What public policies should be sought to address conditions that foster crime?

Several people here have mentioned increasing gun ownership as a means of reducing crime. Do they believe that the only crime existing is street crime?

Also at what point do they pull out at gun at what point would they use it?

A life threatening mugging might be clear but what if someone came up to you and tried to sell you some cannabis do you pull the gun out and arrest them? What if it was heroin or crack? What if the dealer was selling to a child, how about your child? Would you go to high crime areas to help out in bring crime figures down? Go up to gang members and tell them that you are armed so they should mend their ways? With all the guns washing around in the US system what happens if they shoot back or shoot first? I mean if someone you face might be armed why not just shoot them in the back first?

Also how does being armed help in tackling crimes that don’t take place in the open? What about the policeman taking a bribe? The CEO signing off on what they know to be fraudulent accounts? What about the child abuser, the wife beater, the pimp or the tax dodger?

If someone is polluting the environment do you shoot the driver of the sub-contracted truck dumping the waste? The boss who told him to do it? The factory executive that appointed the contract knowing it wasn’t a reputable company but did it on price? The factory boss that produced the poison knowing there was alternatives? The regulating inspector that didn’t pick up on it? The head of the regulatory department for not having the resources and manpower to cover all the factories? The politician that cut that part of the budget that reduced the money going to that department to pay for tax reductions? Or do you shoot the people that voted for him?


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Huck

I found your ‘Just Generosity’ article interesting but I’m unsure why you say you support these things when you are voting for a political party that doesn’t seem to have anything to do with it.

Hike in minimum wage, vast increase in education budgets, drive to full employment, expensive renovation of peoples environments, wealth distribution, changes in market led culture, ending of corporate welfare, the introduction of a true health service and a vast increase in the number of social workers. All these seem to have little to do with your present political stance? The thing is how can I believe it when you say you want to help when your actions say you don’t want to help?

The thing is how does having a gun as an individual help you on wider social or political problems. If someone thought that a political leader had committed a crime is shooting him or her OK?

If you think shooting people is perceived as the way to deal with a social and political problem like crime then I think your social and political system truly is in more danger than I thought.

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It is heartening to have people making the connection between poverty and crime, since many Americans have told me there isn't one only the ‘good’ or ‘bad’ poor, and that to claim that poverty increases the likelihood of criminal activity is insulting the ‘good’ poor.

The thing is that what they say and what they think doesn’t always seem to match, like those people that will tell you they are not racist but go on to say that ‘everyone’ knows that black people are ‘culturally’ lazy.

When some people talk of ‘helping’ poor people what often seems to be implied is that there are ‘deserving’ and ‘undeserving’ poor. Once again it is back to the idea of ‘good’ and ‘bad’ poor. The idea seems to be that the good and deserving poor are just being held back by welfare and that the good generous rich are held back from helping the poor by heavy taxation.

The plan is then to reduce welfare so that the suppressed work ethic and trapped entrepreneurial spirit of the poor will be released. Also in this scenario a job always leads upward as if every petrol pump worker will end up owning a string of petrol stations and that every burger flipper ends up running McDonald’s. If a person does not rise to a greatly better income the reason is totally down to the individual.

So it stands to reason that people who remain poor therefore have only themselves to blame.

The only thing is that I don’t know of any time or place where such an attitude and where the rich are very lightly taxed and the poor have very limited welfare where poverty has improved to any great extent. Such a system usually only breeds an increase in inequality and exploitation.

 

Of course not, crime takes many forms and no one said that guns can stop them all.

The point where my life is in danger. And I use the gun as soon as I pull it out. I'm not taking chances with my life.

If they have good prices, I'm buying. But under my plan you would get drugs at legal, controlled establishments, much like alcohol today, so selling on the streets would pretty much dissapear.

It is easier for high schoolers in america to get illegal drugs than alcohol in most cases. That is why you take drugs out of the hands of criminals and into the hands of resposible citizens regulated by laws similar to alcohol laws.

???? Just because someone has a gun doesn't mean they go looking for trouble. If someone tries to commit a crime against me, be it mugging, rape, robbery, burglary etcetera, their ass is getting shot. End of story. That doesn't mean I go around looking to get robbed or playing vigilante.

Gun ownership reduces violent and property crimes by making it much more dangerous for these kinds of criminals to ply their trade. Also, with drugs off the black market and crime victims shooting back, gangs in America would be all but starved out of existence.

