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The most important part of incarceration is removing what is a quantifiable risk to the public from the public square. Everything else is secondary. The point o

The most important part of incarceration is removing what is a quantifiable risk to the public from the public square. Everything else is secondary. The point of a state having police powers is to ensure for the common good, it is not to continually indulge those who wish to damage that common good. To the extent that the state is responsible for e.g. punishment and rehabilitation, these are ancillary responsibilities that are (or were) downstream from removing threats to the common good from the public square. Seems like, after all of these police and prosecutorial "reforms", we are back to deriving why many state powers exist from first principles. Fun to watch in real time.

mmooss 23d ago
Lacking a house isn't a threat to others. I've rarely seen an unhoused people do harm. Annoying you isn't harm. Making rich people uncomfortable isn't a crime. > common good A term used to justify taking away liberty from people you don't like - 'it might take away their rights, but it's good for people in 'common''. The point of government, as Jefferson eloquently put it in the document that birthed the US, is to protect people's rights.
- alex43578 22d ago
  "I've rarely seen an unhoused people do harm" is an absurd statement. It's an old study, but Martell in Base-rate estimates of criminal behavior by homeless mentally ill persons in New York City found that "The rate of violent crimes was 40 times higher and the rate of nonviolent crimes 27 times higher in the homeless population". Most people don't like mentally ill homeless people who commit violent crime at a rate 40 times higher than average. Remind me what right in the Constitution enshrines your ability to crack the skull of a 70 year old nurse on the ground, then wander off and go to sleep? https://abcnews.com/US/70-year-nurse-killed-random-assault-bus-stop/story?id=82328499 https://abcnews.com/US/70-year-nurse-killed-random-assault-b...
  - mmooss 22d ago
    > It's an old study, but Martell in Base-rate estimates of criminal behavior by homeless mentally ill persons in New York City found that "The rate of violent crimes was 40 times higher and the rate of nonviolent crimes 27 times higher in the homeless population". It is indeed old (1995 [0]) and that's not what the paper studied or concluded. First, the study did not gather data on the homeless population, but on mentally ill people already in the criminal justice system: * "The authors analyzed data from ... records of 77 homeless defendants and 107 domiciled defendants referred for psychiatric examination by the criminal and supreme courts ..." Second, the paper's goals were to gather needed data on homelessness among mentally ill people in the criminal justice system, and to examine the interactions between homelessness and crime among mentally ill people: * "The study aimed to estimate the prevalence of homelessness among mentally disordered offenders entering the criminal justice andforensic mentalhealth systems, to compare base rates of arrest for violent and nonviolent criminal charges among homeless and domiciled persons with mental illness, and to examine patterns in the categories of victims chosen ..." Third, the conclusion was that, among mentally ill people generally (not only those charged [1]) those homeless were ~35x more likely to be charged with crimes than those domiciled, and it was somwhat even more likely that those crimes would be violent or against strangers (there's more detail in the paper). The paper says nothing about crime among the homeless population generally. > absurd > crack the skull of a 70 year old nurse Do pejoratives and outrage make it more persuasive or less? More importantly, do they make it more likely or less likely that you find and express truth? I think much less likely, because it means 1) You are dismissing a lot of information, 2) You are not examining the matter thoughtfully (being outraged), and 3) You likely have little better argument. That also makes it less persuasive to people who are thinking critically. [0] When crime rates were much higher. The paper: Martell, D. A., Rosner, R., & Harmon, R. B. (1995). Base-rate estimates of criminal behavior by homeless mentally ill persons in New York City. Psychiatric Services, 46(6), 596–601. https://doi.org/10.1176/ps.46.6.596 https://doi.org/10.1176/ps.46.6.596 [1] Note that they gathered data only on mentally ill people charged with crimes and not on the general population of mentally ill people. The latter group's data they took from the same author's prior research.
    - alex43578 22d ago
      Can you provide any evidence that homeless people are equally or less likely to commit crimes, compared to the general population?

mmooss 23d ago

Lacking a house isn't a threat to others. I've rarely seen an unhoused people do harm. Annoying you isn't harm. Making rich people uncomfortable isn't a crime. > common good A term used to justify taking away liberty from people you don't like - 'it might take away their rights, but it's good for people in 'common''. The point of government, as Jefferson eloquently put it in the document that birthed the US, is to protect people's rights.

alex43578 22d ago
"I've rarely seen an unhoused people do harm" is an absurd statement. It's an old study, but Martell in Base-rate estimates of criminal behavior by homeless mentally ill persons in New York City found that "The rate of violent crimes was 40 times higher and the rate of nonviolent crimes 27 times higher in the homeless population". Most people don't like mentally ill homeless people who commit violent crime at a rate 40 times higher than average. Remind me what right in the Constitution enshrines your ability to crack the skull of a 70 year old nurse on the ground, then wander off and go to sleep? https://abcnews.com/US/70-year-nurse-killed-random-assault-bus-stop/story?id=82328499 https://abcnews.com/US/70-year-nurse-killed-random-assault-b...
- mmooss 22d ago
  > It's an old study, but Martell in Base-rate estimates of criminal behavior by homeless mentally ill persons in New York City found that "The rate of violent crimes was 40 times higher and the rate of nonviolent crimes 27 times higher in the homeless population". It is indeed old (1995 [0]) and that's not what the paper studied or concluded. First, the study did not gather data on the homeless population, but on mentally ill people already in the criminal justice system: * "The authors analyzed data from ... records of 77 homeless defendants and 107 domiciled defendants referred for psychiatric examination by the criminal and supreme courts ..." Second, the paper's goals were to gather needed data on homelessness among mentally ill people in the criminal justice system, and to examine the interactions between homelessness and crime among mentally ill people: * "The study aimed to estimate the prevalence of homelessness among mentally disordered offenders entering the criminal justice andforensic mentalhealth systems, to compare base rates of arrest for violent and nonviolent criminal charges among homeless and domiciled persons with mental illness, and to examine patterns in the categories of victims chosen ..." Third, the conclusion was that, among mentally ill people generally (not only those charged [1]) those homeless were ~35x more likely to be charged with crimes than those domiciled, and it was somwhat even more likely that those crimes would be violent or against strangers (there's more detail in the paper). The paper says nothing about crime among the homeless population generally. > absurd > crack the skull of a 70 year old nurse Do pejoratives and outrage make it more persuasive or less? More importantly, do they make it more likely or less likely that you find and express truth? I think much less likely, because it means 1) You are dismissing a lot of information, 2) You are not examining the matter thoughtfully (being outraged), and 3) You likely have little better argument. That also makes it less persuasive to people who are thinking critically. [0] When crime rates were much higher. The paper: Martell, D. A., Rosner, R., & Harmon, R. B. (1995). Base-rate estimates of criminal behavior by homeless mentally ill persons in New York City. Psychiatric Services, 46(6), 596–601. https://doi.org/10.1176/ps.46.6.596 https://doi.org/10.1176/ps.46.6.596 [1] Note that they gathered data only on mentally ill people charged with crimes and not on the general population of mentally ill people. The latter group's data they took from the same author's prior research.
  - alex43578 22d ago
    Can you provide any evidence that homeless people are equally or less likely to commit crimes, compared to the general population?