Piggybacking on this thread, is stealing a common thing across the whole of the US or is it restricted to some areas? I keep getting asked how people in n San Francisco are living with crime so rampant and they send a video of gangs stealing from a store/mall.
Right, so this is a hugely political issue right now. Don't be surprised to get wildly differing answers. Republicans are pointing at public disorder and screaming about crime, and Democrats are accusing them of being fragile suburbanites who can't handle normal urban life. I'm a left-leaning independent, and I tend to agree with Democrats on a lot of their talking points, but I will say that everywhere I go I see more public disorder than I did a few years ago. There are more locked shelves everywhere, and I think people's perceptions of crime and disorder are also affected by the fact that there are way more encampments of people living in tents and RVs (which leads to more litter on the streets etc.). I live southeast of Seattle, in a straight-up middle-class area, and our local Target now has OTC pain relief behind locked glass doors. I stopped dead and stared. I'd never seen that except in a big city.
As for the issue of unhoused people, which I don't think is related to the actual crime rate but is very much related to perceptions of crime, we also have some tent encampments down in my area. In Seattle (I visit the International District weekly) a year ago there were huge tent cities under freeway overpasses, actual structures hacked together on sidewalks, people living in deplorable conditions. There have always been unhoused people in Seattle but it was an order of magnitude worse than normal. In the last several months Washington state and Seattle have made a huge effort to clear the tent cities and get people into transitional housing, and from what I can tell it's working: the sidewalk shacks are gone, the tents are gone, the areas are fenced off, and by all accounts they've gotten almost all the people living there into shelter of some kind. I'm paying attention to whether I hear less squawking about crime now that there's less visible disorder.
How's the housing work? Victoria and Vancouver tried this by buying old hotels and turning them into apartments but they filled them with junkies and were surprised that they soon became worse than the outdoor camps.
Any solution that doesn't segregate the sick can't work.
Depends how you define "work." It would have to be pretty damn bad to be worse than what we had. I think King County is doing the "buy hotels and turn them into housing-first apartments" thing, so I do expect those to turn into really bad places. I would also rather have the really bad places behind walls and a roof.
They burn down as Vancouver found out. Not only does it get worse inside than out but then they're back on the street.
It's not a bad solution, sorta. They should just send one to each cheap hotel in the country though. Split the problem up and spread it out so it isn't being reinforced.
By 'work' I mean, for the junkies or the residents. Junkies living together escalate and it spills out. Those walls won't contain them.
Ultimately nothing other than forcing them through rehab will turn them into anything other than drug zombies.
I'd like the organized retail theft (gangs of people robbing a store) cracked down on, but in general I'd prefer a softer touch on general petty shop lifting.
These are different things, with different motivations, and cracking down on someone stealing because they have nothing doesn't actually prevent that from happening more (you need to address the underlying issue).
The organized crime, however, should be harshly treated, because these folks are doing this to enrich themselves, and it's organized. The biggest problem here is that stopping this requires more than just police arresting people. It requires actual investigation work, and it seems that police funding tends to go to patrols and not investigation. Close rates for investigations are at all time lows. I really wish this was the focus of law & order republicans, rather than "we need to arrest people", because that only catches the easy, petty criminals.
Although I generally agree there's little positive effect from harshly punishing very petty thieves, saying "address the underlying issue" is a major cop-out basically indicating you have no interest in fixing anything.
What do you think the "underlying issue" is? Drug abuse? Lack of education? Paucity of low-skill jobs? Not enough affordable housing? Discrimination? Lack of opportunities for ex-prisoners? Inflation? Point is, there are plenty of reasons, not just one, that could lead a person to steal a few items from CVS, and they are far too numerous and widespread to believe you'll be able to do anything meaningful to "address" them.
"The causes of the disease is so complicated, that anyone looking to do anything other than treat the symptoms must be disingenuous" ? :/
It is a long list of problems that most other advanced countries seem to have mitigated. Why must we throw our hands up like, "ugh, Its too hard, I need something simpler"?
