyond that though because it also goes hand in hand with order. Though deterrence plays a role here. My wife just showed me an article about thieves targeting people who wear expenses watches and robbing them at gunpoint. This is happening in well to do Bay Area suburbs like Danville. My wife’s comment was this was a sign of a Bay Area “in decline.”
When we have debated crime before, LeeEsq wondered whether the Anglo-world left has a somewhat higher level of tolerance for disorder than other parts of the world. I do not know if I would go that far but people generally do not like seeing stories about these things. Crime is a complicated thing and the story highlighted by Jaybird has a lot of issues with racial and economic equality. In short, a perfect tempest.Report
The Anglophone left, especially in the Untied States but also elsewhere, is trying to deal with the issue of how to create a social democratic society in a low social trust environment as Jaybird. The answer that was seemingly adopted was that the comfortable, privileged, or whatever need to support the right policies while also ignoring certain amounts of low to medium level disorder for whatever reason. Mainly because they see that a lot of this disorder stems from past injustices, and they aren’t wrong about this, and shouldn’t receive a crack down because of that.Report
This speaks more to where their heads are at than objective reality.
On some level everything comes from everything. Ergo it’s possible to pick some factor, any factor, and draw a line from it generations ago to outcomes now.
But that’s using “one drop” logic and assumes all causes are equal. In reality parents have way more influence (good and bad) on their kids than other factors.
Not all kids are equal, not all situations are equally fixable. At the end of the day me fixing my kid’s mental illness by getting her diagnosed and treated will have a massive impact on her life while her crazy great-grandmother’s adventures will not.
The amount of money needed to do this was effectively zero, it was an issue of investing my time, attention, judgement, and pushing for it.Report
From google, this appears to be a template New York jury instruction for second degree murder: https://www.nycourts.gov/judges/cji/2-PenalLaw/125/125-25%281%29.pdf
“INTENT means conscious objective or purpose.2 Thus, a
person acts with intent to cause the death of another when that
person’s conscious objective or purpose is to cause the death
of another.”
Did the clerk meet this standard of intent? I find it plausible. This was a dispute over a bag of chips. Was the decedent overly aggressive with the clerk? Maybe? Was it enough aggression to justify a self-defense reaction of stabbing a guy five times in the neck with a box cutter? It doesn’t seem that way based on the description. Also left out of the analysis here is the racial angle.Report
Did you want the video? The description doesn’t match the video.Report
A native New Yorker attacked an Immigrant from the Dominican Republic. The Dominican defended himself against the Native New Yorker.
I didn’t think that that particular analysis would lead anywhere interesting.Report
Vigilante justice should not be encourage.Report
The best way to do that is to have the police actually go into the classroom instead of waiting outside of it for an hour while children are being shot.Report
To be significantly less snarky but no less pointed:
If the authorities in law enforcement have lost much of their moral authority, they’re just bullies with badges that everybody knows that you cannot rely upon.
Some might disagree that the authorities have lost much of their moral authority.
I am not among them.
Are you?
If you also are not… we’re in a “now what?” situation. Because I cannot think of anything that encourages vigilante justice more than the loss of moral authority on the part of law enforcement.Report
If the police are bullies with badges who have no moral authority, does that hold true for the political and business establishment which puts them into power?
There is a significant body of political theorizing which holds that shopkeepers are a legitimate target for looting and destruction based on their shared complicity in creating the bullies with badges.
But there is another body of thought which holds that private vigilantism is just authoritarianism of its own kind and that the moral failures of those in power is really just a flimsy pretext used by those who really just want to be the bullies themselves.Report
“There is a significant body of political theorizing which holds that shopkeepers are a legitimate target for looting and destruction based on their shared complicity in creating the bullies with badges.”
I think this is bullshit too to be honest. This is not good political theorizing and it makes it hard for serious discussions on the social causes of crime to take place. I really don’t get the “it afflicts the comfortable” school of thought among a certain kind of activist. The comfortable are rarely afflicted, it is often those only a few rungs up the ladder that get victimized and harassed.
“But there is another body of thought which holds that private vigilantism is just authoritarianism of its own kind and that the moral failures of those in power is really just a flimsy pretext used by those who really just want to be the bullies themselves.”
