casanovaelrey t1_jdxn363 wrote
Reply to comment by Neoliberalism2024 in New Yorkers overwhelmingly support bail changes ahead of state budget deadline: Poll by Grass8989
We've tried the "tough on crime" and "War on Drugs" angle for 40+ years. Sooooooo yeah, I don't know that 2 years is enough to undo decades of terrible conservative policies. Plus bail IS NOT PUNISHMENT. That's LITERALLY a violation of several constitutional amendments to impose a punishment before a sentence has been given by a judge.
That being said, the revolving door of people with 10,000 charges being let back out on the street is wild. There should be a precondition that people released must not commit new crimes and that certain crimes go through a separate review process to determine whether that person can safely be allowed to be released pretrial.
And before ANYONE says "well *insert number" people support it", I don't care. Not everyone knows the law and most people operate based on what they think the law is. But I digress.
The current dynamic can't continue but it can't continue anymore than the one favored by the conservatives for the last several decades can continue. We need to sit down and come up with policy divorced of politics and pleasing "the other side of the aisle". Or else we will end up having this discussion again.
Curiosities t1_jdxsbg4 wrote
Yep. A lot of people don't even know what bail is, especially that it's not punitive, and opportunistic politicians and media like the Post capitalize on that. You'll hear the same talking points - 'no consequences for criminals', 'they'll be out in a few hours', 'no consequences for crimes', 'soft on crime' etc but if you ask the people parroting those lines they're fed, how many of them could tell you what bail is, what its function is, what charges qualify, (and importantly under bail reform, the MANY charges that don't qualify for no bail)?
As well as the facts that arraigned suspects need to be tried, that they are legally innocent until proven guilty, that punishment comes after a conviction (or plea deal, because that's where 90%+ of convictions happen).
Too many people think that an arrest means guilty, when that's not how the legal system works, and also, the wrong people are sometimes arrested. The cops are among those saying this misinformation loudly, saying their hands are tied, can't do their jobs, etc when they often slack off and refuse to do their job (a local chain that has had theft can't rely on the cops coming to take their reports), and part of their job is working to provide the DA with enough evidence to prove their cases.
casanovaelrey t1_jdxus9j wrote
Thank you. I have nothing to add. You're right on the money here.
AceContinuum t1_jdyjq9n wrote
>The cops are among those saying this misinformation loudly, saying their hands are tied, can't do their jobs, etc when they often slack off and refuse to do their job (a local chain that has had theft can't rely on the cops coming to take their reports)
The journalists are also complicit in this. Every time a cop claims their "hands are tied," the immediate response should be to ask the cop to explain how exactly the bail reform law "tied their hands." Which provision takes away cops' power to investigate? Which provision takes away cops' power to arrest? Which provision makes shoplifting "legal"?
The uncritical mainstream media narrative of bail reform "tying the hands of law enforcement" is one of the most in-your-face examples of propaganda - copaganda - I've ever seen.
mule_roany_mare t1_jdy1f9v wrote
We need to get rid of bail bondsmen
-
they inflate the amount of bail necessary by a ridiculous amount
-
they keep their fee no matter what
Just set bail to be a sufficient amount to keep a person from running & return it all in full when they show up to court. There is no reason a person should pay a bail bondsmen 10k to cover their 500k bail.
Bail bondsmen shouldn't be picking up bail-jumpers either. That should be law enforcement's job.
TLDR
Bail is just supposed to ensure people show up to court & make it too expensive onerous to run.
It's not a fee for the privilege to waiting for trial outside jail.
IRequirePants t1_jdxzehv wrote
> We've tried the "tough on crime" and "War on Drugs" angle for 40+ years
And all we got to show for it is the lowest murder rate in almost a century.
SuckMyBike t1_jdz3eym wrote
Every other developed country currently also has their lowest murder rate in a century. But they are locking up 10x fewer people than the US is.
In fact, despite by far having the highest prison population of any country (and it's not even close), the US still has the highest homicide rates of any developed country.
It's almost as if it's not working at all. If locking more people up was working, then the US should have the lowest crime rates of developed countries, not the highest.
