Is the problem with progressive criminal justice and policing reform that the solutions are long-term?

It’s not that simple, but unfortunately our narratives and political system are simpler than the situations they describe and determine policy for.

I am not sure what “progressive criminal justice” means. I’m not an SF resident but have been peripherally following what has been going on.

I’m not too knowledgeable about the topic but just to add, I heard on the news today that they said this may send a signal to other District Attorneys around the country. It will be interesting to see the fallout in the next months and years.

I want to first draw attention to a single fact regarding the Boudin recall effort. And that is that there was an enormous amount of money devoted toward his ouster. There’s been a blizzard of incessant tv and print ads bad mouthing Boudin from nearly every commercial outlet available here, and its been going on since February. And here’s what I find particularly interesting. In that period, I have seen but a single ad , and only once aired back in April countering the recall effort. In fact the disparity in effort between the opposing sides is so enormous, that I believe the fact of it outweighs the issue of Boudin’s competence itself. When that sort of money appears backing tough on crime crackdowns in the country’s most progressive town, with virtually no opposing dialog, it just does not smell right.

This has been building in SF for a while. Much of it stems from the inability of the whole criminal justice system to do anything to allevate the stress on residents. Rampant car break-ins, open drug injections on the sidewalks, widespread shoplifting, and homeless advocates that embody co-dependent enablement of inappropriate behavior.

SF doesn’t get a lot of “defund the police” because the police here aren’t overly militaristic. But they do have a very effecitve union that points the finger at everyone else and does not do anything about crime happening right in front of them.

Boudin was the target as the representative of lack of energy on improving living conditions.

Long term… except for the victims who are killed or suffer now!
And who are many of those victims? According to FBI stats it is black people… WHY?
Because except for their vote, leftist don’t give a flying shit about them!

How do I know… because their proposals are an absolute failure! SO…
what do they do? Demand more power more… just to implement more failure.

And of course blame it on evil conservatives.

@zenvelo So Chesa Boudin was recalled because of his lack of energy… right on bro!

Let’s be clear, what’s needed is a BALANCE between ‘harm reduction’ style policies and ‘tough on crime’ type policies. The mistake both sides tend to make is treating this as a part of their culture war rather than picking intelligently from both sides.

The fact is that more police DOES reduce crime. Also, a more pro-active police force reduces crime. To have a pro-active police force, those cops need to have the confidence that if they aren’t going to be destroyed for doing their job… as some HAVE BEEN. Our cops are paid very poorly, which means better candidates tend not to choose the job.

Now, the opposite side ALSO has a point to make. We DO need police accountability reform. it has to be BALANCED against due process protections for cops. We would benefit from sending a counselor to domestic situations that don’t require a police officer. We do need to de-militarize the police in a variety of ways. We need better oversight and transparency.

I live just south of Baltimore, MD where we have prosecutors who simply refuse to prosecute any crime lower than an outright murder. They are pursuing a vision of ‘breaking the cycle’ that has been tried in this town for decades now and has produced worse and worse crime. But we’ve also had mayors come in and claim they were implementing ‘broken windows’ policing, but then not really do it right, so all the leftists in the area say “See!?! That shit doesn’t work!” when it was never REALLY implemented.

We need to be on Team All The Things.

I have read the OP and the thread. I am unfamiliar with the situation surrounding the DA in San Francisco.

One of the difficulties with increasing social services in crime ridden areas is convincing the people in those areas to use the services. I see this problem in my work every day. The people are so accustomed to poor services that they mistrust the new services when offered.

In my work training Peer Specialists, the Peers are people who came from similar backgrounds and used the services to climb out of the difficulties. These Peers are able to reach the disaffected people quickly and through personal experience able to demonstrate the good results of the new services.

In one case I work on, 90% of those engaging with a Peer Specialist accepted new services. That’s an outstanding result. Many of these people were chronically homeless and were “frequent flyers” with the police being arrested multiple times each week for petty offenses. The program I work on is new, and we don’t yet have long-term data about how many people stay engaged with the new services. Still, the preliminary results are very encouraging.