This I agree with.Report
Yes it is bullsh!t.
Because the shopkeepers just become the stand-in for [insert hated Outgroup here].
But its also why the cheerleading for the destruction of institutions is so dangerous because it becomes like a cancer, spreading to take down everything, and leaving only the power of fear and violence.
Its why revolutions so frequently go off the rails and end up worse than the previous regime.
So although I’m sharply critical of most American police forces for all the usual reasons, I’m getting off the “Lets hate on cops” bus.
Because what I notice is that hating on cops is NOT the same as police reform, and more specifically, when “hating on cops” is added to “Lets all carry guns around because you can trust no one but yourself” it become a form of authoritarianism.
Like that line in the Mel Gibson movie, “Why should i exchange one dictator three thousand miles away, for three thousand dictators one mile away?”Report
Oscar wrote a lovely little essay two years ago called “Altering the Police Paradigm“.
It’s got some good stuff in there.Report
I think “hating on cops” is, for many, a response to the feeling of helplessness when it comes to reform.
Since cops are so dead set against any meaningful change to their profession, they are the problem.Report
So is looting a Walgreens.
Which illustrates the difference between say, the Boogaloo types and police reformists.
Police reform involves a strong administrative state and network of societal trust where marginalized people are accepted and protected, and violence recedes as a tool of order.
The radical attack on the administrative state and the social network of trust by the Trumpists strips away the rule of law and leaves only the rule of the gun.Report
I’m not seeing Trumpets being the ones hating on cops. If anything, they want to be cops, or auxiliaries, so they can shoot some “bad guys”.
And frankly, looting isn’t a response to helplessness, it’s simply taking advantage of the chaos caused by those feelings of helplessness in others, to engage in some blatant thievery.
This is one area where I feel progressives come off the rails. I can see protests, and violence, as a response to helplessness. But linking looting to that because of the shopkeeper class is just putting lipstick on a pig.
If looting was really about getting their due, they wouldn’t be hitting small business in the middle of a riot, they’d be cleaning out banks. But they don’t, they target the businesses least able to secure themselves, and least able to go after them, and least able to absorb the losses.
Then they complain about how nobody wants to run a business in their neighborhood.Report
Reactionaries hate on any police agency which isn’t under their direct control.
The Trumpists beating the Capitol police are one example, the Bundy supporters aiming their guns at federal agents are another, the Boogaloo boys murdering police are another, and the current plans to purge the FBI and law enforcement of anyone not loyal to Republicans is another variant of hating on the police.
The similarities between looters and Trumpists is as you say, taking advantage of chaos they themselves create.
Like that guy in the NYT article I linked below, the reactionary rightists hate the modern administrative state since it protects the cultural Outgroup which they hate.
So they eagerly hope for the societal collapse they constantly talk about, since they are convinced they will be the lords of the wasteland.Report
Why does police reform require a strong administrative state and high trust?Report
Consider for example, citizen review boards that have the power to discipline or fire officers.
This requires first, enabling legislation approved by a citizenry that trusts itself to do so.
As opposed to frightened panicked sheep stampeded by the snapping dogs of OUTTACONTROL CRIME, who crave the reassuring hand of a strongman who will make the rabble obey.
Second, the creation and administration of the board requires well, an administration with delegated powers. An administration that is independent and not the organ of some political faction.
Next, the review board requires members who the public trust to be fair and protective of citizens rights particularly those citizens who are not popular.
And ultimately these factors, if met, construct a society that enjoys ordered liberty.
Police reform isn’t a void, a removal of this or destruction of that. It is a constructed thing that has many prerequisites.Report
Does one of these exist, like, anywhere?
Can you point to how Portland has a citizen review board?Report
This is the perfect.
Good would be Chicago deciding to save 50m a year in police abuse lawsuits by firing it’s 50 worse/most-brutal cops.
Then of course it needs the data to figure it who is the worst, and it needs to break the union to fire anyone.Report
Firing and replacing with….what?
Police abuse, like police professionalism, is an outcome downstream of a long series of cultural and normative choices made by the citizens.