IRequirePants t1_je0l9p9 wrote
>Every other developed country currently also has their lowest murder rate in a century. But they are locking up 10x fewer people than the US is
There is a million and a half reasons why this is. Edit: Since the comment was deleted - there are a million and half reasons why the US and other western countries have different circumstances
>It's almost as if it's not working at all.
The (until recently) record low homicide rate begs to differ.
SuckMyBike t1_je0li2b wrote
This post is pathetic. On the one hand you claim that there are a million reasons why crime rates are low in other countries, but then you go and claim that the US crime rate being low is thanks to putting people in prison.
Fucking pathetic.
fafalone t1_jdyt29l wrote
Computer technology got us the lowest murder rate in a century.
What, you can't just impute causation to whatever has a correlation?
Studied directly, the war on drugs has been an epic disaster, and crime fell entirely independent of it.
The murder rate fell despite the war on drugs funneling trillions to gangs and cartels, making them more powerful than ever.
IRequirePants t1_jdyux74 wrote
> Computer technology got us the lowest murder rate in a century.
COMPSTAT certainly helped.
I guess the difference here is that "War on Drugs" directly funneled money into police. It isn't tangential. It's directly related.
Now, if you want to say the War on Drugs had massive amounts of waste and other related societal harms, then sure. Over-incarceration, "stop-and-frisk" violations, etc.
RoozGol t1_jdxr3nd wrote
Failed? Has the crime not been constantly falling from the 80's? It started to pick up on again due to policy change. Data is clear
andydh96 t1_jdxsba5 wrote
Crime as a whole rose nationally during COVID. It's disingenuous (and incorrect) to imply that the increase in crime here is solely because of bail reform when crime also increased in non-bail reform states/cities.
mehkindaok t1_jdy20y8 wrote
Crime as a whole rose nationally when it got decriminalized.
TheAJx t1_jdymigp wrote
Okay, well COVID is over for most sane people now and has been for about a year. How do we address the issue of elevated levels of crime in this city?
SuckMyBike t1_jdz3tho wrote
>How do we address the issue of elevated levels of crime in this city?
Let's do that!
Criminologists have been in near uniform agreement for a while now: the biggest cause of crime is poverty.
So if you have any proposals on how to reduce poverty, I'd love to hear them
TheAJx t1_je08m0y wrote
How about this, can we address the proximate issues of crime, getting multiple time offenders off the streets, stopping shoplifters etc while we take on the huge task of reordering society to reduce poverty?
SuckMyBike t1_je0iht4 wrote
It sounds like you only want to do the first and not the second.
TheAJx t1_je0k68k wrote
I would like to do both, mainly because they are both important goals independent of each other.
I'm not particularly convinced about the povert -> crime argument in this case, given that poverty rates went down during COVID thanks to massive government cash infusions.
SuckMyBike t1_je0kwe5 wrote
How on earth can someone in 2023 still question the direct correlation between poverty and crime?!
What the fuck .. this is basic knowledge amongst criminologists. Have you never spoken to one?
TheAJx t1_je0oeiu wrote
Bangladesh and Ghana are pretty poor, but not particularly violent either.
Poverty went Down during COVID yet crime skyrocketed. Poverty went up significantly in 2008 but crime did not spike at nearly the same levels (and went down within a year or two).
> Have you never spoken to one?
You guys are all the same, thinking that sociology professors have all the answers to society's problems. Crimnologists have also found that hiring more police on the streets leads to less crime. Are you in favor of that?
SuckMyBike t1_je0oom1 wrote
>Crimnologists have also found that hiring more police on the streets leads to less crime.
Actually, criminologists concistently find that repression is a very weak correlator with reducing crime rates.
But what do you care. You just invent your own facts based on your gut feeling and then think you know everything. Fuck off
NetQuarterLatte t1_je0jz62 wrote
COVID happened worldwide, but crimes didn’t rise worldwide.
If your logic about the bail reform is right, then you must also conclude that COVID is not what caused crimes to rise.
andydh96 t1_je0ttky wrote
You either didn't ready my comment carefully or purposely misinterpreted it, so I'll make it easier for you.