When receiving interaction with a Peer Specialist who came from a similar background, people are highly likely to engage with clinicians offering the kinds of services many people want to see in places where tough-on-crime policies have not lowered crime statistics.

Well… Good answers above… I just don’t see the political class as an answer to
much of this. Take the homeless issue… I just don’t think the government is capable
of moving with this problem, but there are groups that can. I know gay communities
that have so much empathy they should be given a chance to tackle homelessness.
I’m sure there are religious people that would do a great job.

I am sure too much money makes everything political!

I tend to be anti ‘the man’ meaning I tend towards anti government.

@WhyNow Chelsea Boudin was reccalled because of his lack of money. And the problems defining THIS society amount to nothing more than the expanding fact that an ever declining percentage of its wealth is allowed its average citizen.

Homelessness and property crime are symptoms of much deeper rooted problems. There’s 15 million vacant housing units in the US right now. There’s something like 0.5 million homeless in the country. Americans discard 40 million tons of food per year. That’s 30–40% of the total food supply. We could be dealing with these issues, but we’d rather pursue treating the symptoms rather than the disease itself.

The progressive criminal justice and police reform such as defunding the police are pipe dreams. They start with the idea that criminals are actually good people that just need a break. They don’t take into account human nature. They assume that police are all horrible people and are urging on crime by their mere presence on the street. As a result, when some major metropolitan center starts down these efforts, they see an immense rise in criminal activity. Take a look at Portland Oregon as the perfect petri dish. But if you want to test your theory, do nothing. Let the policies run their course. Either the areas that are pushing these ideas are going to be come something akin to war zones or they will become utopian. But you might want to set a goal for how long to wait. That is something else that was never done. No time limit for the change. It was assumed the changes would to have an immediate and positive change. That didn’t happen. So is it now the time to say just wait longer?

Fantastic article in the Atlantic today
https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2022/06/how-san-francisco-became-failed-city/661199/

@Caravanfan Great article, written in the first person and not “I think” or ”‘it’s my opinion” !

@HP Of course… more money! more my money! more your money! more! more!
If only the left in government had more money… Elijah Cummings of Maryland (I think)
said… my state needs more money! Trump said we gave Maryland a billion dollars where
did the money go! The dems started bleeding from their eyeballs! Argh you’re a racist!
they told trump.

@Caravanfan Thanks for the link.

One thing I did find interesting is there wasn’t a peep mentioned about how the owner of The Atlantic: Laurene Powell-Jobs wealth came from the explosion of tech money in the Bay Area…

@Caravanfan I read that article shortly after I posted this question, but it’s very relevant in its discussion of the excesses and limits of progressivism. Yes, homelessness and an increase in property crime can be linked to a soaring cost of living and the economic turmoil wrought by the pandemic, but the solution isn’t to oppose the building of new housing and make shoplifting legal. Boudin was completely out of touch and he needed to go (and he’s still out of touch because he thinks right-wing elites are the reason he’s gone). And man do I hate Alison Collins. The Marjorie Taylor Greene of the left.

@HP more money! I feel better now.

@Demosthenes I used to have season tickets at the Orpheum and I quit going because every time I went I had to walk a gauntlet of homeless shooting up heroin.

@gorillapaws Every owner gets their money from something or somewhere. Jeff Bezos owns WaPo. The Atlantic has been terrific through the pandemic and Ed Yong is one of the best science writers in the world. So they have my respect.

@Caravanfan It’s true, but it does feel like the author should be pointing out that the husband of his boss was a major contributor to the soaring cost of living in the Bay Area, and who is a major fundraiser for anti-progressive, neoliberal politicians. Just as a researcher is obligated to mention that their study on why smoking isn’t harmful happens to be funded by Phillip Morris. I’m not criticizing the content of the article, merely the lack of disclosures and transparency.

@gorillapaws First of all, The smoking analogy is a straw man and you know it.

Second, the author is a woman, and a lesbian at that (which is also irrelevant, but you identified her by the incorrect pronoun so I felt compelled to point it out).