It doesn’t just happen.Report
Surely San Francisco had something like this happen! LA, maybe. There *MUST* be a city that set up something this progressive!Report
This is claiming that there’s no difference between the cops who get a dozen civilian complaints every year on inappropriate use of force and the ones who get none.
That’s there’s no possible improvement other than total utopian full reform.
If memory serves, years ago I read an article describing just how bad the bottom of the barrel of Chicago’s police are, i.e. that the bottom one percent are responsible for the bulk of the multi-million dollar judgements the city repeatedly gets and how they’re all repeat offenders.
Some reform, even just firing the bottom 1%, would be less good than perfect but still a vastly good thing.
And the machinery needed to fire the bottom 1% could then be used for other reforms.Report
“X is an outcome downstream of a long series of cultural and normative choices made by the citizens” is one of those bland statements which should be implicit in almost any discussion about politics.
This is because pretty much everything about the structure of our society is. Our social and cultural norms shape our politics and are constantly evolving and shifting no matter what we do.
Cultural norms that we just take for granted today would have been shocking 50 years ago and vice versa.
So things like civilian review boards or breaking police unions or just transferring public funds into unarmed neighborhood security teams are all impossible, until the day people decide that they are indeed possible.Report
Report
Well he’s absolutely right. Democrats need to take the lead in police reform and alternative means of protecting the public safety.
Apparently some Democrats are listening:
Karen Bass, Democratic candidate for Los Angeles mayor, proposes a series of community based alternative measures for public safety.
Rick Caruso, Republican candidate for Los Angeles mayor, wants to hire 1500 more cops.
Oh, and look here:
Los Angeles Mayoral Race: Karen Bass Widens Lead Over Rick Caruso
https://deadline.com/2022/06/rick-caruso-karen-bass-runoff-los-angeles-mayor-sheriff-alex-villanueva-robert-luna-1235040233/Report
Tell her that she needs to set up citizen review boards that have the power to discipline or fire officers.Report
I don’t need to.
Once she is mayor, Karen Bass will hear from newly elected Democratic Councilwoman Eunisses Hernandez, whose platform is filled with excellent ideas about police reform including:
Expand civilian oversight of the LAPD, hold officers accountable for their crimes against the community, and shift financial responsibility to police departments for the harm they cause. Right now, the financial burden of these lawsuit payouts fall on the local taxpayers. In 2021, the LA Times estimated that we paid over $245 million to resolve legal claims involving LAPD over the last five and a half years.Report
Now we just need to see it happen.
And see if a single police officer is disciplined or fired.Report
Betcha a donut the bulk of those involved an officer with a history of behaving badly.
I’m not opposed, but how would this happen mechanically?Report
Well, this is going to be the first time since 1993 that the Democrats will be holding this office in Los Angeles when Richard Riordan won it. This is finally the Democratic opportunity to institute reforms.
That’s why this next election is the exciting one, as opposed to the ones in 2001, 2005, or 2013 which were also presumably won by Republicans.Report
If we’re talking about Mayor, then Team Blue has held the office in 13 of the last 15 terms. All but 8 years since 1961.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mayor_of_Los_Angeles#List_of_mayors_of_Los_AngelesReport
In California there isn’t really any such animal as “Team Blue” unless you’re talking about the Dodgers.
Rick Caruso is in fact a Democrat (he was always a Republican but recently changed parties). But he speaks like a Republican and can be considered one of the older Pre-Trump types.
And there are plenty like that littering the Democratic field all up and down the state.
The last few mayors- Garcetti, Villaraigosa, Hahn were all Democrats, but very modest centrists.
As the Republican Party here withered down to its bitter Bircher core after the 1990s fiasco, all the reasonable and sane Main Street types gravitated over to the Democratic Party.
So depending on the precinct, a Democrat might be more like AOC or more like Obama.
This is exactly why the Democrats have a stranglehold on politics here- they really aren’t all that liberal and neither is the voting base. But they keep the trash picked up and the electricity on.Report
Well, I’m going to go back to noticing that the democrats have controlled the cities where this has been going on and, in California, unopposed for the most part.