Those kinds of crimes would be taken care of by law enforcement agencies, who would have much more time and resources with drug and violent crime mostly out of the picture

See above.

 

You assert that Gun ownership reduces violent and property crimes by making it much more dangerous for these kinds of criminals to ply their trade, what do you base that on?

Are you saying that you often meet mugging, rape, robbery, burglary, in your everyday life or that these kinds of crime are normal occurrences in most Americans everyday life?

Are you really in constant fear of been raped or mugged?

If someone has a gun pointing at you to rob you and you don’t have your gun in your hand are you going to risk reaching your it?

If you see people moving stuff (TV, DVD) out of a house are you going to pull your gun out and ask if they are burglars?

How suspiciously does another person have to act or a situation to become before you pull that gun?

You hear a woman’s screams or whimpers coming from an apartment do you break down the door with your gun in your hand just in case it might be a rape?

If you take this idea, that carrying a gun is the best way to deal with the problem of crime, to it’s silly but logical conclusion and you have everyone with a gun in their hand pointing at anyone they don’t know personally that comes close. And of course all those people would have guns pointed at you. I mean if you are so frightened that something unexpected might happen that you carry a gun, what is the point of having it locked away or trapped in a holster wouldn’t it make you more secure to have it out ready to use?

I believe it was Roosevelt that told Americans “the only thing to fear is fear itself” well it sounds to me like many Americans have given in to fear.

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As a way of tackling the causes of crime having even more guns in the system seems the most stupid.

 

The woman being raped and the people in the house being burglarized should have their own gun. Otherwise it's up to the police. Like I said, I'm no vigilante. As for me, I've had my car burglarized twice in my own driveway. Both times I saw it happening, but I didn't have anything to defend myself so I didn't want to risk a confrontation. If I had a gun, I would have been able to stop it.

If you want figures for gun ownership and crime, why don't you tell me, if you were a burglar, would you rather ply your trade in New york, where guns are pretty much outlawed, or Dallas, where everyone and their dog has one? I pasted some links to stats in one of my first posts if you want to see the figures.

I don't live in fear, but I do live with the reality that there are some nasty people in the world who wouldn't think twice about commiting crimes against me.

By the way, almost all guns used in crime are obtained illegally. When will the government wake up and realize that banning things only forces goods onto the black market?

Oh, and on more thing, can you guess which weapon is used most often in murder? Bare hands, with a whopping 75 percent. That means we must cut everyone's hands off, according to gun control logic.

 

I thought all Texans had guns!

j/k...but I can make fun of myself cause I'm in Texas too =P

 

The question is “What public policies should be sought to address conditions that foster crime?”

You are putting forward the view that the only thing that would give you courage enough to tackle crime is to have a gun. It makes me think that the only thing that may give people the confidence to commit a crime is to do it armed? Especially since the advantage is with the armed mugger or rapist as they would have the gun out already while their victim would need to either get it out as the gun is pointed at them and risk getting killed or do nothing?

I’m not a burglar but if I was I’d go for a place where the people were not there and as you point out people like you would do nothing.

As to illegally obtained guns where did those guns come from? It would seem to me it must be from either legal gun sellers or from people with legal guns.

As to your argument about hands it is the height of idiocy, guns are built as weapons they can do nothing else can the same be said of hands?

To me the availability of guns may go some way to fostering crime by giving some types of criminal the belief that they have an edge, but my real question would be how they got t that point that they thought crime was a route to take.

 

Of course all Texans have guns. We're also all Republicans, drive pickup trucks, say y'all a lot, call black people negroes, and either listen to country music or the blues.

 

Would you want to confront a criminal who may or may not be armed if you don't have a gun?

I did nothing because I had nothing to defend myself. What was I supposed to do, go out there and ask the guy nicely to please stop burglarising my car? I called the cops, of course, but they only got there long after the guy had made his getaway.

The point is that crime would happen even if guns were never invented. But they were invented and can't be uninvented. What do you suggest? That only criminals and the government have guns?

They got to that point by being poor, stupid, lazy and selfish. How they got poor, stupid, lazy and selfish is their parent's damn fault for genes and upbringing. It may sound cruel, but it's the truth. It isn't my job to keep them from being poor, stupid, lazy and selfish, and poor, stupid, lazy and selfish people will always exist. Throwing free money at them won't help, what else would you suggest?

 

Would you want to confront a criminal who may or may not be armed if you don't have a gun?