Third, just because the owner of the Atlantic happened to make their money in Silicon Valley does not mean that they are directly responsible for housing costs in the Bay Area. It’s progressive San Franciscans who are at fault for housing costs. They have their multimillion dollar homes and refuse to let more homes built. Read the article.

@Caravanfan I’m not saying the article is wrong, but that the disclosures should be stated upfront (I’d feel the same about an article in the WaPo that addressed an issue relevant to Bezos). You’re right that I got the author’s pronoun wrong. I apologize/regret the error.

“Third, just because the owner of the Atlantic happened to make their money in Silicon Valley does not mean that they are directly responsible for housing costs in the Bay Area.”

I think Apple had a pretty significant role in driving up housing costs in the Bay Area. It’s certainly not the only cause and I’m sure you’re right to point to many of the reasons the author mentions. My point is that this article necessarily has a certain perspective because of who owns the publication. That doesn’t make it wrong, but it’s reasonable to point out.

I’m not in a place to speak directly in favor or against the analysis. It’s been five-or-so years now since I’ve been out that way. I know there are a lot of challenges with the homeless population and property crime in San Francisco in recent years. I’ll leave it to locals to evaluate this analysis. (I did read/enjoy it btw).

@gorillapaws Yes, it’s really gotten pretty bad. I won’t take BART anymore because the homeless. They get on and ride back and forth all day. It’s really unpleasant and nobody will do anything about it.

See my comment above about my season tickets to the Orpheum theater. I won’t go anymore. The homeless center they mentioned is literally right next door to it—it used to be a wonderful farmers market and craft fair. The last time I was at the Orpheum I had to tell my daughter to be careful not to step on the dirty heroin needles lying on the sidewalk.

It was indeed an interesting article. But here’s my perspective. And it’s another genuine first hand take. Critics are of course correct. Problem people will concentrate in wealthy cities with good weather and tolerant attitudes. And no one need stumble over the junkie or homeless to appreciate this. However, those of you smugly critical of policies here should stop to consider that just as with the rich techies rendering the town unaffordable, the overwhelming numbers of problem people concentrated here are not natives. These are YOUR people. I myself arrived here in 66. Those of you who can’t recall those days might be surprised that there were as yet no homeless opioid or gunplay epidemics. But I’ll tell you what I did notice. This city back then had a noticeable surplus of winos and vagrants. And I was told then that it was well know that the rest of the country routinely shipped its problem vagrants here as a matter of course. And while not as open, this is more or less the routine yet more clandestine in the burbs surrounding this town. It was back in the 80s when a guy I know who pushed a shopping cart and collected botlles and cans to sell for scrap asked me ” Do you know why you NEVER see any homeless or people like me in Daly City?” It’s because the cops confiscate their stuff, throw it in a dumpster and drive the owners directly to the city line with the admonition ‘don’t let me see you in this town again’. I can also remenber when the cry and hue was about the shooting sprees in our inner cities as evidence that those carrying them out were deviant from what is now the norm. Sure I certainly benefit personally when my town joins in dogging the down and out. I actually look forward to the day when we can ship them home to YOU. The rest of you only THINK these are San Francisco problems.

@HP I never said it was just a San Francisco problem. We have our own homeless problems in my little town in the East Bay. And of course it’s a first person take, the article writer says this. My experience is also a first person take. I used to have absolutely no problems walking from the Civic Center BART station to SF Symphony but I won’t do it now.

Don’t worry. The days of tolerance here are clearly drawing to a close. And when the crackdown arrives, I and others like me can again blissfully enjoy this beautiful place. Out of sight, out of mind. You know what is curious? For all it’s decadence, major crime is at an all time low in San francisco. And for that matter, offhand I can’t recall a single mass shooting incident here.

And what will you do when San Francisco’s problems become typical nationwide?

The homeless and druggies are going to sleep on SOMEBODY’S streets. Now there’s a personal observation.

@HP San Francisco’s problems are nationwide problems. The OP was about SF and the article was about SF.

