>In my neighborhood in Seattle I've seen a tweaked-out individual literally just walking down the street spray-painting cars at around 6pm on a weekday.
Despite the damage to the cars, that sounds more like a mental health problem than a crime problem.
Which is one of the big problems we have with current policing models. We throw folks trained to use deadly force at issues that are better suited to mental health professionals trained in de-escalation.
I get it that many folks don't really care about their fellow humans except as threats/enemies/potential rivals for mates and resources.
And I also get that, as in your example, many folks don't care about the well-being of other people (as in your example, a 'tweaker'. How do you know that? Were they shooting meth as they spray-painted the cars?), especially if they engage in anti-social behaviors.
In fact, many folks would support it if we just killed/imprisoned anyone who makes them uncomfortable or unhappy.
The issues that we lump into a black box called "mental illness" are poorly understood and even more poorly addressed in our society.
Even worse, more often than not we dump the "mental illness" black box into a larger black box called "criminals".
As Hubert Humphrey put it[0]:
The moral test of government is how that
government treats those who are in the dawn of
life, the children; those who are in the twilight
of life, the elderly; those who are in the shadows
of life, the sick, the needy and the handicapped.
I posit that our current policies and practices fail that moral test. Those who are most distressed/needy/lost are usually abused, shunned and thrown away by our society, rather than nurtured, helped and hopefully brought into society as productive members.
Why is it generally the former rather than the latter? I'd say that it was a culture of selfishness, greed and a lack of empathy buried under several layers of soft-soaping like "personal responsibility", "pulling oneself up by the bootstraps", "poverty is a moral failing" and a bunch of other tropes.
Sentient life is precious. We should treat it that way, IMNSHO. But we don't. And more's the pity.
> Despite the damage to the cars, that sounds more like a mental health problem than a crime problem.
In the long term, I agree with you. In the short term, it would be nice if the people who we are forced to pay for the task of preventing antisocial behavior would stop the person who is causing tens of thousands of dollars in property damage, since broadly speaking nobody else has the right to do so.
To put it another way, how much more damage does this person need to do before you consider it a crime problem?
>In the long term, I agree with you. In the short term, it would be nice if the people who we are forced to pay for the task of preventing antisocial behavior would stop the person who is causing tens of thousands of dollars in property damage, since broadly speaking nobody else has the right to do so.
I don't disagree with you. At all. This is a complicated set of issues that will require complex solutions (note the plural).
It would be great if we could stop such folks from causing property damage.
Our society is governed by laws and, more importantly, respect for those laws by the vast majority of us.
Unless we kill or imprison everyone who might engage in such activities, I'd say that we'll likely always have some of that sort of activity.
Reducing the number of folks without strong ties to society/the community seems the best way to address these issues over both the medium and long term.
As for short term solutions, that's much more difficult, as we've spent centuries demonizing the mentally ill, the poor and others society has deemed as "lesser."
>To put it another way, how much more damage does this person need to do before you consider it a crime problem?
A valid question. Without a lot of reflection I'd say that it's less important to determine whether or not some act (or collection of acts) is "criminal" than it is to identify the appropriate mechanism(s) to minimize the likelihood of such behavior from that individual in the future.
And there are many mechanisms to choose from. That incarceration has been the default for a long time doesn't always (or even most of the time) make it the right mechanism.
A broad and complex set of issues underlie this discussion and I haven't done it justice here. That said, I urge people to look beyond the display and use of force as the only mechanism to address these issues.
Despite the damage to the cars, that sounds more like a mental health problem than a crime problem.
Which is one of the big problems we have with current policing models. We throw folks trained to use deadly force at issues that are better suited to mental health professionals trained in de-escalation.
I get it that many folks don't really care about their fellow humans except as threats/enemies/potential rivals for mates and resources.
And I also get that, as in your example, many folks don't care about the well-being of other people (as in your example, a 'tweaker'. How do you know that? Were they shooting meth as they spray-painted the cars?), especially if they engage in anti-social behaviors.
In fact, many folks would support it if we just killed/imprisoned anyone who makes them uncomfortable or unhappy.
The issues that we lump into a black box called "mental illness" are poorly understood and even more poorly addressed in our society.
Even worse, more often than not we dump the "mental illness" black box into a larger black box called "criminals".
As Hubert Humphrey put it[0]:
I posit that our current policies and practices fail that moral test. Those who are most distressed/needy/lost are usually abused, shunned and thrown away by our society, rather than nurtured, helped and hopefully brought into society as productive members.Why is it generally the former rather than the latter? I'd say that it was a culture of selfishness, greed and a lack of empathy buried under several layers of soft-soaping like "personal responsibility", "pulling oneself up by the bootstraps", "poverty is a moral failing" and a bunch of other tropes.
Sentient life is precious. We should treat it that way, IMNSHO. But we don't. And more's the pity.
[0] https://www.columbian.com/news/2016/nov/11/letter-quote-from...