The abolish prisons before neighborhoods are actually safe thing is... ridiculous. You have to uplift the communities before you can have a jail free system. You can't just jump straight to jail free.
Most of the "abolish prison" types appear to be the super left wing which is like.... not a lot of NYC and mostly concentrated in Manhattan (hence Adam's win in all the other boroughs).
I'm hoping, if done well, and with out treating minorities like shit, that the NYPD being all over the subway will be effective in making NYers feel safe on the subway again (I think the crime wave was a bit overblown but it did get a bit seedier for sure), and maybe get the NYPD and the communities to a decent place.
That'd be a nice win for the city.
At least with the subway in LA the way the cops currently patrol it is pretty useless. I've seen four cops talking amongst themselves about 100 feet just on the other side of a stairwell from where someone was using a creme brule torch to light up a glass pipe for their buddy in the middle of the train platform. I see hard drugs smoked probably once or twice a week and I'm going during the 9-5, I can't imagine how much more is smoked during off peak hours when the stations are much more dead.
It seems like subway security is better solved by just having someone sit in a room looking at all the camera feeds in the station (there are already cameras everywhere on every corner but evidently they aren't used for much), seeing when someone is clearly hitting a crack rock or prying into a maintenance power outlet, and sending someone down to respond to what was seen on the video feed just now. Otherwise, people aren't dumb, they will just quiet down when they see a cop and start acting out again as soon as the cop is out of sight or earshot. Cops will also not care to do anything unless they literally saw it occur in front of their eyes, so having them be directed by a video operator at least serves as a record.
It seems like cops in California at least are pretty ambivalent about doing any sort of petty policing, in stark contrast to the cops out east. Here in California I've never seen anyone pulled over on the highways at all. Meanwhile out east, I know people who've been pulled over for going a few mph over, or hanging out in the left lane too long, or "swerving" allegedly, and going on to see their vehicles searched with their possessions tossed to the side of the road like they are at a gestapo checkpoint. If they are walking outside late at night the cop rolls up slow and follows them for some time, then flicks their lights on to ask them where they think they are heading at this time, hoping to stick a public intoxication charge or follow up on a warrant presumably. There's definitely some happy medium between not enforcing the law at all and having a fascist power complex to ruin people's lives using the law, and I hope saner times in the future strike that balance.
[1] https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2022-11-04/is-it-saf...
We'll see if it's any different this time. I think it's in response to the uptick described in that article.
Sucks if you jump a turnstile in front of a police officer, they'll certainly stop you for that stuff.
We can’t close Rikers because NIMBYs veto new smaller jail locations, prison abolitionists also block them, and law and order types want Rikers to stay open.
We can’t build housing because NIMBYs block new development, DSA types hate any private development and fight it, and the narrow slice ultra-conservative types don’t want the mandatory affordable units …
It’s just awful, and we can’t have nice things as a result.
Example: I agree with Republicans on some things, like prosecuting thieves which my local (Seattle) Democrats don't care about. But if I were to publicly state my interest in anything right-aligned, my peers would round me all the way up and think I hate women or something.
Rikers is another example where the prison abolitionists are coming together with law and order types who like Rikers. It makes no sense for these leftist prions abolitionists to partner with MAGA types in Staten Island but here we are.
We obviously need some jails, but at the same time your incarceration rate in NYC is 5x higher than my city. Would reducing jail sentence terms and providing some leniency at sentencing not be an option? Is everybody just a hardened criminal over there?
edit:
I know you mention this
> carceral reform (good thing, more complicated in reality)
It's obviously not as simple as just "reduce jail terms", but it seems like the thing to demand when your government is jailing such a huge amount of the population comparatively. Even when you compare against 3rd world and authoritarian countries it's just too large of a number -- it can't be that the Americans are just built so they commit crime more. Why would you not want more of your citizens to live fuller, more accomplished lives rather than rotting in shitty prisons?
This is really what needs to happen. However, the U.S. criminal justice system is geared toward severe sentencing. One reason is that the U.S. is the only country in the world (AFAIK) that guarantees jury trials for even petty criminal offenses.[1] So when a crime is prosecuted, both the police and government are strongly incentivized to make it count, thus the felony inflation to secure multi-year sentences, and to dissuade criminals from overburdening the system by demanding jury trials in minor cases.
> it can't be that the Americans are just built so they commit crime more.
The number of people the U.S. newly incarcerates each year is comparable with many other European countries, such as the U.K. However, the sentence lengths are 3-5x longer. In the U.K., ~80% of all prisoners are released within 1 year. This is almost certainly related to the fact that (AFAIU) the U.K. only grants jury trials for indictable offenses, or what in the U.S. we still generally call felonies. IOW, lesser offenses are more economical to prosecute in the U.K. and so that's where the emphasis lies.
In civil systems with even fewer procedural safeguards than the U.K., such as France, where it's easier to convict and jail someone, including pre-trial, sentence lengths are even shorter.
Unfortunately, American constitutional criminal rights protections have helped to build a system which is too lenient on the one-hand--petty and misdemeanor crimes don't see much attention--and too harsh on the other--when the government decides to prosecute, they prosecute hard.
[1] NYC is a rare exception, due to an esoteric New York State law that permits NYC to prosecute many misdemeanors without a jury trial. Probably not coincidentally, NYC sentence lengths and its incarceration rate are lower than other comparable U.S. cities.
- don't live here (it appears you live in Europe?) - don't know anything about the local politics - don't want to listen when anyone tries to tell them - don't know much about the justice system (including the difference between jail vs prison) - use ham-fisted statistics like national incarceration rates but... - don't account for enormous variables (hint: guns), or... - weighting of prior sentences (it's a rolling average obviously)
But surprise! they want to squeeze every story into a large conversation so they can take the moral high ground against straw man arguments no one was making. Like this one:
> Why would you not want more of your citizens to live fuller, more accomplished lives rather than rotting in shitty prisons?
You took time out of your day to write that comment to some that told you they supported carceral reform. Heck, you even quoted me saying that I wanted carceral reform and thought "Nah, this guy needs my input about on whether we should let people rot in prison."
Here's a policy recommendation: don't run your mouth on topics you don't know much about. Greetings from New York.
Instead of trying to treat the conversation as having value to both parties it became another instant for you to come in and moralize about a situation you don’t understand.
How incredibly arrogant of you.
(I suppose you think being called out on your arrogance is also “uncivilized”; once more you would be wrong)
> they want to squeeze every story into a large conversation so they can take the moral high ground against straw man arguments
> Here's a policy recommendation: don't run your mouth on topics you don't know much about
I am not insane in thinking this is an abrasive way of presenting one's arguments.
We can be civil and yet abrasively disagree. That’s… sort of the point of civility.
If you can’t handle discussing ideas or accept that you might offend others with your ignorance then perhaps don’t engage in conversations.
So the thinking goes.
Reforming the justice process depends on the will of the electorate. Since the above sentiment is so core to the American culture and values, it's not likely to change much.
So take this article with an enormous grain of salt. And ymmv, but articles that simultaneously play to green energy projects (good thing) and carceral reform (good thing, more complicated in reality) are likely high-minded click-bait.