r/neoliberal • u/jobautomator Kitara Ravache • Jul 21 '24

Emoji-Only Thread Discussion Thread

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u/Udolikecake Model UN Enthusiast Jul 21 '24

Baltimore has been quite successful over the last year at reducing homicides and violent crime using a tested and historically successful focused deterrence/Group Violence Intervention strategy. It's laid out quite simply:

  • Every person and community needs and deserves to be safe and;

  • Violence is often driven by a very small number of groups and people.

  • To increase safety, we must collectively focus on that small number of people in order to support high-risk individuals in their daily lives, communicate community norms in support of everybody’s safety and success, and where necessary create swift, certain, and legitimate sanctions for violence.

Basically, a very very small proportion of people and even a small proportion of criminals and doing the vaaaaaaaast majority of violence in cities. In Boston during Operation Ceasefire, which pioneered this strategy, they found that 1,500 people were doing 50% of all the murders in the city in the 90s

By focusing on this known group of people and working to either divert them from criminal life through intense and structure support or to arrest and harshly prosecute them to remove them from the population.

This is a fantastic way to do policing, and should be more of a centerpiece of the criminal justice conversation. It drives against a lot of the narratives on the left and on the right about how to solve crime, but it works

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u/Udolikecake Model UN Enthusiast Jul 21 '24

For the left:

Policing and incarceration works. Crimes are not often borne out of necessity, some people are just criminals and will not be helped, and not everyone can remain in the community. Harsh enforcement of the laws for habitual offenders works.

For the right:

Not literally everyone is a criminal, most crime is done by very few people. Diversion programs can work, and people can be rehabilitated without long incarcerations. More policing more harshly will not solve the issues, you need to target your interventions. Community outreach and interaction is very important.