They are indeed nationwide problems. But the things critics of this town never understand is that the cities on this coast are attempting a compassionate approach to handling the NATION’S problems. When the towns grow sick of the attempt, they have the money to defend themselves from the problem, unlike the places that send them to us. Imagine what happens when the money dedicated to accommodating these folks is switched instead to their deliberate persecution. The tourists will be happy, and I of course will rejoice. The homeless pile up here for the same reason the Mexicans are at the country’s borders. The dynamic is exactly the same.

@hp. Fair enough. From the article though:

“On a cold, sunny day not too long ago, I went to see the city’s new Tenderloin Center for drug addicts on Market Street. It’s downtown, an open-air chain-link enclosure in what used to be a public plaza. On the sidewalks all around it, people are lying on the ground, twitching. There’s a free mobile shower, laundry, and bathroom station emblazoned with the words dignity on wheels. A young man is lying next to it, stoned, his shirt riding up, his face puffy and sunburned. Inside the enclosure, services are doled out: food, medical care, clean syringes, referrals for housing. It’s basically a safe space to shoot up. The city government says it’s trying to help. But from the outside, what it looks like is young people being eased into death on the sidewalk, surrounded by half-eaten boxed lunches.”

You can have your compassionate approach. Meanwhile I’ll stay on my side of the bay. I fucking loved that open plaza next to the Orpheum theater. Now I won’t go anywhere near it.

@Caravanfan ”...It’s basically a safe space to shoot up. The city government says it’s trying to help. But from the outside, what it looks like is young people being eased into death on the sidewalk…”

What do you think the right solution is to addicts? Is it cruel to allow a junkie to kill themself with drugs if that’s their choice? Is it possible to compel them to get clean when they don’t want to? is incarceration for nonviolent drug offenses actually compassionate, as that mother stated in the article? I’m not sure what the right answers are, but clean needles have to be part of the solution.

Let them eat cake. I will of course be happy not be inconvenienced by the sight of them or for that matter those pesky pigeons. My own sidewalk, for some peculiar reason remains free of both pests. And I no longer have any necessity to walk around in places frequented by either species. God’s in his heaven.

I predict the problems discussed here will never go away… except instead of drugs
addicts will jacked in to a virtual reality world… wes craven style! It will happen!.
Jacked people will lay around emaciated, zombie like clogging the sidewalk soiling
themselves… I predict this in 20 years, when I’m fifty.

How do I know? I’m still writing code tho I retired. How? There is a new way coming
of storing memory and powering this VR world. It will use the minds of those
jacked to fill in blank spaces… human brains can easily handle the VR load.

It will take, I predict… goggles and a few implants to enter this VR world. No wires no
consoles… twitches will control your movements. And a very important chip to pay
your monthly subscription fees, collect your salaries… no more cashiers no more smash
and grab. Collecting payments due will be the most sophisticated tech the world has
ever known. Government can cease the pretext of benevolence… the beast will be
unleashed!

The issue isn’t going to be resolved by policy. It requires a vast change in humanity as a whole, more compassion, less greed.

I disagree. Nearly every one of our nagging problems can be directly attributed to policies accepted as essential to our function. Most of us are not ready to accept this, but you merely have to look at where the money goes to understand that it is EXACTLY the policies or rather who it is that is permitted to design and set those policies. Want some examples? What sort of healthcare would you expect from a system designed and set in place by the for profit insurance and pharmaceutical companies? Or what sort of gun control would you predict if the rules and regulations are in effect set by the NRA? Who turns a healthy profit from the lucrative prison industry? Tough on crime turns out to be a real money maker for some of us. Who should be surprised that in the face of a serious housing shortage, corporations are now snatching up available housing?

@gorillapaws I have no idea what the right answer is. My job is to take care of them when they’re in the hospital with whatever complication they have. I’m not even saying the SF solution is wrong. All I’m saying is that I refuse to go to theater any more because I don’t want to walk a gauntlet of stoned drug addicts with needles littered on the ground.

@Caravanfan “All I’m saying is that I refuse to go to theater any more because I don’t want to walk a gauntlet of stoned drug addicts with needles littered on the ground.”