I did nothing because I had nothing to defend myself. What was I supposed to do, go out there and ask the guy nicely to please stop burglarising my car? I called the cops, of course, but they only got there long after the guy had made his getaway.

I live in a country where few criminals go armed, to give you some examples I’ve successfully fought off a mugger and confronted some young people that were trying to break in to someone’s flat, both ran off.

I once lived on one of the (statistically) roughest estates in London, I never had any problems. In fact at one time I was rushing home when a black guy shouted after me to stop, he thought I was about to mug an old woman that was walking on the pavement just in front of me. He like I (in the case of the would be burglars) was just a local resident doing his bit for the community.


The point is that crime would happen even if guns were never invented. But they were invented and can't be uninvented. What do you suggest? That only criminals and the government have guns?

As is clear from what I’ve said just above crime would happen but if people fear that every criminal is armed then as you have pointed out people like you are afraid to act. The UK has some problems with guns but it has gun control and so the society is not awash with them as it seems to be in the US where there are few controls.

In my view the US has passed the line, there are now so many guns in circulation that people believe every criminal is armed, that people that many not be criminal now but might become so, are armed, and that people that are just plain odd or unstable, are armed. It is in this climate of fear, that the gun lobbyists try to push the idea that that fear will go away if you were also armed, but really that just makes the fear grow.

 

They got to that point by being poor, stupid, lazy and selfish. How they got poor, stupid, lazy and selfish is their parent's damn fault for genes and upbringing. It may sound cruel, but it's the truth. It isn't my job to keep them from being poor, stupid, lazy and selfish, and poor, stupid, lazy and selfish people will always exist. Throwing free money at them won't help, what else would you suggest?
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This is the attitude I talked about earlier and some people even go as far as to comment that this may be the reason why such a large percentage of black people are poor and they also shrug and say "It may sound cruel, but it's the truth". Others believe this but add an extra layer of religious rationalization, by claiming that people are poor because they are sinners or hedonists that god is punishing with poverty.
I’ve heard it all before. Slaves needed to be treated harshly because they were lazy, women should not have the vote because they were too stupid to use it properly, and Jews were evil because they were selfish. Go through history and if you want to suppress people then you need to make sure people don’t sympathise with them. So keep drumming home their supposed faults, for example in this one paragraph, poor, stupid, lazy and selfish is repeated not once but four times. It is an old ploy if you want to drive a message home (however unfounded) just keep repeating it and some people will think that if it has been said that amount of time (remember the link between 9/11 and Saddam) it must be true.

Women eventually got the vote in many countries after a long political struggle and slavery was abolished after a lot of conflict. But in some cases once the majority of a population have lost sympathy with a section of their community that section may be treated very harshly, such as the Jewish community in Nazi Germany.

Also for example in the US, slavery might have been abolished due to the Civil War but that didn’t end an apartheid system still being left in place in many areas with overt and covert suppression. It wasn’t until the 60’s that this was addressed and I’m told that black people are still fighting discrimination. All through that long struggle the black community was starved of resources for many the fact was that there seemed little point in helping lazy and stupid black people. Some in these white communities may even have conceded that this viewpoint sounded cruel, but that didn’t make it any less the truth to them. It just wasn’t ‘their’ job to keep stupid, lazy black people.

 

where are you getting this statistic from? The Bureau of Justice study of firearms stated that 70% of murders in the U.S. were committed using firearms. http://www.ojp.usdoj.gov/bjs/pub/pdf/guic.pdf

I couldn't agree with you more. Unfortunately, it's incredibly hard to find reliable studies to even begin contemplating what to actually do about it. There are so many variables involved that have to be taken into consideration. Someone stated that an armed population will prevent crime, and I just don't believe it. Here's some nice stats for you... A gun purchased for self defense is: 4 times more likely to be involved in an unintentional shooting; 7 times more likely to be used in a criminal assault or homicide; and 11 times more likely to be used to attempt or commit suicide. This is a great article: http://www.csgv.org/docUploads/Gun%20Violence%20Fact%20Sheet%2Epdf

I think this is pretty powerful as well: The firearms related death rate for children under the age of 15, in the US, is 12 times higher than that of the 25 other industrialized countries combined. Put another way, 86% of kids that died from firearms, per capita, out of 26 countries, were American.

 

That statement wasn't about race or minorities or class, it is about criminals. Why should I be sympathetic to criminals? They hurt other people for a living.

Besides, it's true. Very few people who meet any one of the criteria of being: middle class, inteligent, hardworking, or considerate of their fellow human being go on to take up a life of crime.

