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Comment by hunterb123 | Hacker News Reader

Neat analogy, but you didn't finish it. It would be like if the garbage men took the trash out and at the end of the month and the person in charge of the dump released it all back out on the streets. Certainly you would have a garbage strike, which is what happened, and the dump manager (DA) was recalled.

When you arrest the same person over and over again and they are just let out by the DA, you may just not arrest that person again.

You aren't refusing to do your job, you're listening to an elected official that has more power than you do.

Do you have any criticisms to direct at the DA, or do you agree with their actions?

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Most of the sanitation workers I know would love it because of job security.

Maybe if we treated cops like people with jobs, we'd be able to hire some that work.

Which part is "predicting the DA's decision" in a police officer's job description? Why hasn't it been replaced by ML?

For a different analogy, at a startup, the pm changes the requirements every so often, therefore the engineers are fine to play foosball all day?

It's not about predicting the DA's decision, it's about enforcing the current laws that were decided upon by the people.

The problem was the DA was letting people off even though they were breaking said laws.

You're presuming the outcome of the charge. DAs often don't prosecute because the arrest or paperwork is deficient and the case won't stand up in court.

>When you arrest the same person over and over again and they are just let out by the DA, you may just not arrest that person again.

Great, so everyone agrees the current approach doesn't work. Now we need to come up with a better solution.

Option 1 is to throw these repeat offenders in jail and consider the situation fixed.

Option 2 is to take the money that we are paying the cop that now refuses to arrest anyone and instead pay someone who is willing to work with this repeat offender and help get them a home, job, treatment, or whatever else they need to stop living life like this.

The problem is that lack of enforcement leads to criminals that act not out of desperation, but because they analyzed the rules of the game and realized that the reward for a criminal career is better than the reward for a legitimate career, with few downsides.

Why work 20 days a month and make a modest living when you can steal and rob 3 days a month, fence on the 4th, and live in relative luxury?

Throwing people in jail doesn't help with crimes of despair, but it does help with such calculated crime, because it suddenly is no longer worth it.

> they analyzed the rules of the game and realized that the reward for a criminal career is better than the reward for a legitimate career, with few downsides.

I don't think you realize that you are agreeing with me.

There are benefits to committing crime.

There are benefits to not committing crime.

There are downsides to committing crime.

There are downsides to not committing crime.

These all come together to help influence a person's decision. We can impact that decision by tweaking any one of these 4 results. Yes, increasing the penalties for crime is one way to address it, but we can have the same influence be decreasing the benefit of committing crime or increasing the benefit of not committing crime. I happen to think that is the morally superior choice because the result is fewer people in jail and the US already jails more people per capita than any other country.

How do you want to decrease the benefit of committing crime or increase the benefit of not committing crime?

Without punishment, the benefit of stealing $1000 is roughly $1000.

Again, I'm not talking about crimes of desperation, I'm talking about "I want $shiny_expensive_thing and stealing it/stealing for it is going to be an easier way to get that than working for it".

As you said:

>Why work 20 days a month and make a modest living when you can steal and rob 3 days a month, fence on the 4th, and live in relative luxury?

What if that modest living takes 10 days of work instead of 20. Do you think that will impact the number of people who turn to crime?

1) Sure, an utopia of abundance where everyone has everything they want would solve most crime. It's not realistic though.

2) If the modest living takes 10 instead of 20 days, it will reduce the number of crimes, but not to a level where it would be ok to just ignore without enforcement. And once your 10 days (or many times 10 days) of honest work disappear in one criminal act, and you see that crimes pay and aren't punished, you'll also be tempted to go the easy way.

I'm not talking about a utopia. I am talking about basic measures of inequality that is unique to this area. A family in San Francisco with two people earning minimum wage can't afford to rent a 2-bedroom apartment. They would each need to be working 70+ hour weeks for that to even be feasible. A city is broken if the people who work in the city can't afford to live there. That inequality is likely a bigger contributor to crime than whoever is elected DA. Very few people pay attention to local politics. I doubt most San Franciscans can name the DA, but everyone knows when they can't afford diapers.

