I got a degree in criminology about 25 years ago and can confirm that there was no dispute in the science at that time that this was the way to reduce crime.

Everything else had been tried and tried again and proven not to work. It was around that time that my (then) field realized that the DARE program increased drug use.

It was almost 25 years after the St. Louis (maybe wrong city, it’s been a while) Crime and Control study proved that flooding the streets with more police officers only pushed crime into other neighborhoods.

When I studied, it was almost a joke to read new research coming out, because every serious study was just confirming what everyone knew. Guest lecturers would come in to talk about their latest theories in criminology. and, it was basically everyone just sitting around saying oh yeah that’s obvious. The field has peaked, and it was up to society then to catch up.

We looked at three strike’s laws, truth and sentencing laws, asset forfeiture laws, mandatory minimums, and every time we found that these policies increase violent crime. They further fracture communities and destroy families at the generational level.

It may not be intuitive to think that, but would a little thought, a little reflection, it is hard to say that this would not be the obvious result.

The methods to reducing and ending recidivism have been well known to science. People who talk about harsh law enforcement and punitive corrections are either ignorant, emotional blowhards, or not serious about reducing crime.

We have in America a well-established cat and mouse model of policing. And indeed it does Trace its history to slave patrols, a reactionary force of violence, dispatched into the community to capture offenders. The entire model does absolutely nothing to prevent future crimes from occurring.

Maybe they catch some guy who’s a serial offender, and get him off the streets. And they call that a win. But until the root causes of crime are addressed, all they’re doing is playing serial offender whack-a-mole; the next one is just going to pop right up. And maybe they’ll say, oh sure, that’s because we have a “catch and release” system.

Well, if we literally did nothing at all to stop crime, and totally abolished the concept of a police force, the science is absolutely clear that most people are going to age out of crime by the time they turn 25, and the rest, save for a few people who are likely mentally disabled, will age out by the time they hit 35. But instead, we’re kicking down doors and locking people out in cage for decades on end, making sure that their families are broken and locked in a cycle of poverty and trauma, and we end up sometimes with three generations of men sharing a prison together.

And while we’re on the subject of prison, the science is also absolutely clear that the way to reduce recidivism to almost nothing is to provide good health care, good mental health care, and to teach people marketable skills, all in a safe environment. When I got my degree, the field was shifting to a program evaluation approach, because we had figured out what programs we needed to have, and the only thing left to do was to fine-tune those programs to get the most out of them.

But then 4 years would go by, or 8 years would go by, and some new tough-on-crime politician would come and wonder why we’re spending so much money to hold people in a cage, and they’d start cutting the programs.

And despite that, and despite the emotional reactionaries who just want to see bad guys be treated badly to make themselves feel better about crime, virtually every type of crime is the lowest it’s ever been in my lifetime.

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46 points

This is why we say “the cruelty is the point”. As you note, these are not serious people trying to reduce crime. They are straight up lying about their goals, possibly even to themselves. The whole mindset is against the idea that crime is something that even can be reduced; rather, “bad people” will always do “bad things”, and it’s up to “powerful men” to protect the rest of society from them. It is rooted in a deeply authoritarian mindset that puts them as one of the “powerful men”. If you were to reduce crime, how can they prove that they’re one of the “powerful men”?

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14 points

well, the powerful man probably think that covering people’s basic necessities wouldn’t reduce crime. After all, they have those covered in spades, and yet steal billions of dollars each year

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31 points

This is a spectacular post

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17 points

Thank you for this great insight and information.

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17 points
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To add to that, it’s the same with homelessness. Every 1-4 years, architecture students and urban planning students are asked to do projects on helping to house the homeless or something similar. Every time, they come up with innovative and unique ways to handle it. People forget about and/or realize that no one will try any of them. Repeat.

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2 points

I remember reading that a study showed that giving homeless people (without drug problems) a steady source of money, and not even that much money, helped almost all of them get back on their feet.

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13 points

emotional reactionaries who just want to see bad guys be treated badly to make themselves feel better about crime

I keep thinking about Dukakis. They asked if he would change his mind/support the death penalty if his wife was murdered. He said no - and folks flipped their shit.

The “left” as it exists in the US is so cowed by the idea of a Willie Horton scenario that it has to lean into that same evil vindictiveness. The 1994 Clinton crime bill which devastated Black communities was Dems trying to show off how “tough on crime” they could be.

Criminals are a safe “other” to hate.