Maybe this mayor will be different. She says she’s going to be different!Report
What’s her relationship with the union?
If it’s not “nightmare bad”, then she ran on getting it done without actually getting the tools to get it done.Report
What, exactly, does “shift financial responsibility to police departments” mean? Last I checked, police departments are funded with taxpayer dollars.
This is where QI being reined in would go a long way to curbing bad behavior. If I thought abusing my power might result in financial ruin, you better believe I’d think twice about abusing it.Report
Union opposition to police reform is a constant force in the background akin to gravity.
We’ll know someone’s overcome gravity when they can fly, not when they claim they intend to.
A really good to measure progress on this is how many cops are fired without the media’s spotlight.Report
It’s a question of how much that bottom 1% or 5% drive the negative culture. If they are merely a product of the culture, and simply the worst, then removing them doesn’t do much, since the culture persists.
If, however, that bottom percentage drive the culture because they are connected enough, and know where enough metaphorical bodies are buried, then clearing them out could have a positive effect.
I think it would be a great experiment to try, I just wouldn’t promise anything.Report
I expect giving [someone] the ability to get rid of the bottom would shift culture by itself.Report
Why is the comment genie objecting to the word bullshit?Report
who have no moral authority
I actually wrote something else. Read it again, carefully, and compare it to your paraphrase of it.
But I’ll pretend that I wrote what you’re objecting to and say “not only that, but the people who argue that we need to keep police unions are part of that too.”
Now you can explain how, no, people who care about maintaining strong police unions are *NOT* part of the problem. Just the people who still support the police WHO NEED TO BE FIRED are.Report
The entire thing is an example of cooler heads not prevailing. The store owner shouldn’t have been in jerk after the first EAC failure. The boyfriend shouldn’t have confronted the store owner over a bag of chips because his manly bravado got the better of him. The store owner didn’t need to stab to death with a knife but I can see how the age and height difference could induce a panicked over-reaction. This is why other developed democracies tend to criminalize more of this sort of behavior than the United States. The entire point is not to let passions flare by setting a strong detrimental consequences to overreacting.Report
You are assuming it’s an over-reaction.
If you had an angry man the size of The Rock pushing you into a corner, what would constitute an over-reaction on your part? When would it not be?
You have to put your self in his shoes, not look at it from your own.Report
I know what the lessons from my father, based on his Shore Patrol experience, would dictate: injure and/or cripple, as quickly as possible. I was the new-kid skinny nerd target in a new high school when I was 16. All of that stopped when the first fight I couldn’t talk my way out of ended before it “officially” started, with the big guy on the ground and me standing.Report
Being older and with a dodgy knee, I won’t think twice about giving an assailant the gift of orthopedics reconstruction, despite the fact that I am a big guy. I’m not a person who can engage in an extended bout of fisticuffs just to satisfy the sensibilities of the local DA.Report
I would probably end up doing the same. That being said, I’m a bit more reluctant to embrace broad self-defense laws than other people on this blog. I do see something of the argument against a broad right to self-defense in theory.Report
I think first we need to decide what constitutes “broad”.
The guy shooting at the fleeing robber, that might be too broad (depending on the details).
What Alba did, not so much.5 quick successive jabs is not overkill, unless someone finds evidence that Mr. Alba used to frequent the Continental and has a stash of curious gold coins.Report
we should try to discourage murder in self-defense or “self-defense” as much as possible. A duty to flee standard is better than a stand your ground standard.Report
I agree there should be a duty to retreat. But that’s really why I don’t see an issue here. Simon had Alba cornered behind the counter. This seems pretty straightforward under the old common law approach at least.Report
I don’t have a problem with a duty to retreat in public (it’s a lot more difficult in a home or other building, since exits may be limited).
I do have a problem with insisting on that duty after a round of Monday morning quarterbacking with improved situational information.
That kind of thinking absolutely ignores everything we know about what happens to higher cognitive functions when a person is in fear for their lives.Report
Generally a duty to retreat is qualified by something like if it is reasonably safe to do so. That plus castle doctrine has always struck me as the right balance. Basically you have to be an adult and walk away if you can but if someone corners you or comes into your home you’re allowed to defend yourself. Any other idea I’ve ever heard strikes me as crazy or unworkable.Report
It has to be reasonably safe to do from the POV of the defender at the time. Telling a person they could have retreated via X is only valid if the person knew X was a potential path of retreat.Report
It is unclear if either of those things actually happened.
