Chicago gave hundreds of high-risk kids a job; violent crime arrests plummeted(washingtonpost.com) |
Chicago gave hundreds of high-risk kids a job; violent crime arrests plummeted(washingtonpost.com) |
Poor state = lack of security (under-funded police or over-burdened courts for example)
Prohibition = creates market incentives for violence and coercion
These reasons are 100% why economic intervention should always be answer #1 to violence and crime. Not more warfare or tough justice.
I'd even take this position beyond the war on drugs and apply it to the war on terrorism as well. As we saw in Afghanistan, what good was spending trillions on war when we leave them with a non-existent economy or infrastructure? The only massive industry there is now opium and funds are going straight to the adversary.
Same with the American drug war. Thousands of impoverished kids with their fathers dead or in jail on drug charges, no long-term career possibilities except an extremely accessible job market built on violence.
I'm not promoting pacifism, security is essential. But social/market liberalism, combined with creating economic support infrastructure, and investing in a strong legal systems against corruption (so it doesnt end up like Africa).
The only way practical justification for more war/justice is via some emotional gratification of getting 'revenge' on some unsavory class of people in society by the controlling class. Because how could the goal really be to minimize or stop the problem when the failures of that strategy are so obvious to anyone who spends a moment critically analyzing the history of it?
Why not promote pacifism? Existential security of the US is guaranteed by military supremacy, average daily life security of the US citizen in comparison with other western countries is quite low.[0]
I think that the main problem of the US society's approach to punishment/justice/war is rooted in deontological ethics, which stems from high religiosity and "american values" propaganda.
Adopting a more consequentialist ethics approach would help to switch social consensus from punishment to rehabilitation, from doing what is "right"(definition that is coopted by politicians and media) to doing what is useful.
One can only dream. I believe that AI originated societal change is more probable than massive perception shift, though.
[0]http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_intentiona...
As long as you have poor, horny and young male population you will always have high crime and organized crime (and some terrorists lately) will have no lack of recruits.
If high risk, high reward life of crime is the only shot at social status - the kids will take it.
Every person committing crimes and going to prison, or unemployed or employed in criminal activity is a person who could be not only doing less harm through crime to their community, but also, with proper support, meaningfully contributing to GDP.
The real important thing here is the ease at which a significant impact can be made to change people's behavior towards the better with a minimal (literally minimum wage) investment. Criminality is not an inherent trait, at least not for the majority of individuals. It's a product of environmental factors. And the effect increased after the work was over.
The potential increase in property values from reduced crime alone are interesting.
One project was to setup a mesh wifi network and they made a 'digital stewards' program so the kids and young adults in the neighborhood could learn how to maintain and troubleshoot the hardware and software.
The program seems to have legs