> There are plenty of people that break the law everyday and never get caught, unsolved crimes rates are HUGE
Sure but this is a resource problem. If we devoted the resources, we could solve the crimes. Those resources would arguably be "better" deployed 'simply' rather than, say, by investing in officer sensitivity. The tactics of policing work, that's the argument I'm trying to make.
No, society deserves more sensitive policing, even though it costs more and demands more from people, because it's the right thing to do. It's a pure moral argument, and it loses something when you try to paint it as a tactics issue.
> Recidivism is a complex issue
It's really not. The whole thing can be boiled down to a very simple statement of fact. Society fails people. The reasons why it fails people can be largely determined to be resource problems, not failures in the mentality of the people trying to help. The 'bad egg' explanation of law enforcement failure should be taken way more seriously than it is. Most cops really do want the best for the people they have to work with on a daily basis.
But they just don't have the resources to put all these people into the precise social programs that they need. Every decent social worker is immensely overworked and underpaid. There's a massive number of people who want to get into social work but there's just not that many jobs available, because from a governmental budgetary perspective, money spent on social work is money thrown away.
Sure, when you get academics into a room and do studies, yes, money spent on social programs more than pays for itself. But that 'paying for itself' is diffuse, the repayment doesn't just flow back into state coffers. So you have to justify every expenditure.
It's a really hard problem, and laying blame at the feet of law enforcement systemic failure misses the point profoundly.
Life is not a crime drama we really don’t know how to solve most individual crime even with essentially unlimited resources.
Ex: Somone was robbed at knife point in a city. With no direct physical contact with victom and no image of who did it and you don’t have any way to track this down.
People mostly get caught becase they can’t retire of of one thing so they keep rolling the dice and eventually something changes.
It could be with unlimited resources where those resources are millions of high res cameras everywhere. Which I am against, but it would not be unthinkable that most crimes, including the one you mentioned, would be solved fast(er) with unlmited resources.
I was robbed at knife point years ago; I got the license plate of the stolen 'getaway' car (it was at a gas station on the parking lot); there were cameras there (not in the parking lot but connected to the building), I reported it immediately, the police (later on camera) saw the car crossing a toll booth and then it went into some village. They found the car abandoned but never (at least not in time for me to be helpful) got the robbers. If everything, including the village, would be blanketed with high res cams, they would've caught them. The toll booth cams were too low res to identify anyone, just the car + numberplate.
I do believe we know how to solve most (traditional; financial / online crime can probably be similarly solved with enough resources and invasion of privacy) crime with unlimited resources; we don't have unlimited resources AND, at least in my country (where the robbery took place), we (still) have strict privacy laws and they are not allowed to hang cams on the streets of these places. Which I find a good thing by the way, but it doesn't help solve unobserved crimes like violence in off the beaten path alleyways and stuff like this.
This is a very good example of the skimming reading example that is high up on the HN front page today. You did not read what I said nor did some downvoters; I say I am against this idea. BUT I was responding to someone saying 'we don't know how to solve most individual crimes even with unlimited resources'. I do not believe that is the case and this is one example of doing it, but no I am in no way advocating it which is what I say multiple times in my comment.
I actually say in the first line 'which I am against', so definitely not advocating it. Just saying; unlimited resources really do give us ways to solve most crimes but we might choose to value freedom and privacy over solving all crimes, which I hope happens although many places, like London/UK already have pretty much blanket camera networks.
You’re assuming the only limit is resources, instead of resources being to only limit I am minimizing.
Sure, if we where willing to implant GPS trackers and require people to upload their daily movements that would cost resources, but people’s unwillingness to be tracked like that (outside of cellphones) has nothing to do with resources. Thus a willingness to spend more money would not allow for that kind of tracking or even what you are suggesting.
PS: Low millions of cameras is also insufficient, you need billions just to cover major cities and even then people would focus on low coverage areas. You really need to track people for hours or even days to get positive identification. That takes more than a few cameras in the right places as plot demands.
Hence the unlimited :) But yeah, given that unlimited is not unlimited and people won't allow it (although govs will try) you are right; we have not much chance to solve every individual crime because we have no way (yet) of attacking the problem. Education and jobs seems to help, but that's prevention, not solving after it happened.
I 100% reject the "bad egg" explanation of law enforcement failure and do not believe it is the "bad eggs" at all but instead a systemic failure caused by improper training, improper goals, improper exceptions and Unethical laws (aka the war on drugs) that have turn the police force from a protectionary force to a oppressive force. The police of today are not about protecting people, it is about control.
Further The number of laws, regulations, etc on the book ensure the most people on any given day can have something used against them, this leads to all manner of corruption and attracts those they want to abuse people
I also reject the idea that is is "resources" problem, we do not need more resources in policing and prisons, we in fact need less. What we need ti less criminal laws, less regulations, and less abuse by those with authority
This is a narrative that you will believe in that can be analyzed and rejected purely on the internal logic of it.
You're 'othering' the police and the social system. If you get to know these people, listen to their stories, what they have to say about society's problems, as the people whose literal careers are to deal with them, the explanation of systemic failure rings more and more hollow.
But you have to actually go to these people and listen to their stories in order to understand. That takes work, but it's work made easier with Quora. But you don't need to, you can just look at the statements you're making and see that they're the products of narrative belief.
>>This is a narrative that you will believe in that can be analyzed and rejected purely on the internal logic of it.
Feel free to, since you elected not to I will simply dismiss this claim
> If you get to know these people, listen to their stories, what they have to say about society's problems, as the people whose literal careers are to deal with them, the explanation of systemic failure rings more and more hollow.
That is neither required, or ideal in looking at the actual problems. the Inherent bias their outlook makes any opinions they have on the solutions suspect in the first place. Plus police are not trained researcher nor are likely to understand the root cause of the social problems that stretch back generations as such would likely propose the same "solutions" that have failed for those same generations. Such as increased prison terms for offenders, more draconian surveillance, decrease accountability in policing (some times called "giving police more unilateral authority at the street level). etc etc ad nauseam
For example most police officers when polled support the War on Drugs and oppose efforts to legalize narcotics, even though in every objective analysis of the facts the War on Drugs as a objective failure on every front,
Sure but this is a resource problem. If we devoted the resources, we could solve the crimes. Those resources would arguably be "better" deployed 'simply' rather than, say, by investing in officer sensitivity. The tactics of policing work, that's the argument I'm trying to make.
No, society deserves more sensitive policing, even though it costs more and demands more from people, because it's the right thing to do. It's a pure moral argument, and it loses something when you try to paint it as a tactics issue.
> Recidivism is a complex issue
It's really not. The whole thing can be boiled down to a very simple statement of fact. Society fails people. The reasons why it fails people can be largely determined to be resource problems, not failures in the mentality of the people trying to help. The 'bad egg' explanation of law enforcement failure should be taken way more seriously than it is. Most cops really do want the best for the people they have to work with on a daily basis.
But they just don't have the resources to put all these people into the precise social programs that they need. Every decent social worker is immensely overworked and underpaid. There's a massive number of people who want to get into social work but there's just not that many jobs available, because from a governmental budgetary perspective, money spent on social work is money thrown away.
Sure, when you get academics into a room and do studies, yes, money spent on social programs more than pays for itself. But that 'paying for itself' is diffuse, the repayment doesn't just flow back into state coffers. So you have to justify every expenditure.
It's a really hard problem, and laying blame at the feet of law enforcement systemic failure misses the point profoundly.