I take issue with your statement that theft is a "disease." I do agree that for a small segment of the population, economic conditions are extremely difficult... but I don't think these are the people committing the majority of thefts. As long as you start with the assumption that theft is a disease, i.e. something that happens TO an individual, rather than a choice, we're going to have greatly-differing opinions on how to remediate.
It's not a cop-out, it's exactly how other countries have eliminated this problem.
The US is the largest incarcerator in the world, yet it still has these problems. Your suggestion is that we can imprison our way out of this, but prison makes people poorer, in some cases permanently, which ultimately makes the problem worse.
And yet not imprisoning people isn't a solution either. Weird.
Portugal and the NL other countries who are supposedly soft on druggies are actually far stricter with them than Canada or the USA - but by imprisoning the drug user on first use they provide a better outcome than going easy on them until they manage to commit serious crime and have to do hard time.
You seem to think that prison time somehow rehabilitates people, but data simply doesn't back you up on that. People are categorically worse off and more likely to commit more serious crimes after being imprisoned.
If we want to lower crime, we need to address the source of the crime, and that's primarily poverty. There's plenty of research that shows strong correlation. Law & order approaches have historically been quite ineffective, and are very likely to help increase, rather than decrease crime.
This isn't to say there should be no crime enforcement, but concentrating on violent crime, and less on petty crime would be a step in the right direction. Hell, one of the most effective places we could set our sights is wage theft.
> You seem to think that prison time somehow rehabilitates people, but data simply doesn't back you up on that.
That's a cop out even if it was true. "We can't put them in jail [so you have to suffer the break-ins and violence]". If you can't help then step back and let people who either can or are at least still willing to try.
Portugal imprisons, and has great results, but it imprisons you in a rehab program and doesn't give criminal records from the drug-use portion of your charges. (If you stole to buy drugs then you get a record for the theft.)
> People are categorically worse off and more likely to commit more serious crimes after being imprisoned.
People are categorically worse off after being preyed on by a criminal. Please consider the actual victims here.
If your prisons are that bad then you should pay to ship them off the countries that run humane prisons, but you still need to do something.
> If we want to lower crime, we need to address the source of the crime, and that's primarily poverty.
Once citizens are safe on the streets and can work on community wealth-building programs then sure. Many people are poor because of crime and need help too.
> one of the most effective places we could set our sights is wage theft
Now you're in the spirit of the thing. Recognize more crime and punish more criminals to make things better for everyone.
> "We can't put them in jail [so you have to suffer the break-ins and violence]"
Break-ins and violence aren't petty theft. Break-ins are a form a violence, as well. Prison is a reasonable thing to use to isolate violent people. It would be ideal if rehabilitation was what was happening during that isolation, of course.
> it imprisons you in a rehab program and doesn't give criminal records from the drug-use portion of your charges
This doesn't happen in the US. In the US, if you're imprisoned, your life will be worse afterwards, not better. You will be poorer, you won't be able to get most jobs, and you won't be able to rent most apartments. You'll also be released on parole, and will have a constantly disrupted schedule that further limits you.
I'd love to also see prison reform in the US, but it's a separate topic. Even with prison reform, it's better if people don't go to prison to begin with. In the best case, if you go to prison, you're going to lose your job, and you're very likely going to lose your home.
> Please consider the actual victims here.
For petty theft, the victim is the business, which in the vast majority of cases is a large corporation, who has leakage built into their numbers.
Stop conflating petty theft with violent crime.
> Once citizens are safe on the streets
They are. Cities in the US are the safest they've ever been. These reports about massive crime waves are simply lies supported by idiotic statistics. Yes, crime is some categories is up 100-200%, but that's because the actual crime numbers are so low now that minor changes in the numbers looks like huge percentage shifts.
If the stock market dropped 90%, then went up 200%, would you be celebrating the 200%?