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9 points
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First, thanks for taking the time to do that writeup!

Second - do you happen to have links to any likely sources that would present that info in a digestible manner? I’m not asking this to challenge you, I’m asking so I have linkable references in future discussion.

Thanks!

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Someone else asked for this too and I’m really having a hard time coming up with anything.

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3 points

All good, no worries, still a great writeup!

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9 points

Do you have some beginner friendly references I could look at? I live in a MAGA heavy state and although logic doesn’t always work the more tools in my belt the better!

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6 points

What I keep getting held up on is that if the science keeps pointing toward the same conclusion, how do you actually apply those to society? How to you convince the voting masses to institute these changes? Because the average person won’t accept repealing things like three strikes and minimum sentencing, they just assume that a “tough on crime” attitude is the way to go. If a politician comes along offering justice system reform, he’d never make it into office because people would assume he’d be letting criminals run rampant unpunished.

Related, I’ve heard people argue against UBI by saying that it would just make people lazy and not want to work at all.

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3 points

Related, I’ve heard people argue against UBI by saying that it would just make people lazy and not want to work at all.

I mean, it’s completely unrealistic to think that this would not be the case for some X% of the population. It’s already the case now, with the welfare programs we already have, after all. What number that X is, is what’s unclear. People saying “nobody will work” are definitely wrong, though, lol.

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0 points
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I think you could address that by using what I call “Universal Ranked Income”. The idea is that there are floors and ceilings on income, wealth, and so forth. The floor is basically a minimum wage, while the ceiling of the highest income bracket is absolute - people simply do not get any more income at that level, regardless of their job or investments.

In addition to this, job classes should be assigned a rank based on the effort, risk, and knowledge required to perform the task. The job class has a fixed income, that employers can’t alter. They cannot manipulate the number of workdays, the income of a job is fixed, with each month delivering a set wage. Workhours and days are also fixed, to prevent employer manipulation.

Next, is a small pool of income archetypes, from lowest to highest. By keeping the diversity in job ranks to a dozen at most, employees can say “My boss isn’t supposed to get that much money, they are only X. Something smells!”. By creating a framework of obvious rules, it would be easier for society to nip potential oligarchs in the bud.

Here are some ranks from my notes as a baseline sample:

Rank 0: $10,000 per year, 05% / 10% cultural & social taxes, resulting in -$1,500. Has no work obligations.

Rank 1: $10,000-20,000 per year, 10% / 10% cultural & social taxes, resulting in up to -$4,000. For students, who receive a level of income based on grades.

Rank 2: $40,000 per year, 15% / 10% cultural & social taxes, resulting in -$10,000. Waiters, clerks, curbside hawkers, daycare staff.

Rank 3: $60,000 per year, 20% / 10% cultural & social taxes, resulting in -$18,000. Crop pickers, athletes, sex workers, couriers, nurses, police, teachers, journalists, soldiers in cold zones.

Rank 4: $80,000 per year, 25% / 10% cultural & social taxes, resulting in -$28,000. Doctors, engineers, lawyers, professors, researchers, hot zone troops.

Rank 5: $100,000 per year, 30% / 10% cultural & social taxes, resulting in -$40,000. Astronauts, Firemen, ambulance staff, hot battlefield leaders, surgeons, diplomats, lumberjacks, lead researchers.

If you look at the example, notice that education has become a job. It delivers a variable income based on performance, but is still less valuable than being a waiter, who has a fixed $40k income. Education is a pathway to a career, and people can focus on the path, since education offers an income for being studious. The current method of education sucks, because a person has to balance their survival, wellbeing, and education against each other. This is extremely inefficient and punishes people.

Further, I think the URI can potentially negate inflation. This is because the value of money has to be judged against the fixed incomes of society. Remember, jobs lost value, largely because employers keep the fruits of productivity to themselves. By enforcing fixed incomes for everyone and placing heavy restrictions on organizations, we can mitigate that siphoning of wealth. Price controls are much easier when you don’t have a huge variety of income factors to confuse the calculation.

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1 point

Honestly, I think it would require being raised in a society where social welfare is the norm before it can be considered ordinary.

It would take a revolution with people of vision in order to create a social welfare society. Similar to the Founding Fathers of America, where people of intelligence, character, and spine agreed that a change must be made. We will need people who can fight like hell to lead us into battle, and coolheaded types who will spend a great deal of midnight oil on drafting and workshopping a new way of living.

