[swearwolf]

1.) Though this is becoming an increasingly popular viewpoint in many of the American cities that are experiencing these problems right now, it’s far from universally held.

2.) The U.S. is not a monolith, so looking at the prison population of the United States as a whole doesn’t tell you about what’s going on in an individual state or city.

3.) The number of people incarcerated has a long tail. In the U.S. in particular, many people received long sentences during the years following the ‘94 crime bill. Little if any effort is being made to commute these despite policies centered on new incarceration changing.

4.) In the places where reduced incarceration is being tried in the U.S. it’s important to recognize that it’s being tried effectively in a vacuum. In many other places which are able to sustain low incarceration rates, there are a lot of social programs that help make that possible, and also programs to help people rehabilitate after a conviction. The U.S. has little if any of that. Where reduced incarceration is being tried, it’s usually not replaced with something that’s more effective.

[wing-_-nuts]

I consider myself a liberal, but while I think pretty much all drug possession charges should be dropped and decriminalized, violent crime? Robbery? Those folks should absolutely be in jail. I don't care if we have to build tent cities to incarcerate them. You hurt someone intentionally, you should not be breathing free air for a while.

[bluescrn]

The problem area seems to be property crime without direct violence.

It can ruin the victims life just as much as non-lethal violence (taking away a person's source of income, or transport required to keep a job, or wrecking a business they've spent many years building), but many take the 'it's only property, it's probably insured!' attitude.

And many at least see stealing from 'big nasty corporations' as relatively OK. But if people keep stealing from businesses until they close down or relocate and there's no easy shoplifting targets, will the thieves stop, or will they move on to stealing from homes?

[nullc]

> 'it's only property, it's probably insured!'

Insurance increases the expected cost of loss! -- the insurer would go broke if they were charging less than that.

So yeah, sure, it can save you from the boundary effect of it instantly wreaking your life but only by putting you at a constant disadvantage to people who live in less crime prone areas or whom are wealthy enough to self insure against such loss.

[throwaway57443]

And very often small mom and pop shops aren't insured

[throwaway57443]

"it's only property, it's probably insured!"

People who say this don't have real jobs; not the type of jobs where they'll end up on pain killers when they retire. They have laptop jobs on the softer side of intellectual rigor.

Money is time traded from your life, health traded from your body to your employer. Stealing property is literally stealing the purpose of hours of grueling work.

[giantg2]

'it's only property, it's probably insured!'

I wonder why insurance is so high...

[thephyber]

I almost had to sit for a jury trial. Guy stole things worth less than $950, was likely homeless, the prosecution took 22 months to build a case and failed to leverage a plea bargain, named about 30 law enforcement officers and/or forensics specialists as potential witnesses, and jury selection started with 100 citizens and took 4+ days, then the judge claimed it would take 6 weeks to try the case.

The problem isn’t just insurance. It’s that prosecution is insanely slow and is far more harmful to society than the actual crime.

[giantg2]

"and is far more harmful to society than the actual crime."

I doubt the victims see it that way. If we just let people steal, it can turn into a runaway chain reaction due to a lack of consequences.

[rini17]

You imply that if you were the victim, watching such byzantine process to recover mere hundreds of dollars would feel satisfying to you?

[naijaboiler]

That's not how society works.

[nxm]

O why there are food deserts when stores continue to get robbed without any meaningful repercussions for the thieves

[bee_rider]

It should also be noted that locking people up puts them in contact with a bunch of convicted criminals. Making weed illegal put a bunch of otherwise harmless people in a situation where they wanted to do illegal business.

The liberal position—don’t make relatively harmless stuff illegal—is one way to reduce the amount of crime.

Sure, lock up people who do violent crimes (I mean, get them out of society while we try to figure out if we can get them psychological help), but instead of doing something dystopian like tent prison cities, just let out the people who shouldn’t be there in the first place.

(All that is to say, I agree with you, just think we should focus on the part that will benefit society).

[qingcharles]

Having spent a considerable portion of my adult life imprisoned, I don't think the contact with other criminals increases a person's penchant for criminality. I think the incarceration itself does though by essentially fucking your entire life up and resetting you to a hard zero. And while you are inside you are not making any improvement to your life, e.g. skill building, improving your emotional intelligence; and in fact you are usually letting any skills you might have had stagnate and deteriorate beyond use.

[quad_eye_oh]

I think some of this political conflict is over what constitutes a harmless or victimless or nonviolent crime.

In the past year I've seen different people claim that hemp consumption, property crime, and even intimidation with a firearm were nonviolent and that their perpetrators were merely marginalized individuals who need social assistance rather than prosecution.

I think GP's point is that even property crime is not victimless: It hurts everyone, it makes society worse, and it likely hurts the people at the bottom of society disproportionately.