> Recognize more crime and punish more criminals to make things better for everyone
The point isn't to punish more crime, it's to punish the right crimes to move the needle. Poor people having their wages stolen makes them poorer. Poverty is strongly associated with crime (especially violent crime).
Same reason to encourage unions, increase minimum wage, have better social programs, provide free childcare, provide free education, provide public health insurance. When people have their needs covered, they're less likely to commit crimes for money.
Stop condoning violent crime just because it starts as something petty.
It's not just that these people are stealing in "shoplifting gangs" it's that they easily resort to violence when blocked.
> It would be ideal if rehabilitation was what was happening during that isolation, of course. [...] I'd love to also see prison reform in the US, but it's a separate topic.
If you say so. This seems like a perfect time to fix prisons so that you could better use them.
> For petty theft, the victim is the business, which in the vast majority of cases is a large corporation, who has leakage built into their numbers.
That's a commie answer. Corporations are made of people, and owned by people.
If I robbed your house enough you'd eventually budget for it, at which point I could defend myself by saying "See, it's built into his monthly expenses!"
> If the stock market dropped 90%, then went up 200%, would you be celebrating the 200%?
Yes.
> Cities in the US are the safest they've ever been
Less safe than last year, for a few years now. Yes, it's smaller than all past gains but why are we slipping backward at all?
> The point isn't to punish more crime, it's to punish the right crimes to move the needle.
I'm not about the absolute numbers but the percentages. I wish there was less crime to punish, but of the more damaging types the problem is definitely that we aren't punishing enough. And yes, that totally includes economic crimes that make the everyday people poorer.
> Same reason to encourage unions, increase minimum wage, have better social programs, provide free childcare, provide free education, provide public health insurance. When people have their needs covered, they're less likely to commit crimes for money.
What a depressingly bad set of social policies but what a great demonstration of why we're in trouble.
Unions were a good idea when workers were dying, a little light crying isn't an issue. Minimum wage increases produce inflation not real wealth. Social programs are what's destroying many cities - specifically Vancouver, Seattle, SF. Free childcare is backwards compared to helping mothers work less in the first place and hurts the quality providers in the market. Insurance that everyone has isn't insurance, it's a poorly run buying program - mandate open drug pricing and help small providers buy at scale to achieve savings.
> When people have their needs covered, they're less likely to commit crimes for money.
Help make the economy better so they can afford to. Safety for people and property is essential.
This isn't petty theft. Petty theft is an individual shoplifting, for instance.
> That's a commie answer.
No, that's a capitalist answer. You're comically giving the communist answer, that a business is a collection of people, and that hurting it hurts them all.
Shoplifting is bad for society as a whole, but (usually) doesn't directly hurt individuals.
>> If the stock market dropped 90%, then went up 200%, would you be celebrating the 200%?
> Yes.
So you don't understand math...
> Less safe than last year, for a few years now. Yes, it's smaller than all past gains but why are we slipping backward at all?
Because that's normal. The decrease in crime over the past 50 years hasn't been continuous. It's been a more natural ebb and flow. I don't see a year or two of very slightly higher crime as a trend up.
> Unions were a good idea when workers were dying, a little light crying isn't an issue. Minimum wage increases produce inflation not real wealth. Social programs are what's destroying many cities - specifically Vancouver, Seattle, SF.
All of these cities have lower crime rates than republican lead cities. All of them have drastically lower violent crime rates.
> Free childcare is backwards compared to helping mothers work less in the first place and hurts the quality providers in the market.
What about single mothers? What about mothers in 2 income families, where they can't afford losing an income? What do you actually propose to make it easier for mothers to work less? Apparently higher wages aren't appropriate, and free school to help them get higher paying jobs isn't appropriate.
> Insurance that everyone has isn't insurance, it's a poorly run buying program - mandate open drug pricing and help small providers buy at scale to achieve savings.
Essentially every other country on earth proves this to be wrong. The US has the highest medical costs, and plenty of other countries have a life expectancy that keeps rising, while ours is falling.