Anyone who uses credit cards has had them fail mysteriously. Ergo the clerk deals with this problem on an hourly basis. Reswiping a card should be seriously old news for him.
GF has promised her kid chips and doesn’t want to be embarrassed that her card is dead. She tries to drama her way into getting free chips. When that fails she tries more drama and threats. She goes outside and blames the clerk. She makes it an issue of respect and whatever as a distraction from the problem that she’s messed up.
BF is reacting to whatever she told him and not “a bag of chips”.Report
Another wacky incident.
Lee Zeldin, Republican candidate for Governor of New York, was attacked while on stage in Monroe County.
The alleged attacker, David Jakubonis, was subdued by the crowd and law enforcement showed up shortly thereafter.
Jakubonis has since been released on his own recognizance. (That means “without bail”.)Report
An astonishing and sad story in the NYT:
He Built a Home to Survive a Civil War. Tragedy Found Him Anyway.
https://www.nytimes.com/2022/07/21/us/kentucky-bunker-civil-war.html?referringSource=articleShare
The guy builds a home with a massive bunker beneath, to protect him from societal collapse:
“My feelings were that we were going to have civil unrest because there was so much going on with Obama,” Mr. Morgan said. He believed that people were going to rise up against the attempts to overhaul health care and restrict guns, and that societal collapse would soon follow. He envisioned “roving bands of gangs” hunting for food and necessities in the aftermath. He bought riot gear, bulletproof vests and a small arsenal of firearms, so that “if you had to engage a band of marauders, you would have a chance to save your family.”
He entered politics, and tangled with local pols. Got disenchanted and decided to sell the house and bunker. The Zillow ad (not surprisingly) went viral.
A mentally unstable man noticed the bunker and launched a midnight attack on the home in a bizarre plot to take the bunker for himself, because you see, he also was convinced of an impending society collapse. In his attack he murdered the man’s daughter and wounded the father.
Now the man lives in a motorhome, wandering with no fixed address. Just like someone in a post-apocalyptic movie, wandering, unmoored from society, detached from family and community and any sense of connection, with only his nightmares to keep him company, endlessly turning over the attack in his mind.
The prospect of a social safety net to help people with medical needs was so hateful and terrifying to him, that he spun a bizarre fantasy in his mind, no different than the mentally ill man that ended up taking it all away from him.
We live in a time of madness. We can choose to weave the threads of community and solidarity, but instead choose isolation and detachment. We can choose to embrace and accept each other in a multicultural community, but instead choose fear and paranoia and ultimately self-destructive hate.Report
Chip, we have a thread devoted to the ten second news links we’ve overlooked. It’s called “Extra! Extra! The Ten Second News Links We’ve Overlooked!”
Just post whatever Ten Second News links that we’ve overlooked in that post. Thanks.Report
I thought it was highly relevant to this post, and comment thread.Report
Well, knock yourself out.
Here’s an article about years of alleged misconduct in Alzheimer’s research.Report
I think it is relevant.Report
The man was probably pretty fragile from a stability and safety standpoint to begin with, evidenced by his fear of social collapse and the building of a bunker. Then his daughter was murdered, precisely because someone wanted the safety he’d built for himself.
“Just like someone in a post-apocalyptic movie…” That was an apocalypse for him. His world really did end. Heartbreaking.Report
The point of criminal justice:
Hawaii has no girls in juvenile detention. Here’s how it got there.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/nation/2022/07/25/hawaii-zero-girls-youth-correctional-facility/
The Tl;Dr is that the state og Hawaii has undertaken a long and difficult process of shifting the focus of youth crime from imprisonment to alternative treatment.
When Mark Patterson took over as administrator of the Hawaii Youth Correctional Facility in 2014, he inherited 500 acres of farm ranch — and the care of 26 boys and seven girls between 13 and 19 years old.
