> On Twitter, Reddit, and real life, the majority of people keep complaining about crime, drugs, homelessness.
Maybe I’m misunderstanding your comment but in the US, these issues are the result of conservative politics.
Maybe I’m misunderstanding your comment but in the US, these issues are the result of conservative politics.
You’ll find a lot of “lock em up and throw away the key! … But not my son. Or my daughter. Or my nephew and his children and my former coworker. Or my pastor’s children. But everyone else, yeah”
The difference between approaches isn't "lock them up / don't" or "my kids / their kids". It's not a left/right or conservative/liberal divide, it's on another axis - more about the philosophical difference of personal vs group responsibility and meaning vs nihilism.
We need to look at the path these front running cities are taking, and where everyone else will be dragged, to see the difference. The same cities which refuse to lock up a violent junkie will lock up a parent who complains too loudly to the school board. It's not that they aren't authoritarian, often more than conservatives. It's that they don't feel there's any degradation of the individual which is ultimately wrong. Like, an individual can "choose" to be a street whore and die painfully from heroin. That's valid. This is how all junkies eventually live and die, and without a strong moral consensus that this is all bad - for the junkie and society and that we must stop it, you can't make progress on the base issues.
Vancouver will leave a junkie in their own vomit, to continue hitting the drugs that almost killed them, because "nobody should be committed against their will" but it will fine or confine an otherwise fit college student who drinks in public, or who commits any of the other offenses the junkie is committing (littering, starting fires on the sidewalk, having a violent dog, openly carrying a weapon, and so forth). The junkie has somehow "chosen" his or her role and now it's a beautiful thing, like a butterfly, that should be left to unfold, unmolested, in the parks.
Portugal, often held out as a utopia for drug users, has a "not even once in public" policy where they will jail you and assign you to a multi-year rehab program. They know nobody wants to die in their own vomit, in the street.
We need to regain the compassion we've thrown away in the "everything is okay!" anti-conservative backlash such that we can help people in obvious distress. Once we all look at things that way we can see that our policies won't actually be too different, or rather, it doesn't matter if they are and we can work in a spirit of cooperation from different angles rather than fighting about the issue itself.
Ultimately, Portugal is a more liberal society (for drug users) than Vancouver.
Fentanyl is cut with other drugs and there's no fentanyl distribution that I can see. Care to provide a source? The drug is extremely potent to be consumed alone.
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Here's a DEA warning about mass overdose events from Fentanyl "Fentanyl-related mass-overdose events, characterized as three or more overdoses occurring close in time and at the same location, have happened in at least seven American cities in recent months, resulting in 58 overdoses and 29 deaths. Cities impacted include Wilton Manors, Florida; Austin, Texas; Cortez, Colorado; Commerce City, Colorado; Omaha, Nebraska; St. Louis, Missouri; and Washington, D.C."
I don't' see SF or LA mentioned here. I'm sure some of these are Democrat controlled but You are claiming that liberal policies cause an increase in overdoses. Do you have a source for your death rates?
https://www.dea.gov/press-releases/2022/04/06/dea-warns-incr...
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Top 10 states by drug overdose in 2020 (latest year for this source)
West Virginia 81.4 1,330 Kentucky 49.2 2,083 Delaware 47.3 444 Ohio 47.2 5,204 Tennessee 45.6 3,034 Maryland 44.6 2,771 Louisiana 42.7 1,896 Pennsylvania 42.4 5,168 Maine 39.7 496 Connecticut 39.1 v1,371
https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/pressroom/sosmap/drug_poisoning_mor...
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"We need to regain the compassion we've thrown away in the "everything is okay!" anti-conservative backlash such that we can help people in obvious distress."
Ant-conservative backlash? Republicans, as in elected officials, are calling their political opponents pedophiles and communists. They claim guns are going to be taken away for the last 40 years guess what actually gets banned? Abortion. Multiple Republicans are still lying about election fraud and you wonder why there's a backlash?
I'm generally not in the USA so I'm trying to speak of things more internationally, and broader than just the divisive Dem/Rep mob.