> Help make the economy better so they can afford to. Safety for people and property is essential.
The US economy has been stronger than most countries for effectively my entire life, and that hasn't eliminated poverty or crime. Other countries have enacted good social programs and have virtually eliminated crime.
> This isn't petty theft. Petty theft is an individual shoplifting, for instance.
If any are ever caught they get treated as individual shoplifters. Magically the crime statistics never show gang shoplifting.
> You're comically giving the communist answer, that a business is a collection of people, and that hurting it hurts them all.
The communist answer is that it isn't theft because of how you categorize those you inflict it on.
> Shoplifting is bad for society as a whole, but (usually) doesn't directly hurt individuals.
Of course not, you said the word 'directly'. All crimes against public companies are guilt free by definition comrade.
> Because that's normal. The decrease in crime over the past 50 years hasn't been continuous. It's been a more natural ebb and flow. I don't see a year or two of very slightly higher crime as a trend up.
You're missing the difference between reading history and experiencing the events in real time. Yes, we can probably count on things getting better in generational time, but now as things are getting worse we should look at our policies and try to figure it out rather than just waiting decades for things to clear up on their own.
> All of these cities have lower crime rates than republican lead cities. All of them have drastically lower violent crime rates.
Only if you ignore the crime of open drug use, and that it kills thousands per year. The only thing you can trust from these cities is that they're dishonest about their stats. If police don't answer a call did a crime really happen?
> What do you actually propose to make it easier for mothers to work less? Apparently higher wages aren't appropriate, and free school to help them get higher paying jobs isn't appropriate.
Higher wages are because of promotions are good, higher wages for the same job simply by government mandate doesn't provide higher purchasing power after inflation. And free school leads to the nonsense we have now with subsidized loans where a critical-studies degree costs $250k.
> Essentially every other country on earth proves this to be wrong. The US has the highest medical costs, and plenty of other countries have a life expectancy that keeps rising, while ours is falling.
Of course the costs are higher in the USA because it's the only country where you pay the actual cost. In every other country it's hidden in taxes to some degree, usually a lot, if it's available at all.
> The US economy has been stronger than most countries for effectively my entire life, and that hasn't eliminated poverty or crime.
It kinda has though. Our poorest are richer than the median in many countries. In cash dollars and in purchasing power. There are structural problems keeping many people in poverty and not purely distribution problems.
Crime on the other hand is more of a social thing than a poverty thing.
> Other countries have enacted good social programs and have virtually eliminated crime.
You know what's a good social program? Building a place to put druggies before thousands of them die on the street in the middle of a city.
> Only if you ignore the crime of open drug use, and that it kills thousands per year.
Thousands of users are killing themselves with the drugs. This is a self-harm issue, not a violent crime issue. It's only crime because we're criminalized possession, and that hasn't curbed use. It's still illegal to possess the drugs these folks are using, and they have roughly the same level of access to these illegal drugs inside of prison.
Prison simply isn't the answer to solving drug use. Drug use is also highly correlated with poverty. Some of the addicts on the street became homeless because of their addiction, but some of the addicts on the streets became addicts after becoming homeless.
The biggest driver of the heroin epidemic was perdue. The people responsible got off without punishment. You're proposing punishing their victims.
> The only thing you can trust from these cities is that they're dishonest about their stats. If police don't answer a call did a crime really happen?
This is a conspiracy theory.
> And free school leads to the nonsense we have now with subsidized loans where a critical-studies degree costs $250k.
No, you get that nonsense when the government subsidized a loan program.
> In every other country it's hidden in taxes to some degree, usually a lot, if it's available at all.
This argument isn't supported by the data. The data shows that total spending on healthcare in the US is considerably higher.
In the US the cost is also hidden by your employer, who's paying thousands of dollars a month for your insurance, which you also need to pay for, where you also need to cover a deductible, co-pays, out-of-network costs, ambulance costs, etc.