By 2016, his facility, in Kailua, Oahu, was only holding between five and six girls at a time. And in June, the last girl left the facility.
For the first time, there are no girls incarcerated in the state of Hawaii.
Patterson said this moment is “20 years in the making,” and the result of a systemwide effort to divert girls from the judicial system and into trauma-based care programs. The number of incarcerated boys has also lowered significantly in the past decade, he added.
…
Patterson said the movement to replace punitive systems with trauma-informed care in Hawaii’s juvenile justice system reaches back to 2004, when Judge Karen Radius, a now-retired First Circuit Family Court judge, founded Girls Court. One of the first in the nation, the program aimed to address the specific crimes and trauma history of girls.
Many influential programs in the state followed the formation of Girls Court. In 2009, Project Kealahou launched as a six-year, federally funded program aimed at improving services for Hawaii’s at-risk female youth. And in 2013, Hawaii created the Juvenile Justice Reform Task Force to analyze the juvenile justice system in Hawaii and provide policy recommendations aimed at reducing the HYCF population.
Then, in 2018, Patterson partnered with the Initiative to End Girls’ Incarceration and drafted a “10-year strategy to get to zero.” The overarching goal was to focus on the underlying trauma the youth were suffering from, instead of the crimes they were charged with, Patterson said.
It wasn’t quick, there wasn’t some One Weird Trick. It took decades of patient work and coalition building, persuasion and compromise with all the stakeholders and interest groups associated to make things happen.Report
Hawaii is a rich, very remote, not very diverse city. Hawaii has a population of 1.5 million people. They’re median household income is $83,200. Getting buy in from all stakeholders and interest groups is MUCH easier for them than it is anywhere else because they’re fewer and smaller.
If the big lesson is we need to be less diverse, smaller, richer and good policy is easier if you don’t have to deal with various self destructive sub-cultures, then I’m not sure where this takes us.
Having said that, I’m in favor of decriminalization of prostitution, identification of at risk children, and so on, but Hawaii is it’s own thing.Report
Hey, at least it’s an example of something that actually happened rather than “Look at this politician’s campaign promises!”Report
True. And more power for them for having done it, and Chip for having pointed it out. He’s right in it’s a solid win.Report
According to the census diversity index (likelihood 2 random people will be of different race and ethnic groups) Hawaii is on the high end of the U.S. scale. https://www.census.gov/library/visualizations/2021/dec/racial-and-ethnic-diversity-index.html
I imagine the median income is driven by things just being more expensive to to having to import everything.
It seems that what Hawaii had in abundance was political will to tackle the problem.Report
Which doesn’t change that they’re missing the sub-groups that have scary high level crime rates and other cultural disfunctions. They never had slavery so they don’t have the legacy of slavery.Report
Interesting observation from someone who routinely reminds us that that legacy is allegedly overblown in its impacts on current status . . . .Report
I’m using it as the popular phrase.
I still think it blindly obvious that what I do to/for my children has WAY more affect on them than my dead grandparents.
More importantly, what to do about other peoples’ dysfunctional culture(s) remains an unsolved problem. At first glance this could have been Hawaii solving that, but as it turns out they didn’t have that issue.
With that population and income, Hawaii is basically a rich suburb.
Me proclaiming that my rich suburb has “solved” various problems wouldn’t attract attention because the answers wouldn’t transfer well onto the inner city.Report
Only if you persist in ignoring the pernicious systems set up to control someone’s dead grandparents – systems which still exist, and which still constrain actions in many socio-economic and cultural groups because those systems constrain resources.
Not at all – https://www.civilbeat.org/2018/03/racial-inequality-in-hawaii-is-a-lot-worse-than-you-think/#:~:text=But%20by%20far%2C%20Hawaii's%20poorest,6.6%20percent%20for%20Japanese%20residents.Report
What do you mean?
RE: Your link
This is increasing the magnifying glass’ resolution to find inequality because that has to be there somewhere. Historically, yes, new immigrants are poorer than average. Their children will be fine.
If we’re talking about multi-generational poverty and fixing cultural disfunctions, then “inequality of new immigrants” isn’t on the menu.Report
When we start talking about inequality in groups that I’ve never heard of, the next question should have been “how many people are we talking about”?
