I'm seeing this in nyc right now. Twice this week I've witnessed people acting violently in public. They know there will be no repercussions, and everyone else does too.
Personally, the reason I don't rob stores is that it's a waste of time. Software development is easier and pays far better than robbery. There's no moral aspect to it.
If other people are robbing stores, they must be in a position where they think robbery is their most profitable option. Maybe they are desperate and need money today, maybe they don't have the skills to do anything more useful. In any case, that type of situation should never happen.
>Twice this week I've witnessed people acting violently in public. They know there will be no repercussions
It's not that they know there will be no repercussions, it's that they have nothing to lose. They don't have a career to keep or money or a house or the respect of others. They aren't integrated with society. You don't see politicians or executives doing this.
Or put another way: what's the reward for good behavior? It should be much, much higher than the reward for crime, to the extent that people would never commit crimes simply because it's not a good use of their time.
Yes, well, where I grew up there were plenty of people with nothing to lose that behaved civilly. Because if they didn't, cops took care of business and the perpetrator would walk away with a broken nose or rib or two, while the mentally ill would be locked up in asylums. It seems that in SF these options are not available for various reasons.
(edit: so I guess they did have something to lose).
A new DA will take time to right this ship. At least the new one has intention to arrest crime where the other one was sympathetic to criminals.
The second disaster as you refer to: criminals don't care if they are caught. Criminals unlike Hollywood says are kinda dumb and desperate. You can put them in jail for shop lifting for a few months at society's expense but they'll just do it again.
I will admit Amsterdam is certainly not a bit as safe as the Hague/Rotterdam/Delft in my experience, but even then it appears (to me) to be relatively tame.
But I have no idea about what is stolen, where it ends up, etc… I’m sure someone does this, but it isn’t widely publicized, probably for good reason.
If you have large numbers of mentally ill and/or drug addicted people living on the streets with little to lose then it's pretty easy to do a DDOS to the rest of society.
Like drug dealing, you really want to catch the people a couple of steps up the chain, as the people on the frontline are just disposable cannon fodder and easily replaceable.