I wouldn’t either. I was asking you in particular because I thought maybe you were familiar with some of the data on addiction recovery and what is/isn’t successful. I’ve always heard that it won’t work until the addict decides they want to change, but I have no idea if this is backed by actual research.

@gorillapaws Oh, sure. Narcotic addiction is treated pretty well nowadays for those who wnat it using bupinorphone. But you have to want it.

@HP ” Nearly every one of our nagging problems can be directly attributed to policies accepted as essential to our function” I would agree but after reading a couple hundred
pages as research I went back to your post and saw the word ‘profit.’

I realize that there is NOTHING I could say. The only thing that concerns you
is that people’s money must taken away! AOC and the left have no answers…
they don’t give a shit about the poor… homeless or black people!
But they want equity… the only real definition that i could find
is white people must suffer!

How do I know? The cities were the most black children are killed are run by
democrats. I remember one BLM march in a middle class neighborhood
the ‘protesters’ were yelling ‘give us your houses!’ First, law abiding people
must be disarmed.

@WhyNow _“The only thing that concerns you
is that people’s money must taken away! AOC and the left have no answers…“_

That’s one way to invert the narrative. How about this smart guy: If triclke-down economics were so effective, why isn’t the middle/lower class drowning in wealth as the top 1% now have more wealth than ever in human history? Why is it that when someone like Bernie Sanders proposes a top marginal tax rate in line with Ronald Reagan’s first term, that he gets equated to Stallin, and yet under the Republican, Eisenhower, the top marginal tax rate was 90%—almost double what Bernie was proposing?

@WhyNow You really do not get the gist of what I am telling you. And worse than that, you clearly haven’t bothered to consider the landscape yourself. My claim is that we are trapped in a system where greed and selfishness are incentivized. Then list a few examples pointing toward that premise. You come back with an argument implying that greed and selfishness are solid conservative values, and I am certainly inclined to agree. It does confuse me when you do not understand that this has nothing to do with race other than the fact that white people are now being displaced to economic levels formerly typical for blacks and hispanics. And instead of placing the blame where it obviously belongs, they somehow believe those blacks and hispanics responsible for their plight. I make no holier than thou claims regarding my position. I, just as others have prospered considerably through exploitation of those who as a consequence are on that down escalator. I just don’t pretend I’m unaware of it. Forget about left and right. This is about who prospers in a system favoring the rich and the slick. And I put it to you that we are now living through an age where the two are in fact indistinguishable.

@gorillapaws How about this one? If socialism is so good why is EVERYONE in Venezuela except the ruling elite poor?

@gorillapaws
I’m just not smart to fit the too many Qs you are asking… so I’ll tackle one before I get bored.
Yes I am a supply sider (trickle down) after reading Art Lafer and Romer & Romer. Three
times in the recent past… JFK, R Reagan and Clinton-Bush was the top marginal tax
brought down resulting in about doubling taxes collected. Jimmy Carter had top rate 78%... Reagan took it down to 28% and DOUBLED the feds take! Not a fan of wartime Eisenhower… don’t care B Sanders or the gossip you’re snarking about.

The poor… Lyndon Johnson started the war on poverty… since then the government
spent 20 trillion dollars yet poverty remains around 14%. Are the poor poorer? well…
They have air conditioners cell phones etc… not the way I judge wealth but good
for you. We are kinda getting long here.

@HP You may be right about me not getting the gist… still don’t tho I try.
Still I kind of agreed… I didn’t know the NRA sets gum laws… I know the FBI lists
defensive gun use at about 2.5 million times a year… wow how many lives saved?

I have trouble understanding your latest post… I work with syntax all day and what you
say fit in a mathematical T graph.

Still… you have no solutions.

@seawulf575 I always ask that very question and always get the same answer…
‘They don’t do it right’ which I totally reject outright!!! The ‘just give us the money
and power’ and we’ll show you argument is downright apocalyptic!