For Tongan: 8,496 people (0.6% of Hawaii)
For Marshallese : 7,400
This seems a lot like answer shopping. Slice the data lots of ways until you get what you want.Report
“Answer shopping”.
Yeah lotta that going on.
You know that Hawii has had a long history of “other people’s dysfunctional cultures”, right?
That the white colonists viewed them as lazy and dysfunctional and unsuited for the modern world of industry and commerce. Which is why so many natives ended up landless and poor?
What you’re doing here is grasping at straws to find the answer you want, that “Nothing can be done”.
All the problems you point to in Mainland are present in Hawaii. And if you read the article you’ll notice it cites similar programs in Vermont and Maine.
Are we now going to hear the excuse of “Well, sure, but they have abundant reserves of maple syrup so of course it is possible there!”Report
$80k says otherwise.
If they can get it to work, then you’ll have proven $60k also works. That would be good.
Now both of them are also lacking some groups so there’s that. What you want is inner city Chicago.
When data shows I’m wrong I admit it and change my opinion.
I’m all in favor of these various social experiments being run at a state level.
However I seriously doubt that what works in a well off or even rich sub-urb (all 3 states qualify) will work with large numbers of people with dysfunctional cultures.
What to do about large groups of people making bad choices is a thing.Report
The Hawaiian delinquents they worked with, how were they any different any delinquent youths in Chicago?
How hard would it be to find essays and op eds from a decade ago in Hawaii predicting that this couldn’t work because these kids were just no good?Report
Your own link says they don’t think they’re going to be able to help all the males because some are guilty of things like murder.
I take Hawaii’s murder rate times it’s population and I get 35 people murdered per year.
In Chicago that’s a normal weekend. Part of that is Chicago is much bigger than Hawaii, but most of it is Chicago is way more violent.
So the number of at risk kids is going to be MUCH higher, both in absolute numbers and as a percentage. That means that the amount of resources per kid, even if you wanted to do the same thing, will be much lower.
Dealing with outliers is pretty easy. Dealing with an entire generation of youth who have cultural support for things like murder is MUCH harder.
Culture does a LOT of heavy lifting for this sort of thing. That’s where the kid my brother was dealing with who was going to kill his GF’s friend gets it from.
Hawaii apparently doesn’t have cultural support for that sort of thing. So they have to deal with dozens or in the low hundreds of problem youth. Chicago has tens(?) of thousands.
This brings me back to us not really knowing what to do about dysfunctional cultures.Report
Scale matters, a lot. Think of education and classrooms.
It’s the difference between having one disruptive kid with problems in the classroom and having 20 of them.
Pointing to the 20 and asking if they’re different from the rich suburb’s one doesn’t lead to solutions. With 20 kids there are serious network effects. Their problems will feed on each other…
…and I will be changing my actions too.
With one I can hope that he gets the help he needs and my kid won’t need to deal with him next year (or he’ll be better). With 20, I need to find a different school. So everyone like me flees and the problem as a percentage gets worse which causes others to flee.Report
Getting cooperation from rich people is…easier? Than what, getting cooperation from lower income households?
This is not supported by any evidence whatsoever. Has anyone ever experienced this, that upper middle class people are just so easy to herd and get consensus with? Aren’t they just as difficult and quarrelsome and contrarian as anyone else? Aren’t their vested interests and biases and preferences just as strongly held as anyone else?
This just sounds just like “Any excuse as to why it Can’t Happen Here”.Report
Cooperation isn’t the issue.
Various problems are strongly associated with poverty. Ergo income in a large group is a measurement of how prevalent various problems are.
Average income is also a measurement on what kind of resources are available to fight a problem.
So in an area whose average income is zero…
The number of at risk children will be extremely high, maybe 100%.
The level of resources available to deal with that will be very low.
So in an area whose average income is extremely high…
The number of at risk children will be extremely low.
The level of resources available to deal with that will be very high.
Now that’s income. Boarders is also pretty big in that the gov of Hawaii can have “free” handouts without needing to worry much about needy people from other areas walking over the boarder to claim them.Report
Isn’t this just a variant of the “Poverty causes crime” theory?