It also doesn't matter what the punishment is or isn't, most people aren't going to steal a bike off the street. Most people have morals. Most people don't want to view themselves as a bad person. Most people require some sort of personal justification before they steal something. Desperation is a strong justification. Societal unfairness is a strong justification. The lack of punishment can't be used justify the crime from a moral perspective so it won't impact the way most people behave. It will only impact the people at the margins who were already open to committing crime.

Ah yes, the classic "all criminals are just misunderstood and will stop committing crime if you give them money" argument.

What is the counterargument? "All criminals are just evil people and will never stop committing crime unless they are thrown in jail"?

The original line of argument was that crime went up because punishments went don't. This implicitly is built on the belief that criminals are rational actors responding to a changing incentive structure. We can therefore reduce crime by changing the incentives again so that crime is a less attractive option. There is no reason why that change needs to be the reintroduction of harsh punishments. We can also change incentives by reducing the positive benefit of crime by making sure people's basic needs are satisfied.

You assume people need external incentives to commit crime, which is completely wrong. People need external incentives to NOT commit crime, because most crimes already include inherent incentives. For example, stealing comes with the inherent reward of gaining whatever it is you stole. You don't need to be homeless and starving to want more money or physical goods.

I am living a comfortable life, all of my basic needs are satisfied, and I have never stolen anything. But if I could just walk into a store, grab things and walk out with the knowledge that I was not going to be punished for it in any way, I absolutely would. Why wouldn't I? Because it's "wrong"? I'm sorry but the world doesn't work that way. If I didn't, someone else would.

> People need external incentives to NOT commit crime, because most crimes already include inherent incentives.

That's a pretty cynical view of human nature that I don't share.

> But if I could just walk into a store, grab things and walk out with the knowledge that I was not going to be punished for it in any way, I absolutely would.

I absolutely wouldn't. I mean, zero-consequence thefts seem to be a true state of affairs for many places like pharmacies in SF, and yet I don't feel any desire to walk into a Walgreens and start walking out with stuff without paying. Sure, I'm pretty comfortable financially, and that's a factor. But I would have to be pretty hard-up financially, like "I'm going to be out on the streets if I don't steal" levels of hard-up, to consider stealing at all, let alone habitually (and I'd still feel guilty about it). And I frankly can't blame people in that position; in many cases society has failed them, so I can't fault them for ignoring society's rules.

> Why wouldn't I? Because it's "wrong"?

Yes! Laws only work because people agree that they're a good idea in general, even if we may not agree with every individual law. I agree with laws around theft because I think it's shitty to deprive someone else of something that's theirs. Maybe it's a little muddier in the "personalization" aspect when we're talking about goods for sale owned by a huge corporation, but massive, ongoing, consequence-free theft from a particular store means that store is eventually going to shut down, and deprive regular people from jobs and their livelihoods. I wouldn't want that on my conscience.

> I'm sorry but the world doesn't work that way. If I didn't, someone else would.

Ah, yes, the "if I'm not an asshole, someone else will be, so I might as well just be an asshole and reap undeserved rewards" anti-morality play. That's reprehensible; I strongly suggest you re-evaluate your approach to being a human.

>And I frankly can't blame people in that position; in many cases society has failed them, so I can't fault them for ignoring society's rules.

You remind me of the dude who made that one bike comic. If someone stole something you own, you'd be happy because "society failed them"? I assume you've never actually been victim of or even witnessed any kind of crime, because you'd probably change your mind if you did.

>Laws only work because people agree that they're a good idea in general

No, laws are created because most people think they're a good idea, they work because they are enforced. A law that is not enforced is a law that effectively does not exist.

>Ah, yes, the "if I'm not an asshole, someone else will be, so I might as well just be an asshole and reap undeserved rewards" anti-morality play. That's reprehensible; I strongly suggest you re-evaluate your approach to being a human.