And no, the backlash I'm talking about is the last eighty or more years. The hippies are boomers, after all.
> Top 10 states by drug overdose ...
I'm not talking about deaths but deaths that society encourages. What would happen in that area if you tried to shoot up in front of a cop?
> there's no fentanyl distribution that I can see. Care to provide a source?
The programs aren't very well documented because they're "just" a doctor treating their patients, many of whom they never meet. The newspaper articles aren't great. Here's a transcript of the Alberta government examining Vancouver's drug situation for the purposes of setting their own policies. There are also other days of testimony and citizen input if you look around. https://docs.assembly.ab.ca/LADDAR_files/docs/committees/ess...
> The drug is extremely potent to be consumed alone.
Yeah. The dealers intentionally kill a few every now and then as an ad for their product and they manipulate the potency in competition with other dealers. The police warn non drug users that a cheap street dose is many times more likely to kill an inexperienced user than a similar dose from a decade ago.
"The police warn non drug users that a cheap street dose is many times more likely to kill an inexperienced user than a similar dose from a decade ago."
This is a conspiracy theory. Evidence?
And about your first comment, I'm showing numbers of deaths, you're claiming that some part of that is encouraged and that percentage is higher for liberal cities. But the death rate doesn't correlate either way. So it doesn't make sense, even if it was encouraged apparently it's not making things worse
Most of what you said is speculation and you haven't provided meaningful evidence besides linking to a paper in another country.
Because the cities literally follow the same public policy. Don't arrest for "simple usage", camping on the streets is allowed, etc. They're getting advice from the same people. But yes, the USA does not that I know, have vending machines for drugs yet, that's still afaik a Canadian thing. In the USA you have to go to a "clinic" and ask a worker for your dose by hand and generally they want you to consume the drug there.
> [Street doses growing in strength] is a conspiracy theory.
Not even a little. I'm not talking about the why or the who. When tested the bags sold contain more active drug and many first-time users are reported dying when generally opioids (read erowid, etc) don't do that.
> Evidence?
Your googling fingers are busted but the ones you use to complain are working?
> Most of what you said is speculation and you haven't provided meaningful evidence besides linking to a paper
No, I've provided enough evidence to show that things are run by people who don't know what they're doing and are misrepresenting the studies to the city. If you can't find the public documents talking about your own cities you aren't trying hard enough.
> in another country.
Lol, so sorry the world doesn't end at your borders.
It's not my job in a debate to provide evidence for your arguments
"Lol, so sorry the world doesn't end at your borders."
We are discussing American politics
We're also discussing drugs and the lib/con divide which aren't in the article either. I didn't respond to you originally, you responded to me which means you adopt the discussion at that point - or did you intend to reply elsewhere?
Also, this is how you stay uninformed. Refusing to look to countries who are a few years ahead of you on a policy cycle. Drugs are drugs no matter the country.
> [not my job] to provide evidence for your arguments
You don't have to. I fully supported my argument, it's not my fault you can't read Canadian.
It's as valid for me to quote Vancouver as a model for SF and LA as it was for Vancouver to reference Amsterdam twenty years ago.
Here's just one set of statistics-Most Murders 2022
St. Louis, MO (69.4)
Baltimore, MD (51.1)
New Orleans, LA (40.6)
Detroit, MI (39.7)
Cleveland, OH (33.7)
Las Vegas, NV (31.4)
Kansas City, MO (31.2)
Memphis, TN (27.1)
https://worldpopulationreview.com/us-city-rankings/cities-wi...
Additionally, politics and policies exist at the national level as well and can influence what happens in even liberal cities.
The ‘clearances paradox’: could less policing actually reduce gun violence in New York?
Your over simplifying the complex reasons behind crime.
Violent antisocial behaviour presents itself in a small percentage of young (mostly) males. It can be predicted as early as age 4 and effective intervention is very difficult. Most people who present with it tend to age out of the behaviour by around 30. Therefore the only effective strategy to protect the rest of us from this tiny fraction of people is to confine them until they age out. This is basically what our criminal justice system does, however imperfectly.
