_crapitalism t1_ixmeyr7 wrote
Reply to comment by doc89 in Two Philly developers think Atlantic City can look more like Amsterdam with the help of a $3 billion housing development by Dryheavemorning
we've put up with that because of decades of tough on crime DAs who have put massive swaths of the city into deep poverty. we need to stop doing that if we ever want crime to get better long term. the US has the highest incarceration rate of any country on the planet, yet somehow, we still haven't become the safest country on the planet. we need to try something different, and allowing time for families to build wealth without being incarcerated is a good idea.
doc89 t1_ixmfsau wrote
The idea that incarcerating violent criminals is a primary cause of poverty is completely insane, imo
_crapitalism t1_ixmh9md wrote
take a look at the list for yourself and draw your own conclusions. sort by incarcerations per 100k and scroll until you find a low-poverty nation anywhere near the US. then come back here and tell me the problem is we don't arrest enough people.
doc89 t1_ixmjrsw wrote
I'm not saying "the problem is we don't arrest enough people". I'm saying "stop arresting people" is not a serious strategy to fight poverty.
Correlation does not imply causation. The US is a very different country than most of our low-crime European peers. We have orders of magnitude more guns, violence and crime. Hence it should not be a surprise that our incarceration rate is higher.
There are certainly arguments to be made that we incarcerate way too many people for, e.g., drug related offenses, but a blanket policy of "stop arresting people" seems like pure insanity to me.
_crapitalism t1_ixmlm8g wrote
I never said stop arresting people for violence, I said that arresting more people is linked to more crime, and so arresting less people for things like possession of drugs, petty theft, and other minor offenses is good, and not charging those people is good policy.
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