But I may add, then, that the reformers have the burden of showing evidence for their position: they need to demonstrate that it is possible to have a low-crime, low-prosecution, high social net city somewhere in the US. I'm beginning to suspect that they are missing some critical component which is required to make such a system work for everyone.

[cdogl]

Hemp consumption _is_ non violent. I agree with your overall sentiment but that inclusion made me squint.

[quad_eye_oh]

That's my point, that some people will draw the line at things that are objectively nonviolent, and others will draw it at things that are objectively very close to violent. Actually come to think of it, violence is really just a proxy for harm to others.

[justinclift]

Just to point out:

> ... property crime is not victimless: It hurts everyone ...

"victimless" and "hurts everyone" are both at the two extreme, opposite ends of a spectrum.

It's fairly likely some of the property crimes occurring could be somewhere in the middle.

[_v7gu]

Well, good thing is that rehabilitation is the central goal of correctional systems; so you can send thiefs/etc to prison without feeling guilty. This is not a problem that requires a novel solution; almost every other rich country has this sorted out. The central issue US has to fix is reorient prisons around this goal, instead of trying to exploit the slave labor loophole in your constitution.

[mindslight]

The fundamental problem is that the misguided attempt to criminalize drugs destroyed respect for the law for generations. Once you're at risk of being locked in a cage for decades for engaging in behavior that would otherwise just be called running a small business, then robbery isn't a huge leap. Especially after your industry ends up creating its own parallel justice system because the usual courts have been made unavailable.

So yes, while drugs should be deillegalized and those crimes expunged, this is only but a first step on a long road to repairing the severe damage that was done to actual law and order by the very people fallaciously rallying behind "law and order" in the 80's and 90's.

[flextheruler]

I don’t have a problem with some drugs being state regulated and I know it would reduce violence but the harder drugs should never be state sold we already have huge issues with alcohol which is a very hard drug. Acting as if lone actors serving narcotics or prostitutes are regular small business owner is an insult to legitimate entrepreneurs

[mindslight]

There are other ways to handle abuse and addiction besides trying to prohibit a widely-desired substance. You rightfully point out that some people have huge problems with alcohol. The solution isn't just to blanket make it illegal (with the ensuing chaos that would/did cause), but rather directly address the acute harm caused by the people with the problems.

Ultimately the reason we consider some things natural rights isn't to create some prescriptive model that we imagine as the shape an enlightened society will take. Rather it's due to the inevitable ugliness when government attempts to legislate into individual autonomy, and people react en masse. And the results of the "drug war" have most certainly been quite ugly!

[cdogl]

Aside from the legality, what’s different between a liquor store owner and a weed dealer? You may disagree with their breaking the law, but commerce is commerce, and this is victimless except with regard to the rule of law.

[Tyrek]

Yeah, locking up Elizabeth Holmes and SBF for running a small business will destroy respect for the law for generations. How dare we?!

[EliRivers]

You hurt someone intentionally, you should not be breathing free air for a while.

Genuine question; is that only physically? If I like causing people pain and anguish and suffering, and my weapon of choice is words, should I also be incarcerated because I hurt people intentionally? I tend towards not giving people a free pass simply because their weapon of choice is words, but (amongst other things) the US has a reputation for being very permissive with the spoken word.

[bilvar]

Please don't equate words with physical violence. It's Orwellian and the only purpose it serves is to destabilize society.

[bavell]

Agreed with the sibling comments, physical violence is an entirely different beast than verbal "violence".

[DiggyJohnson]

Sticks and stones may break my bones…

I think there is a massive difference between physical violence (and property crime) and words. What sort of words are you envisioning here?

[filoleg]

> If I like causing people pain and anguish and suffering, and my weapon of choice is words, should I also be incarcerated because I hurt people intentionally?

No, you shouldn't be incarcerated for that. You would be an asshole if you intentionally caused people anguish with your words, but being an asshole is not a crime (and shouldn't be).

[naijaboiler]

Or I'm a greedy or incompe exec taking silly risks and now people are out of a livelihood and are hurting because of my actions

[lesuorac]

Prison is where criminals go. Jail is where people not convicted of a crime go.

Drug Offenses are nearly half the prison population [1]. So the prison population can decrease by significant amounts without releasing any violent criminals.

[1]: https://www.bop.gov/about/statistics/statistics_inmate_offen...

[kooshball]

> Drug Offenses are nearly half the prison population

this is not true. your data is federal only. most prisoners are at state prisons. drug offense is about 1/5 of total.

source https://www.prisonpolicy.org/reports/pie2023.html

[dotancohen]

A reduction of 20% is most certainly significant.

[shjake]

What proportion of them are in prison for possession of small/personal amounts?

And is imprisoning people who are smuggling/distributing hard and potentially very dangerous drugs really that controversial?

[dotancohen]

I have no idea, I don't live there. I'm responding to the assertion that 1/5 is not significant.