Discussion about this post

User's avatar
Del Cross v's avatar

Your premises are sound. The revolving door of non-incarceration needs to stop. Glad Kim Foxx is finally gone.

"Our problem is one of an unwillingness to enforce the rule of law, and one of a deep culture of violence in this country, accelerated by the prevalence of guns, not material poverty."

I'm not sure "prevalence of guns" is causative- N.B. in the UK they just swapped guns out for knives. Here, like places in downstate Illinois, there're lots of guns, but low crime.

We did try the eliminating poverty aspect with "The Great Society" and things got worse. What needs to happen are two things IMHO:

1. criminals need to be incarcerated for a long time or take a short drop with a sudden stop- pour encourager les autres.

2. people need to be invested in their communities through employment, religion or both. It's more a cultural problem than an economic one. Bronzeville was a better place in the pre LBJ.

Expand full comment
Josh's avatar

I have this theory that both parties are soft on crime for distinct reasons, both rooted in their respective forms of libertarianism. On the one hand, many people are total softies on guns, way more than is reasonable given the bulk of evidence on the links between guns and crime as well as being anti-tax which puts a ceiling on what is even achievable through public policy.

On the other hand, the left-wing term for libertarianism is just anarchism, which basically means that the government causes crime in the form of dubious causal analyses that suggest that police in fact increase crime, basically getting the causation backwards.

I suggest to liberals something of a norquist-pledge: Liberalism implies a huge role of the government in daily life, and I reject any and all forms of libertarianism. Crime should be taken as seriously as poverty is.

Expand full comment
37 more comments...

No posts