It won’t be easy nor intuitive, but the crisis caused by Yarvin’s Cabal might be the kindling we need for people to give up on the way we have lived. After all, the old ways are dying with the Constitution. When cowardice offers no shelter, all that is left is to fight.

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5 points

Thank you for typing that out!

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4 points

yeah. i thought this was common knowledge myself (as a layman) but then i realized i lived in an intellectual bubble, and that most conservatives would reject the idea even when presented with evidence because cruelty is the point.

that’s when i realized that the only solution was to get rid of conservatives.

seriously. none of this will ever change until the vast majority of abrahamic religious minded, protestant work ethic devoted people are gone.

and for those that say, “if you just educate them”, well… they stand in the way of education reforms, so…

the answer remains: [redacted]

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2 points

Yeah. There was a time that I wanted to believe conservatives were merely misguided. Now I know: they are straight up evil. As dehumanizing and unkind as it is, I have started to mentally replacing them with orcs, goblins, and dragons.

A small part of me is sad about the death of my naivety. Then my brain reminds me what price society has paid for hosting these malicious turds. If there is a Reconstruction 2.0, these words must be followed: “Rip and tear, until it is done.”

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4 points

Trump mandated that lead piping won’t be replaced. That stuff correlates with crime rates, far as location goes. Brilliant. 🤦‍♂️

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3 points

Fantastic reply. Thanks for taking the time to write it out and thanks again for the insight into the very important work you do.

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2 points

Thanks for sharing your experience

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2 points

It was almost 25 years after the St. Louis (maybe wrong city, it’s been a while) Crime and Control study proved that flooding the streets with more police officers only pushed crime into other neighborhoods.

Small point about this in particular, but isn’t the above evidence that this is effective at removing crime from an area? Why not do the same in the “other neighborhoods”, too, then?

Especially if you combine the above with what you described later to reduce recidivism:

the way to reduce recidivism to almost nothing is to provide good health care, good mental health care, and to teach people marketable skills, all in a safe environment.

Seems like a solid plan to me, and police forces would naturally/gradually shrink over time, to suit the overall crime rate as it goes down.

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I can almost picture the classroom I was sitting when I first learned about the study and having the exact same reaction you did.

Part of the study controlled for that, in the context of practical limitations. They divided the city into sectors and absolutely flooded certain sectors with cops while doing minimal patrols in the others, or in some cases none at all. The crime just moved in the opposite way. When the police presence increased in one sector, the crime rate went down there, but went up in the others. And then when they switch the sectors, the crime switched back. So practically speaking, cities and towns would have to be able to sustain that high level of policing, which hardly anyone wants. I see towns get into it over a budget allocation to hire one additional officer, let alone the number they would need to sustain to keep up the sort of levels needed to push crime out everywhere. And maybe some places would be able to do it, but the crime would just push to other areas, foisting the problem onto other communities. Further, I think there’s very little appetite in America to actually put a police officer on every corner. Nobody would like living in that world.

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2 points

practically speaking, cities and towns would have to be able to sustain that high level of policing, which hardly anyone wants.

But it’d be temporary for it to be that high, no? Am I misremembering, or is this basically the way that NYC stopped being so infamously crime-ridden? I was under the impression that it’s not as aggressive now as it was then.

Hastily-googled, but this seems to confirm at least some of what I remember reading a while back: https://www.nber.org/digest/jan03/what-reduced-crime-new-york-city

I think there’s very little appetite in America to actually put a police officer on every corner. Nobody would like living in that world.

Yeah, probably. Was just wondering about it hypothetically.

After all, an ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure, right?

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1 point

Wow, all very insightful, thanks for taking the time write this!

Do you have any recommended sources to read more about this topic / research? I’d love to learn more!

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-2 points

Thanks for the thoughtful comment

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86 points

They don’t want to lessen crime, not really anyway.

They want to increase prison labor capacity by arresting and charging more people

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19 points

Americans maybe. There’s other countries that don’t have legal slavery.

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78 points
*

I can’t find the podcast. Maybe someone else can post an article about this:

Several years ago, I listened to a podcast that interviewed a man in Chicago who was conducting a study. His team found people with a criminal history(I think maybe drug dealers?) and tell them they’ll get $1000 a month. No strings attached.

There were a few who didn’t use the money well, but most quit crime/dealing drugs entirely. They found steady work and some went back to school.

All they needed was an opportunity to feel financially safe, feed their kids, and pay rent.