The only reason you don't agree with this is because you're not surrounded by other people reaping undeserved rewards. It's very easy to say "I would never do that!" in an environment where nobody else does it. Have you ever heard of "looting"? Because that's literally what I described in action. If people know for a fact they can get away from stealing from a store, there will be no shortage of people willing to do it. If you'd stand there and watch while everyone else gets their free stuff, knowing the store will be cleaned out by the end of the day regardless, good for you, but your own morality does not change the facts.

> And I frankly can't blame people in that position; in many cases society has failed them, so I can't fault them for ignoring society's rules.

Society doesn’t owe you anything; you owe society.

How is this asymmetry justified? By how pithy and strong the statement sounds?

>You assume people need external incentives to commit crime, which is completely wrong. People need external incentives to NOT commit crime,

These are the same thing. There is one decision, either commit crime or don't. There are positive and negative incentives on each side.

>For example, stealing comes with the inherent reward of gaining whatever it is you stole. You don't need to be homeless and starving to want more money or physical goods.

Sure, but if you are homeless and starting your motivation to steal go up because that money represents a greater marginal improvement to your life. Would you disagree with that?

>But if I could just walk into a store, grab things and walk out with the knowledge that I was not going to be punished for it in any way, I absolutely would. Why wouldn't I? Because it's "wrong"? I'm sorry but the world doesn't work that way. If I didn't, someone else would.

It is always funny to me when someone admits they have no morals and think that means no one else has morals. There have been studies that show most people don't operate this way. For example, a majority of people will try to return a lost wallet and that percentage goes up when the amount of cash in the wallet increases[1]. How do you explain that?

[1] - https://www.npr.org/2019/06/20/734141432/what-dropping-17-00...

  "How do you explain that?"

That can also be a selfish act. The feeling of happiness and pride from being gratuitously thanked exceeds the feeling of happiness from getting extra cash. Social validation and feeling wanted is a powerful driver of happiness, because being popular in your tribe leads to reproductive success. Clear selfish motive there.

So that doesn't map onto anonymously stealing from a store which many people, if not most people, would do if there were guaranteed to be no criminal or social consequences. Empirically the correlation between income and shoplifting wasn't that high, last I checked. And studies of people cheating show it is more common than not, last I checked. Almost everyone eats meat, despite the knowledge it's morally reprehensible, simply because it's still within the Overton Window for now. Eating meat is more morally reprehensible than shoplifting, the only reason people do the former and not the latter is social acceptability.

By design, people are intrinsically selfish creatures. Any motivations that present as altruistic are either cultural mind viruses, disingenuous virtue signalling, or strategies (such as popularity and recognition seeking) we unconsciously selfishly employ to improve happiness (proximate reason) and genetic fitness (underlying reason).

There's no societal difference between "people are intrinsically good" and "people are intrinsically selfish, but perform good acts for social credit". When the rubber meets the road, people are performing good acts.

Even when using stunted amoral analysis of human behavior, who cares what's the reason people are justifying moral acts?

>Sure, but if you are homeless and starting your motivation to steal go up because that money represents a greater marginal improvement to your life. Would you disagree with that?

No. I never claimed that nobody has ever committed a crime due to being poor or homeless. All I'm saying is that the claim that solving homelessness and poverty would also solve crime is objectively wrong.

No one said this is a solution to "solve crime" just like throwing all criminals in jail doesn't "solve crime". There will always be murderers, rapists, and just generally evil and deranged people. The goal isn't for San Francisco to have zero crime. That is impossible. The goal is to reduce crime. Reducing homeless and poverty would lead to a reduction in crime. Do you agree with that?

Some criminals just need opportunity and support to see the light. Some are just horrible people who can't realistically be saved and should just be thrown in jail forever. Most are somewhere between the two.