These things are all covered directly by your taxes in other countries. I'm currently living in Japan, and the cost of healthcare here is considerably cheaper, and my overall tax rate isn't much higher than it was when I was living in the US.
> Our poorest are richer than the median in many countries.
We're the richest country in the world. We need to compare ourselves to similar countries, not to third world countries. Folks in impoverished areas in the US can live in third-world conditions. This is extremely out of the norm when compared against our peers.
> Crime on the other hand is more of a social thing than a poverty thing.
Again, the data doesn't support this. There's a very strong correlation between poverty and crime.
> You know what's a good social program? Building a place to put druggies before thousands of them die on the street in the middle of a city.
Yeah, this is the point of safe-use sites, which have counselors to perform outreach, doctors to ensure they don't die, and facilities to ensure they have somewhere to throw away needles and use the bathroom. They're extremely effective at combating overdose deaths and at reducing needles on the street.
As mentioned before, it's just as easy to get these drugs in prison as it is to get them on the street, so unless you're proposing detox and treatment centers, I don't see what your good social program suggestion is.
> this is the point of safe-use sites, which have counselors to perform outreach, doctors to ensure they don't die, and facilities to ensure they have somewhere to throw away needles and use the bathroom.
These already exist in all the cities I'm discussing, but that's not at all what those sites are like. There are no doctors, no talking, no help, just a chair in a little nook and one nurse watching a room of people through a camera. The current message to the addicted is that they will die addicted and there's essentially no hope of "being cured" so there isn't much use in having a doctor on staff to deliver it.
> They're extremely effective at combating overdose deaths and at reducing needles on the street.
That's what they claim in their funding requests. And who knows, years ago with a different drug problem they may have had some positive effect. (fwiw clean needles appear to be the only useful piece of this intervention and they are widely available elsewhere.)
> Thousands of users are killing themselves with the drugs. This is a self-harm issue, not a violent crime issue.
It's a criminal issue because there are armed dealers and fortified camps and dead bodies in our cities.
> It's only crime because we're criminalized possession, and that hasn't curbed use.
It's crime, and not one we can look away from, because they're incapable of doing it quietly and without secondary violence and crime. The point isn't to give them a criminal record, it's that once we judge someone's actions to be criminal it gives us a lot more power to compel them off the streets and into treatment.
Once we put them in a detox program we can waive the criminal record for all their non-violent crimes. Portugal does this - the criminal sanctions are secondary and only used if you don't cooperate.
>> If police don't answer a call did a crime really happen?
> This is a conspiracy theory.
This doesn't require any conspiring, it's just the natural consequence of the police being too busy. They don't even record the things that they're too busy to respond to so it's invisible to the criminal justice system.
> Again, the data doesn't support this. There's a very strong correlation between poverty and crime.
For which city, and when? Is the city also undergoing a fentanyl crisis during the study? The people in the drug camps are not the same people who would have been smoking crack by the side of the road twenty years ago, many of them are well to do people who've fallen - quickly - into ruin.
> Some of the addicts on the street became homeless because of their addiction, but some of the addicts on the streets became addicts after becoming homeless.
Ultimately it doesn't matter how they got there, they all need to detox before they can move on.
> so unless you're proposing detox and treatment centers
I am.
> Prison simply isn't the answer to solving drug use.
Nothing is the answer, but it's an important part of the solution. When you imprison the drug user they don't live in a drug camp on the street and they don't overdose. Everyone is safer and happier. But no, detox is the answer and you use prison to make the junkie do that if they won't take another option.
> it's just as easy to get these drugs in prison as it is to get them on the street,
Not in the slightest. You can openly buy and use injection drugs in front of a police officer in these cities.
> I don't see what your good social program suggestion is.
I don't think you really understand the scope of the problem or the solutions that have been tried. Especially when you're telling the most "progressive" cities to be more progressive.