Edit: I think I found it? Here’s an article on it. Some of my facts were wrong, but the idea was right overall.

Chicago Future Fund

The article also mentions another called the Stock Economic Empowerment Demonstration.

I’m not sure which I heard about but I suspect the interview was with Richard Wallace who is mentioned in the article. Some of his talking points sounded familiar.

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57 points

They’ve been trying it across the world, it’s called Universal Basic Income. It’s been proven mostly successful every time.

Here’s an old article about the US: https://mashable.com/article/cities-with-universal-basic-income-guaranteed-income-programs

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28 points

Yeah! I wanted to specifically call out the study on UBI with formerly incarcerated people.

I know a lot of pushback on UBI is that it will make people lazy, or emboldened criminals. It has the exact opposite effect.

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20 points

I believe that’s manufactured pushback tbh. People who are overworked might think it would make themselves lazy. At first, maybe? To get your thoughts in order, it might look lazy. But most people who feel safe with a steady income want to be productive.

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0 points

It’s not “universal” unless/until it’s given to everyone. Until then, it’s just another targeted welfare program, “offered to a select portion of a city’s population instead of all residents”, as your link says.

You can’t say UBI has been “proven mostly successful” without actually doing UBI, considering its main hurdles are related directly to giving out that much money to everyone. A UBI of $12000/year ($1000/month) for just all working-age people in the US (a bit over 200 million) would cost the government $2.4 TRILLION, yearly.

Even seizing the entirety of every US billionaire’s net worth (est. $4.5 trillion), assuming you could convert it straight across into cash 1:1 (which you can’t), and cutting defense spending (~$850 billion), the two most common ways I’ve seen people claim we can pay for UBI in the US, even if defense was cut to literal zero (also absurdly unrealistic), that still wouldn’t even cover the cost of this UBI for three years.

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4 points

There are alternatives that would have a similar effect, without the scary price tag. A negative income tax is an example: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Negative_income_tax

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3 points

I’ve had this discussion before. You might want to do some more research and have sources. I would advise you to look at really good sources about the following points:

  • “It’s not “universal” unless/until it’s given to everyone.”
  • “…would cost the government $2.4 TRILLION, yearly.”
  • “Even seizing the entirety of every US billionaire’s net worth and cutting defense spending wouldn’t even cover the cost of this UBI for three years”

Your numbers and projected income is way wonky. I’ll discuss it when you come back with sources from the studies of UBI and why most experts think they worked being referenced.

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2 points
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The politics are easy, except that it needs a political champion who promises and delivers the redistribution of power that is UBI.

A UBI of $12000/year ($1000/month) for just all working-age people in the US (a bit over 200 million) would cost the government $2.4 TRILLION, yearly.

Technically UBI saves government money. That $2.4T is just transfers from net tax payers to net receivers. Zero government discretion/power to stop it. But because programs can be cut at that UBI level, It costs somewhere around $1200B (all government levels) less to provide $2.4T. Once you look at military budget as something that could increase your own cash, even more.

A fair tax system that eliminates payroll taxes and pays for universal healthcare can be 33%. Or 25% for first $100k income, and surtaxes at higher income levels.

https://www.naturalfinance.net/2019/06/andrew-yang-and-democrat-tax-proposals.html

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1 point
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0 points

Why the hell would we give the rich $12k/year.? It makes no sense for it to be “universal,” we should change the branding. Doesn’t make it the bad idea you are so eager to paint it.

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0 points

Nationalize Corporations

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11 points

That’s precisely it, there’s lots of evidence which shows that welfare programs are better for creating stable societies.

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43 points

If people have nothing to lose, they’re gonna act like they have nothing to lose…

Like, it’s basic psychology. Resource scarcity changes how our brains work, it’s literally Maslow’s hierarchy of needs

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5 points

I hit rock bottom. Was broke.

My thoughts on stealing changed entirely. I couldn’t care less. I had bigger concerns than other people’s property. Most people steal out of desperation and when you’re desperate, your moral compass disappears.

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5 points

Society is perpetually 9 missed meals away from collapse.

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1 point

A person can do anything when they lost everything.

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36 points

But if crime declined, the poor private prison corporations would lose money, and that’s not a good thing. They wouldn’t be able to give judges kickbacks to sentence lesser crimes! Please, think of the poor private prison corporations!

/s in case the sarcasm isn’t abundantly clear.

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10 points
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