Police declare riot at Seattle protests, make arrests

[WingedHussar]

I prefer solutions that actually stop them from committing crimes.

 

[Balto1]

Your declaration that they are bad, does not make them so.

This is correct. Their effects on children make them bad, not my declaration.

 

[RhodesianSon]

I don’t think anyone disputes that the majority of crimes are committed due to economic hardship. At least not anyone I take seriously.

 

[Regular_Atheist]

If you can accept that then I sincerely think it’s plausible to imagine the end of most crime.

 

[JonNC]

“…as long as America postpones justice, we stand in the position of having these recurrences of violence and riots over and over again.”

This was not an incitement of violence, but a recognition that the changes at that time were playing out.
MLK would not approve of the actions of BLM and Antifa.

 

[JonNC]

Lots of crime stems from personal financial issues, or larger issues with economics

Was that the case during the a Great Depression? Seems to me that if this was the case, crime would have been off the charts nationwide at that time b

 

[josie_L]

Bull. Man does not live on bread alone.

 

[Pat_Albertson]

 

[RhodesianSon]

I disagree. Mainly because people are flawed regardless of how materially comfortable they are. Without some kind of purpose in life even people who have all their material needs met will still harm others.

 

[pnewton]

It’s not up to me, it’s part of a process that includes the victim.

So why support all these protests? Based on this, not locking up police who kill people, and letting the family of victims work through their grief while giving the police counseling should be sufficient for their crimes as well.

There is is the rub. Justice is not just about punishment, but about limiting punishment. Committing a petty crime should not get you shot. However, if we do away with punishment, then there is not a way to punish those who kill the purse snatcher, or attack and kill the person for jogging while black. If anyone thinks a loosening of the laws will somehow help black people, they are not familiar with history. It is only throw the force of law that integration occurred. It is only through the force of law that lynchings were finally punished. Lawlessness will never help the poor, the needy, or the disenfranchised of any race or religion. The greater the level of anarchy, the greater the level of violence against the all people.

Without prisons and a justice system society would be worse. Police that care little for the civil rights of others, looking askance at people of color, will no longer be police, but they will still be there, and be free. The police uniform might come off, but the robes could again be worn in public, and there would not be any agency to stop them, no prison to send them to.

 

[pnewton]

@Balto1, let me ask you something. Since mental hospitals for criminals getting treatment are also locked down, do you see the possibility for something in between for juveniles? As it is, juvenile facilities are not like adult prisons. Perhaps some compromise could be reached where only those who present a danger to others, exclude those committing vice crimes like drug possession, and make it more like a school/hospital?

I would have no objection to a re-branding and re-purposing of such facilities to a youth rehabilitation center. I would suggest that there would be even a benefit for keeping non-violent offenders out of them, as fewer patients would make rehab easier, and those who are not currently violent, do not need the influence of those who are.

 

[KMC]

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[Suudy]

I don’t think anyone disputes that the majority of crimes are committed due to economic hardship. At least not anyone I take seriously.

This is a broad claim. Crime is committed by, well, criminals, and as such by people less averse to breaking laws. That economic hardship may or may not exist seems to be a tangential issue and only one of several factors that lead to crime. It may be a factor, but not the factor.

Perhaps some you may take seriously, like Walter Williams or Thomas Sowell would demonstrate that crime, especially violent crime, is not solely or even primarily due to economics. But due to a difference in culture and attitude.

What the Media, Academics Get Wrong When They Blame Crime Rate on Poverty, Discrimination

They say the cause is poverty and discrimination. But here are the facts they ignore.

www.dailysignal.com

Academics and the media blame poverty and discrimination for today’s crime. No one bothers to ask why crime was falling in the 1930s, ’40s, and ’50s, when blacks faced far greater poverty and discrimination.

Thomas Sowell Talks About Discrimination, Race, And Social Justice

The famed economist and social theorist sat down to talk about race, discrimination, crime rates, and cultural attitude shifts.

thefederalist.com

Now, the white population in the American South has had a higher violent crime rate than the white population of the rest of the country. Nor is this unusual. The murder rates in Eastern Europe have for centuries been some multiple of the murder rates in Western Europe. Like so many things that should theoretically be equal, they’re not, and they never have been.

Now, of course, over 90 percent of blacks in the U.S. came out of the South at some point in history. And so it’s not surprising that they bring many of the same cultural attitudes of Southern Whites to the North, East and wherever else they settle.

Sowell: Welfare state no ‘favor’ to blacks

Columnist Thomas Sowell argues that the creation of the welfare state was no favor to black people in the U.S..

www.eastbaytimes.com

This is ultimately not a racial thing. Exactly the same welfare-state policies and the same non-judgmental exemption from behavioral standards in Britain have led to remarkably similar results among lower-class whites there.

The riots of lower-class whites in London, Manchester and other British cities in 2011 were incredibly similar to black riots in Ferguson, Baltimore and other American cities.

The Cultural Roots of Crime

A conversation about the rise and fall of violence in America with criminal-justice scholar Barry Latzer.

www.theatlantic.com

The cultural explanation for violence is superior to explanations that rest of poverty or racism, however, because it can account for the differentials in the violent-crime rates of groups with comparable adversities. My favorite illustration of this is the Haitian situation in 1980s Miami. Here was a group of black people coming to the U.S. illegally in makeshift boats. They had a brutal history of slavery, and were illiterate in English, impoverished, and unwelcome. Yet their violent-crime rates were much lower than those of African Americans living in the same city in the same time period. If cultural differences don’t explain this, then what does?

 

[RhodesianSon]

Most crimes being theft or property crime I assumed would make obvious I wasn’t talking about violent crime.

 

[Suudy]

Most crimes being theft or property crime I assumed would make obvious I wasn’t talking about violent crime.

I didn’t take that as the context, especially given the thread topic. And vandalism is a form of property crime that I don’t think could have any economic explanation.

And while theft is the single largest category of crime, it is not at all clear that theft is motivated by economic hardship or even material need. Given the abundance of social welfare programs and the very small segment of the population that is not eligible or not receiving such benefits, it seems more likely that greed or a distorted sense of entitlement.

 

[Theo520]

The crime in Seattle was building a child prison, the people of Seattle were just stopping a crime in progress.

Children aren’t in the juvie facility, it has adolescents and young adults in their early 20’s.

They are convicted of real crimes and sincerely earned their ‘time out’ in the facility. They are not sent there for trivial matters.

If a child is that much of a dangerous threat then they require mental health treatment, not prison.

What are you proposing? I’ve not heard of these magic mental health treatments.

If they actually existed (IRL), they would be in use already to prevent the crimes that land these youth in detention.

 

[Theo520]

Most crimes being theft or property crime I assumed would make obvious I wasn’t talking about violent crime.

Seattle doesn’t bother to prosecute teens for property and drug crimes, unless they are severe and repeated.

 

[RhodesianSon]

I’m glad I don’t live there