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by pllbnk 15 days ago
I think it's an important distinction whether crime stops happening after all criminals are locked up or after preventative measures are taken to prevent criminal activity happening in the first place.

When criminals are locked up, they will get released and many of them don't have anything else to do other than returning to do crimes, with gained experience from the previous failures.

But it's possible to reduce crime by preventing it. Do not let dangerous districts form, build communities, reduce access to weapons and so on.

1 comments

This is one of those ideas that gets thrown around and fits into one of two categories:

- Massive money sink that shows no results: See SF during covid and a bit after - Dystopian policies that tank crime but flagrantly violate peoples rights: see stop and frisk, El Salvador, etc

Some people are going to be criminals no matter how much money you give them. I would argue that especially in functioning countries, the returns on carrot approaches to crime reduction are magnitudes weaker than stick ones.