I think what we need to do is to reintroduce short-term but painful punishments (a day in the stocks, public caning, etc) for moderately severe offenses. Some people need more than just a slap on the wrist to change, but don't deserve to have their life ruined forever by a 30-year jail sentence. Physical pain and public shaming have worked well for millions of years (literally) they still work today in many countries, and they are far more compassionate than a long jail sentence. Humans are just another animal species, sometimes animal incentives are what we need.

That's a good idea. At least give convicted criminals the option. Will save taxpayers a lot too. This could apply to non-violent offences where the person doesn't need to be confined to protect other people from high probability reoffense.

I agree. Let ICE round up the (mainly Honduran) migrants dealing drugs to pay off the cartel for their transit into the country. Note: that doesn’t mean cooperating with ICE on raids on the rest/majority of the migrants who are actively contributing positively to the city. The current policy is to simply hand these people “no go” orders, which are essentially a polite request to not go back to Civic Center/the Tenderloin.

It’s an absolute joke and it is typical black and white American policy making that’s causing this situation to be far worse than it needs to be.

I don't think that's what the person you're replying to said, but yes, that is true in some cases, especially when crimes are perpetrated out of need, drug addiction, or because of feeling disenfranchised and excluded from society.

That's certainly not everyone, but I suspect if we were to deal with the subset that is "misunderstood" in a more productive way, SF crime would be a lot more tractable.

Ugh. No, that's just another strawman. The argument, which is supported by research, is that actually helping people to reintegrate into society, helping them find homes, get jobs, and get mental health treatment stops them committing crimes. That's because putting people in a place of stability reduces the need to commit crime.

"Throw them in jail to rot there forever" vs "slap on the wrist, coddle them and give them money" is a false dichotomy. We used to have a third option; it worked; many countries still do and it still works.

We should reintroduce short-term but painful punishments (a day in the stocks, public caning, etc) for moderately severe offenses. Some people need more than just a slap on the wrist to change, but don't deserve to have their life ruined forever by a 30-year jail sentence. Physical pain and public shaming have worked well for millions of years (literally) they still work today in many countries, and they are far more compassionate than a long jail sentence. Humans are just another animal species, sometimes animal incentives are what we need.

Option 2 is not a "slap on the wrist, coddle them and give them money." It's solving the actual problem. This is supported by research. Stop strawmanning. Even the DoJ agrees: https://www.justice.gov/archives/prison-reform

Soon we will have colonies on other planets and there will be an option 3.

Police that refuse to do their job because the DA's office is politically indoctrinated are not helping anything. It's almost immature. Police have unions and associations, political connections (even today), connections with the press (even today), so we're not talking about some powerless sector of society.

The mature response is for SF police to do its job (because if we do the math, it is also wasting the time of criminals), and have its organizational arms make a stink about it in the public space. Publish statistics and weekly 'wtf DA?' blog posts. I mean it's the 21st century.

I prefer Option 3 - executions - but I'll settle for Option 1.

Some people are too far gone for Option 2, but don't deserve 1 or 3. Like serial shoplifters, first-time drunk drivers, non-violent drug dealers…

We used to know how to deal with these people, and many countries still do. Corporal punishment and public shaming have been the go-to solutions for millions of years. We should bring them back. You can make a criminal deeply and viscerally regret their crime, without destroying their life.

> Corporal punishment and public shaming have been the go-to solutions for millions of years. We should bring them back. You can make a criminal deeply and viscerally regret their crime, without destroying their life.

People have a hard time with the idea that caning or standing on the street with a sandwich board detailing your crime can be the empathic answer. Better than letting you hurt others, and letting the crime harden you until you need harsher responses.

> Like serial shoplifters, first-time drunk drivers, non-violent drug dealers…

Then non-violent drug dealer has to mean someone selling something that can't kill or seriously injure you. Fentanyl dealers might as well be selling arsenic and should be treated accordingly.

Drunk driving kills too. The intent here is that small-time drug dealing, like drunk driving, is something easy to slip into—especially if you are an addict yourself and in debt. Of course the bigger dealers should get worse.

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