If we were to design a system eyes-open, knowing these constraints, with the goal of minimizing violent crime, we'd:
1. Enact age-based confinement - teenagers who present with violent antisocialism are very likely to reoffend in their 20s. Violent teenagers and young adults should be confined until they've aged out.
2. Structure prison culture - prison should not be crime university. Criminals should not be permitted to form a culture. Violent antisocialism should not be tolerated in prison. Instead they should be given the tools to find a legitimate place in society upon their eventual release. Japan does this quite well.
3. Seal records after release - criminal records relating to youth-associated violent antisocialism should be sealed. People we release should have a clear path to reintegration without discrimination.
That won't fix everything, of course. People will get involved in crime for other reasons. Obviously there are rich people who are criminals; financial security doesn't remove every temptation to do crime. But I think a lot of the people you label "antisocial" these days are people who have been left behind by society, people who have gotten crushed by wages that haven't kept up with inflation (even before the current inflation issues), by companies who raise CEO pay and send dividends to investors, while ignoring the wages of their employees. Why would anyone bother to be "social" if doing so doesn't solve their economic insecurity?
And sure, there are some people who just don't give a shit about living in polite society, who don't think twice about violating norms and taking what they want. I have no problem locking those people up. But I think those people are a much smaller percentage of people who commit crimes than you think.
I don't know much about policing in Israel, but as I understand Japan, there's rampant corruption and a lot of innocent people behind bars. A near-100% conviction rate is just too good to be true. If you get charged with a crime in Japan, you are screwed, even if you didn't do anything wrong. The only alternative explanation is that Japanese police are so afraid of losing a case that they only charge the near-certain slam dunks. But if that were the case, I think we'd see a lot more crime in Japan than we do. So the only realistic explanation is that a lot of innocent people get steamrolled.
I do absolutely agree with your points 2 and 3. Time spent in prison should not make convicts into better criminals! Hell, even sitting in pre-trial detention for a few months can harden minor offenders. And after a prisoner has served their time, they shouldn't have that history dragged into employment, housing, credit, etc. decisions. If we still feel like they can't be trusted in jobs without their employers knowing about their conviction history, then they probably aren't fit to be released from prison in the first place.
These are not mutually exclusive propositions. As I mentioned in my comment, there are two concerns here:
1. Reducing the number of violent antisocial people by reducing the number of people who are exposed to childhood circumstances that tend to produce them. This is complicated and entails dictating to parents how they raise their children to a much higher degree than most people are comfortable, and than our society's values permit.
2. Dealing with the ones who already exist. This is policing and justice.
> the people you label "antisocial" these days are people who have been left behind by society
> It's the economy, stupid
If only it were this simple. I'm referring to people who haven't been correctly socialized in their early childhood. Toddlers are all violent, self centered, assholes by adult standards. They learn not to be through appropriate socialization with their peers, through play. Children who are not given this developmental opportunity past a particular age tend to exhibit traits that strongly correlate with violence in early adulthood. This is exacerbated by numerous domestic factors, most importantly the absence of two parents in the household and the presence of violent antisocial adults in the household (not household income).
We can observe these same traits and behaviours develop in our ape relatives for the same reasons. We're not that different.
> I think those people are a much smaller percentage of people who commit crimes than you think
This just isn't true - this small percentage of people are the serial criminals responsible for most of the real danger in our society - shootings, armed home invasions, armed robberies, etc. These sorts of crimes are largely not committed by people who are "down and out", but by people who are in many ways fundamentally different from the average person. I'm not talking about petty theft here.
This can be most clearly illustrated by the phenomenon of college campus rape. The rapes themselves are committed by a tiny fraction of repeat offenders. "Teach men not to rape" doesn't work on them. They're just not like most people, mostly as a result of some combination of tragic childhood circumstances and poor socialization (again, not household wealth). The best solution is to identify these people and imprison them as efficiently as possible. To enact this solution effectively, the people we entrust with it need power.
This is a tired trope.