 

Apparently white-collar crime doesn't count in your book - none of those Enron execs hurt anybody...

Do you really think all of us middle and upper class folks are really that considerate to the plight of the lower classes? What do we do to show our consideration? We give them crappy wages at even crappier jobs, and get pissy when they're selling drugs so they can afford cars and homes like ours.

We force them to live in this worst maintained, oldest, most run down parts of town. Look at any city. The more wealthy area's are kept up much better by the cities. For example, here in Austin the east side is the poor part of town. Most people do not have cars, they ride the bus. The east side is also the only side of town that doesn't have covered benches for the bus stops. That's just fucked up when more people ride the bus on that side of town than any.


Then we call them lazy because they need to go on welfare becuase 60 hours a week at minimum wage still wont help them care for their family.

The more money you have the better society treats you. You can get better seats on planes, better healthcare, etc...That type of class discrimination is obvious to the people in the lower classes. And in our society we force people to be in the lower class. No matter how many of these lazy people turn their lives around and start making money, the crappy jobs STILL need to be filled, and someone is going to have to work them at 5 bucks an hour. No matter how many people get to move up in this society, we always shuffle one down into their place.

You won't see an end to crime until you see an end to such a drastic class inequality.

You can't blame the people of the lower class for this at all. The upper and middle classes just keep this cycle going.

 

Actually I believe that so called ‘white collar crime’ committed by mostly the middle class who are comfortable, affluent and even very rich, is the largest growing crime plus if taken as a whole it is by far the most profitable. Think about it, it covers everything from the pilfering of a few company pens to the embezzlement of millions from the company’s pension fund.

I also have to burst your bubble about intelligence and crime. White collar crime because of the very nature of a lot of it, which often involves complicated fraud, the people that do it are more likely than not rather intelligent. Also these crimes often go undetected for years or are only discovered because of the greed of those involved or due to whistleblowers.

 

I was referring to "Traditional" crime. White collar crime is a problem too, but it is very different in nature than traditional crime and requires a different way to go about dealing with it.

 

So are you acknowledging that not all crime is caused by poverty and that there is an element of personal morality involved?

 

Of course.

It is silly to think something like "all crime is caused by poverty" because that is obviously not right. There definitely is an element of personal morality (or lack therof) in a criminal.

But a person's morals are going to be completly different depending on this situation they were raised in. If a person feels like society is oppressing them, they are naturally going to have a lack of respect for that society.

 

I think one of the best resources for studying these sorts of issues, are the learning materials at the "United For a Fair Economy" website. I went to one of their teachings, and they very clearly showed us how raising the minimun wage had a profound effect on lowering poverty levels, and how raising the number of low-cost housing units and how this had a clear affect on homelessness.

http://www.faireconomy.org/

The main problem with that reasoning, is that unfortunately with live in a free-trade economy, not a fair trade economy. And our government, as it stands now, rewards companies for outsourcing.

I think we should stop labeling people as "the poor". They are just people who have come on hard times. People who have come on hard times, often do deperate things. Don't go and say we are insulting "the poor" like they are some monolithic cultural group that holds "poor pride parades." People in general aren't perfect, and extreem situations can cause extreem behavior.

I mean...don't think of lowering poverty rates as "getting rid of poor people so they won't cause crime", but of making life easier for people so that desperate situations are less likely to occur."

If you wonder how drugs play into all this, I don't know much about it, but here is a great on-line documentary-

http://www.guerrillanews.com/reality_tour/

 

What I have fault with is the idea that the reasons for a person committing a crime, what some would call a persons ‘morals’, are somehow preordained. I believe they lay in the worldly not handed down from some spiritual plain or overriding genetic marker.

There are always those that wish to claim some extraterrestrial or junk scientific influence, something that decides whom is to be bad and whom good so that that they do not have to deal with the real and very human sources of these traits. If someone believes that an individual is going to be bad or good whatever the circumstances of his or her life they might see little point in trying to change those circumstances.

The thing is the people in any given society have to look at the real reasons why crimes are taking place rather than looking for copouts based on spurious belief systems about already predestined outcomes.


(An aside some religions us the ploy of a supposed preordained good or bad character to trick people to join them. What they claim to be able to do is change a default setting of bad into a new rebooted – born again- one of good.)

 

Who said anything about "preordained" moral choices? My point is that poor people can be virtuous and rich people can be thieves. In other words, criminal behavior cannot be entirely attributed to external circumstances.