“Strongly associated” is working overtime here to the point of collapse.
It’s true that affluent communities have more resources, but equally true that they are often reluctant to expend them on a socially undesirable class.
In this case, the troubled Hawaiians were exactly that. They were delinquent, gay or trans, from lower income and status homes.
The sort if kids that affluent states like California and Texas could afford to treat.
But as election returns prove, “Lock ’em up!” Is politically popular even among ostensibly liberal venues. Spending vast sums on police and prisons is popular and very difficult to beat at the ballot box.
In the previous article I linked, about West Hollywood diverting some funds from hiring armed Sheriff deputies, to unarmed ambassadors, there was a passage about the fierce criticism of that decision where peopled mocked “Help I’m being mugged send an ambassador!”
That’s potent stuff and reflects an unwillingness to explore alternative means of enforcing order.
But at the end of the day, it is Hawaii that is spending less and getting more safety.Report
More like crime causes poverty. Or culture causes both poverty and crime.
Sure, this is my point. It’s easy to handle a kid who is gay and kicked out of his house. Throw some resources at it and it’s solved.
The harder kid to handle is the one my brother was mentoring. His GF cheated on him and he decided the way to handle it was to shoot her new BF. Respect or something I guess.
Hawaii mostly doesn’t have kids from that sub-culture.
Dealing with gay kids who are homeless + struggling with their sexuality is a different problem than dealing with kids who shoot their romantic rivals because of respect.
Hawaii found a solution for the former but not the later.Report
I understand you probably meant that as a rhetorical question, but I’m going to give you the real answer.
In the early 1830s, Philadelphia became the first city in the United States to hire day watchmen as well as night watchmen. Two years later, in response to race riots (which, in this instance, means “an influx of Irish immigrants”), the City of boston inaugurated what is generally-accepted as the nation’s first modern police department. Since that time, there have been four predominant models of policing in the US: The political model, the professional model, the community policing model, and the intelligence-led policing model.
Now, all of that is something I learned in a 200-level class. I have over 40 hrs at the 500 level. So, please, bear with me. I’m going to be referring back to this.
The purpose of the criminal justice system is to reduce recidivism.
I’m not happy about it, but I’m one of the naysayers.
Some interesting things occurred around the same time. One was the move from the community policing model to intelligence-led policing. Relationships within the community ceased to be important, because the police had developed a better set of lockpicks. That was around 2000.
Shortly before that, a great many psychologists and sociologists began to enter the field of criminal justice, and they brought new methods with them. They breathed new life into the field, and the change was pretty much complete by 2006. One of the changes they brought was concern for the “revolving door” of the criminal justice system.
But 2006 is pretty much the dividing line for the literature. Everything before then is questionable. The exceptions would be some materials on corrections and gangs.
I might have left something out in my explanation. I was thinking there were three things, but the third slips my mind at the moment.
Anyway, from 2006 through 2014, reducing recidivism became the primary focus of the criminal justice system. This entails focusing on the high-risk offenders (i.e., drug offenders) and reducing recidivism among this group, while undertaking policies designed to ensure near-maximum recidivism of medium- and low-risk offenders. This has given rise to a cottage industry of treatments offered by drug courts across the nation, many of which are questionable in their execution; in fact, the peer-reviewed literature shows that “judicial familiarity with the personal circumstances of the offender” was the primary factor in reducing the amount of time that drug court graduates were incarcerated– but I’ll save that for another day.Report
PS: The third thing was the public health model of corrections, but that is indicated in the timeframe given.
Succinctly, the public health model began to gain traction around 1998, but it wasn’t until around 2006 that it really became popular. By 2014, the change was complete.
The public health model is grounded on the idea that crime is a disease that can be cured. Although there is a lot of support for that, it simply isn’t true in all cases.
But writing all of that out, the amazing thing that stands out to me is that a major sea change occurred in the field of criminal justice within the last 25 years, and it all seems to have happened under the radar.
These days, it’s all about getting the drug offender arrested six times, rather than nine times, within the first year after they are released. That’s what criminal justice is all about.Report
Minor update:
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