I was listening to a podcast this morning that specifically referenced the problems in SF as well as the Atlantic article. I’ll attempt to summarize some of what they said, as well as my own thoughts:

About SF crime, they were discussing the fact that pointing out higher crime statistics in years past, especially in the 1990s, is a worthless argument (no one said that here in this thread, but I have seen that in response to the reactions to the post-pandemic crime wave and the current perception that cities are lawless shitholes). Yes, overall crime might have been higher in cities like SF in the late 90s than now, but certain types of crimes (i.e. shoplifting, a very visible crime) are up and that leads to a perception that overall crime is worse than ever, even if it technically isn’t. It feels more dramatic to have certain crimes go up than all types of crime being more rampant at once. Perceptions are reality. “Vibes” matter. The 90s were a golden age when Americans believed things were getting better (and that high crime rate that begin to rise in the early 70s was beginning to decline). The early 2020s are the total opposite: a time of peak pessimism, only getting worse with a never-ending pandemic and rising inflation. They also pointed that even if crime is not personally affecting many residents, even if overall crime in SF went down during Boudin’s tenure, the homeless people lying on the streets, doing drugs add to the “vibe” that everything is fucked. SF is so expensive that even those making over $150K are at risk of slipping into poverty. Few who live there actually feel comfortable in their situation. Re. what I said about short-term vs. long-term, nobody thinks anything is getting better or that there is much of a future. All we want is to hold onto what we have; giving up something in the short-term for better results in the long-term is a non-starter. And I think that explains responses to other issues as well (like climate change).

They also pointed out that the only solution American society offers to urban problems is more police, more incarcerations (and I’m sure that’s what we’ll get in the wake of Boudin’s recall), but that runs into a problem with homelessness because being homeless is not a crime; misery on the streets is not a crime, so what do you do about it? It’s not a coincidence that homelessness spikes when the cost of housing increases. The two are directly related. To combat homelessness, we’d have to do things that would lower real estate values and that’s just not going to happen—too many vested interests in keeping those values up.

It’s true that it is not a crime to be homeless. Neither is poverty a criminal offense. However the fact that neither the poor or homeless can be jailed for their plight by no means guarantees they will not be treated like criminals short of being locked up; depending on where they choose to “settle.” This is exactly why every class deemed at one time or another pariahs in society; the poor, blacks, hispanics and yes the homeless are concentrated in their ghettos. Undesirable is every bit as pronounced a social determinant as illegal. And even in San Francisco in its silly attempt at actually living up to the concept that destitution is not criminal, you won’t find homeless encampments in front of the city’s mansions. But again, America, these issues like housing affordability, addiction gunplay, and all the other ills you believe define the big cities; these are all previews of what YOU should expect and sooner than you might think.

@HP you won’t find homeless encampments in front of the city’s mansions

Absolutely. Criminal or not, it is only allowed to happen in certain areas. It is not an option in other areas because those who live there have the money and resources to ensure that it cannot be visible.

ills you believe define the big cities

Of course, drug addiction (especially opioid and meth) is rampant in rural areas. It’s just that those addicts are not on the streets because housing is dirt cheap there. But it affects everyone nonetheless. There’s no escaping certain problems.

And again, regarding criminality; when you look at opioid addiction and crack addiction which of the 2 was a criminal offense and which is an illness worthy of treatment and why?

@HP Well.. I tend to agree with you above^ Where I disagree is I think the government
cannot solve those problems (ills of society)

Ours is supposedly a government reflecting the attitudes and beliefs of the people it governs. Whether it is true or not matters not nearly as much as the consequences to even a sham democracy confronted with an increasingly obtuse and logic deficient population. You want an example? What would you conclude regarding a population which listens to a man declare that he can force Mexico to pay for a wall he erects, and yet conclude the same man worthy of elevation to the Presidency?

^^These people are divided but I hate when they’re called stupid. As for trump
(did not for him the first time cos I am a NYCer) There are reasons I voted for his
second term… still an outsider and still strongly disliked by politicians! Got things done…
maybe not the things you wanted. Brought pride to the US… bad for those who hate the
US. Nobody I know (me) likes his character! Nobody likes me either. Can the US possibly
find a better person to vote for? Yes… Joe Biden.

I am a white male who made big tons money selling my holdings… my tech ideas…
call me evil, I will push back!