I said bail reform is not the SOLE CAUSE of crime increase -- that's easy to see from crime stats nationally that likewise show increases in non-bail reform states and locales. But neither did I say that COVID was the sole cause -- that too would be disingenuous and an overly-simplistic conclusion (same as your stance which seems to be only blaming bail reform). Effects can have multiple causes -- this is why statistical analyses exist to calculate how much of the increase we can attribute to one factor versus another.
I would suggest against looking at global crime statistics, its like comparing apples and oranges (besides the fact that reported data for many countries are unreliable). Too many different variables across countries makes the comparison far less useful than comparing among states for making policy decisions based off those statistical trends.
NetQuarterLatte t1_je1oi53 wrote
The gist is that you were trying to associate covid and crimes.
I get that you’re saying it’s not the sole cause, but even if factually true (your statement would still be technically true if Covid was not a cause at all), it’s still misleading in the overarching context of the conversation.
Even in the US, Covid didn’t hit every city at the same time. The staggered manner in which Covid hit US locations can be used to show a causal relationship of Covid and Crimes, if that exists. However there’s basically no evidence of that.
In fact, NYC got Covid waves earlier than most cities. But even in 2022 we had crimes still rising in NYC faster than other big cities like LA, Chicago and Miami.
andydh96 t1_je26v7v wrote
I'm sorry but objectively speaking, what you are saying isn't fully accurate. COVID shut down the national economy. As is typically the case when the economy and employment rates decline, crime goes up and COVID and its short term effects were no exception. Making it sound like we should be beyond COVID is a bit of an over-simplification -- yes in theory we are beyond the pandemic stage but we are still suffering from indirect effects particularly with the economy, supply-chain issues, etc. I think sane minds can agree the economy still hasn't recovered fully. Just because we aren't dealing with something in our faces doesn't mean its effects aren't there. The timing of the COVID waves too isn't really relevant - neither NYC nor the rest of the country operates within its own bubble, just not how society or economies work. When NYC shut down first, it still had ripple effects across the country despite the virus not being nationally widespread yet.
On an aside, I also question the validity of your statement about our crime rates increasing at a larger rate compared to other large US cities but I don't have hard statistics to support my skepticism. Care to link for my own education?
NetQuarterLatte t1_je36b3j wrote
Here's a comparison of the increase in violent felonies across those cities during 2022 compared to 2021: https://imgur.com/a/YbvYifw
If your hypothesis linking of Covid to crimes depends on the economy, you can look at the economy directly. Poverty in the US dropped to 20-year lows (https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/PPAAUS00000A156NCEN) during Covid. That puts a dent in the supposed link between economics and crimes nationwide.
But crimes, in NYC at least, climbed to 20-year highs for some crimes.
[deleted] t1_jdxui19 wrote
[deleted]
casanovaelrey t1_jdxulur wrote
I would answer this but the person right below you (above this answer) answered what I would have said.
TheAJx t1_jdymarc wrote
> We've tried the "tough on crime" and "War on Drugs" angle for 40+ years.
Not a fan of the war on drugs, but "tough on crime" over the last 40 years or so has been pretty effective. Homicide rate basically cut in half since the early 90s. Violent crime in cities like NYC and LA down like 80% off their peaks. It's so weird to see people act like the last few decades have been abject failures in policing. Crime rates are a many-decade lows. Incarceration rate is at its lowest point since the mid 90s.
SuckMyBike t1_jdz3ned wrote
Crime rates in all other countries dropped just like it did in the US. But they didn't use a "tough on crime" approach to achieve it.
The more likely explanation for why both the US and other countries saw declining crime rates is the banning of lead gasoline and improvements in economic prosperity.
To criminologists, it is also no surprise that crime has been up since the pandemic. Crime rates also saw an uptick during the 2008 financial crisis.
Bad economic times = more crime. Other countries are experiencing a similar uptick in crime without any "bail reform". Surely the recent uptick in crime in Finland isn't caused by NY bail reform, is it?