> cracking down on someone stealing because they have nothing doesn't actually prevent that from happening more (you need to address the underlying issue).
The petty shoplifters steal mostly because they can. They're not stealing a bag of rice because they're starving, they're stealing a new pair of jeans because there's no need to pay.
There being unpleasant consequences for stealing actually would deter them.
"I'd like the organized retail theft (gangs of people robbing a store) cracked down on, but in general I'd prefer a softer touch on general petty shop lifting.
"
What about door frames that launch an array of taser lines when someone hits a panic button?
It’s very much specific to particular areas. In Los Angeles, a CVS or RiteAid in a less well-off area will have things behind plexiglass. The same store just outside Pepperdine (a very expensive university in the very wealthy Malibu area) has the same things and more expensive stuff just available on the shelves without restriction.
Organized retail theft is common in big cities. Most Americans do not live in big cities. This is not an issue for most Americans, and the stores they shop at do not have restrictive shelving nor go out of business do to "shrinking."
Assuming 331M people in the USA, 164M (50%) live in a metropolitan area of at least 1.6M people. 189M people (57%) live in an area with at least 1M people. 230M (70%) live in an area with at least 500K people.
My conclusion is that most Americans do live in big cities. However, even if all big cities have restrictive shelving practices, there are still 3 out of 10 Americans (outside of the 500K cities) that do no experience these practices.
I'm in an area with 4M people and have seen the shelving practices. So I can concluded that at least 34% of Americans (who are in larger areas) have also experienced these restrictions.
I'm not sure how to consider the stats you're using here. Metropolitan areas aren't cities, the whole reason for the term is to include not just adjacent suburbs, but whole adjacent cities to major urban cities. Do we really consider an hour away and for cities over living in San Francisco?
I mean, from a European perspective who has been to the bay area semi-often, SF - San Mateo - Redwood City - Palo Alto - Mountain View - Santa Clara - San Jose is pretty clearly a continuous urban area and the fact that the subdivisions are considered separate towns and cities more an anomaly of historical origins and local government setup rather than something you would decide working from the definition of town or city.
In Europe, places that have been swallowed up by urban sprawl like that usually stop being called as such given time - no one persists in calling Chelsea, Charlton or Westminster cities now they're well inside the London urban area, and I suspect the same will happen to bay area towns and cities over the next 200 years unless it undergoes a significant population decline.
Hm. Maybe it's just from having grown up here but to me those cities are very different places — each with a dozen neighborhoods of their own. And they range from "urban" through suburban, to isolated neighborhoods. Especially when you want to consider them in terms of stores, crime rates, foot traffic etc.
Sure, but to stick with the London example, Canary Wharf, Chelsea, Westminster, Ealing and Croydon are all very different places with differing densities, land uses, socioeconomic makeup, etc.
The definition of an MSA is basically the "economic gravity well" of an urban areas. This is casually obvious just by looking at the nice green map they give you on that page.
If you think some guy 2hr northwest of Bangor or 3hr out of Vegas into the Nevada desert is in an urban area I'll sell you some beach front property in Arizona.
Meanwhile in Tokyo you have self serve 24/7 convenience stores. And I’m not talking about vending machines. This is where you grab the item, enter on a screen what you got, pay for it, and walk out. No staff needed.
Though I know these exist somewhere, I haven't personally seen one in the 3 years I've been here.
Petty theft does occur in Tokyo, and there's organized crime as well. You don't see this kind of organized retail theft because the police would actually investigate it, rather than do nothing and cry about "the crackdown on police rights".
More extreme instances likely restricted to particular areas but much more widespread is locking up seemingly cheap stuff behind cage/plastic.
In Australia, spraypaint in a hardware store is locked up but often not much else that I can recall. In Home Depot in the US, power tools even in the $30-80 range can be, amongst other things. In supermarkets in most states/cities I've been to, cheap toiletries can require help from staff with a key, plus some electronics in the automotive section. Seems to be a reaction to targeted theft rather than just value of items.