TheAJx t1_je0de7g wrote
I only call it "tough on crime" because that's the terminology you guys use and you guys continue to insist that it was some sort of failure. I think better policing over the last 30-40 years has been pretty effective.
>Crime rates also saw an uptick during the 2008 financial crisis.
The uptick in crime was nowhere near as bad as it was in the last few years. And it quickly waned, leading to continued lower crime rates.
>banning of lead gasoline and improvements in economic prosperity.
Was there a bunch of lead that entered the system in 2020?
Due to CARES ACT, PPP and stimulus checks, poverty rates and household debt decreased. Incomes actually rose (an unemployed person was earning a minimum of $600 / weekly).
>Bad economic times = more crime. Other countries are experiencing a similar uptick in crime without any "bail reform". Surely the recent uptick in crime in Finland isn't caused by NY bail reform, is it?
Did other countries see 20-30% increases in homicides like the US did? Maybe Finland did . . its hard to extrapolate based of one country with a population about the size of Brooklyn and Queens. TO my knowledge, no large countries experienced the surge in crime to the levels the US did.
SuckMyBike t1_je0l4ns wrote
>I think better policing over the last 30-40 years has been pretty effective. .
10x more people in prison per Capita than Germany and yet way higher crime rates?
You call that a success? Man, your parents must've put the bar for your achievements insanely low
TheAJx t1_je0o0ce wrote
>10x more people in prison per Capita than Germany and yet way higher crime rates?
We have far more guns on the streets than Europe.
>You call that a success? Man, your parents must've put the bar for your achievements insanely low
Like I said, violent crime in NYC fell by 80%. I'm happy for that. Maybe you're mad because more criminals went to jail.
SuckMyBike t1_je0otwe wrote
I'm mad because sad people like yourself are preventing the US from reforming the prison system to be in line with other developed countries.
.instead, you want to keep a prison system that dictators use.
frost5al t1_jdy3vzj wrote
>come up with a policy devoid of politics
>policy
>devoid
>of politics
lol
Peking_Meerschaum t1_jdxzked wrote
It's simple physics, though. If someone is locked in a secure box away from the general public, their ability to inflict injury upon said public drops to zero.
> I don't know that 2 years is enough to undo decades of terrible conservative policies.
We were never truly "tough on crime." It's time to try to Singapore model, enough is enough.
AceContinuum t1_jdym2ro wrote
>It's time to try to Singapore model, enough is enough.
You mean the "Singapore model" of having 80% of the city's population living in high-quality public housing, supported by a truly universal and affordable state-run healthcare system?
That could actually work. It would go a long way toward providing increased stability and, as a result, reducing crime.
But somehow I feel like you're referring more to things like putting people in jail for selling gum, downloading porn or criticizing the Mayor.
Peking_Meerschaum t1_jdyp90p wrote
Absolutely, I fully agree with this deal. Singapore's HDB Scheme of public housing is one of the most successful urban planning programs in modern history. But you should understand what you are suggesting, because it is probably different than how you're envisioning it.
It is important to understand that Singapore's HDB system is truly meritocratic, it isn't just a handout of free housing, but rather a form of lend-lease whereby Singapore citizens can apply for subsidized housing after meeting social criteria such as being married, and not having been convicted of a serious crime, and agreeing to abide by the rules and regulations of the housing program and the state, which are vigorously enforced by a network of community patrols and cameras. Also, married citizens who have more than two children are given priority.
If we couple this program with Singapore's robust and judicious use of corporal punishment (caning) for crimes such as vandalism and sexual assault, and the death penalty for drug dealing, then I really think we might be off to a good start. I would love to see NYCHA housing being as judiciously and equitably dispensed to good virtuous citizens as are Singapore's HDB flats, and I would love to see those who piss in and graffiti the NYCHA elevators and stairwells get the cane, and I would love to see those who deal drugs in the NYCHA halls get the death penalty.
SuckMyBike t1_jdz3yg5 wrote
> We were never truly "tough on crime."
-> US literally has a 10x higher incarceration rate than Germany
-> US was never tough on crime
You're insane
Peking_Meerschaum t1_je01cgn wrote
I didn't say incarceration
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