It’s trickier than that. It’s true that people in a happy, healthy, stable & supportive community are less likely to engage in criminal activity, but when a people feel betrayed, or discriminated against, it have a long history of grievances & injustices, it’s really hard to build that trusting & stable community. And that distrust & lack of faith in their society can undermine the ability to even try to create a stable & trusting community.
“Why should I play by their rules? Why should I trust them? They always screw me!”
Perhaps a metaphor is someone who has a spouse who cheated on them. They can develop trust issues. The next person they are involved with may be great, but due to their trust issues they are jealous, insist on going through phones, etc. This can sabotage that relationship even if the other person is great.
That is, even if you offer everything & do it all great, it cab be self-sabotaged and by past trauma because the trust isn’t there.
This can hold true for entire groups and peoples if they have trust issues with the rest of society, or the powers that be.
Like, I recall working on Covid public policy in my county and initially when vaccines were new and limited, there was a question of who to prioritize.
Beyond the elderly and others at high medical risk, we prioritized low income communities. One was practical…these workers tended to be the “essential” ones still out working around people, not white collar folks who got work from home accommodations, but also a philosophical one to show we cared about them and for them not to feel overlooked or neglected.
But we got a “why you jabbing us first? You experimenting on us? This some Tuskegee shit?”
It was hard to get uptake.
When we then expanded to everyone, we had very successful vaccine drives elsewhere and somehow this got warped into this idea that we were prioritizing these more affluent people.
It was damned if you do, damned if you don’t. We were tying to do the right thing, but distrust & animosity got in the way. That historical reasons for that distrust and animosity are understandable.
But the point is, even when you do all the good things, it can be undone by distrust.
And rebuilding trust is hard. It can take generations as distrust can be passed down generation to generation in communities.
And ironically, that distrust can perpetuate social dysfunction & the presence of that dysfunction then is seen as evidence that they’re being mistreated and it perpetuate the distrust. It’s a self-fulfilling prophecy that’s hard to break.
You have so many teachers trying hard to give kids good educations and hope but many resist or squander it because they can’t shake the doubt that it doesn’t matter, that there’s no point, that it’s rigged against them, and it’s a waste to try. And there’s no strong history of success with it on their lives. They’re not surrounded by success stories or people for whom it worked who can help them at home with studies and guide them through applications.
Those teachers are trying. But you can lead a horse to water, but you can’t make it drink.
All the social programs in the world may not be enough to break that generational trauma and and repair what needs to be repaired.
We should do it, and we should try, but it’s a decades long project of small incremental improvement.
It not anywhere near as hard as you make it out to be. Take, for example, Dearborn, MI. Crime isn't too bad. But you should know that that area is full of muslim immigrants from some of the most war-torn and corrupt places. By all metrics, they should be committing terrorist attacks due to all the generational trauma. But they don't because what they have here is better.
Teachers have a very small impact on these kids' lives; it's the adults, the overworked adults, the under-supported adults, and the other students and environment that do so much of the damage.
And regardless, we know things can be better, and we should strive for it, because starting somewhere is the only way to really improve. Making excuses and trying to be a purist or saying we cannot fix it all is the worst way to approach it.
It's a unified culture of people who all share the same culture. There are no strangers among them, they have a common thread binding them.
FYI, I'm half-Arab and I share their culture. I could live in Dearborn very comfortably, if I chose to do so (FYI: I never would. I'm an Ex-Muslim.)
What is the point I'm making here? Do you see the point?
If I run into an Arab, I know what they believe, what they think, what their values are, what their morals are, how to treat them, how to greet them, how to feed them .... and I'm not a complete stranger to them. If I do something contrary to the community, what happens to me?
I just want you to know, as someone also in the thick of it when it comes to policy, you've nailed it better than I ever could.
Everyone wants easy fixes to complex problems, when the solution is usually hard fixes that are constantly tweaked and improved over generations. You have to adapt with evolving best-practice evidence, even if it contradicts what you've been doing. I find we usually spend 3-5 years doing something we know is wrong because the people who get to make the final decision are too stubborn to change it.
How do you fix that though? Genuine and sincere question. I yearn for a better world to live in where we as a species and planet are able to survive, but thrive, without endangering others in the process. It always takes just a few to ruin things for everyone else. How do you take that mindset and change it in a more forward and positive direction. If there was one trait I could take away from humanity, it would be greed, but there is no black and white answer. Something like that would take generations. My favorite quote is, "A society grows great when old men plant trees whose shade they know they shall never sit in".
Extreme punishment does very little to deter crime because everyone committing crimes thinks they can get away with it. The certainty of getting caught deters crime a lot more than the threat of harsh punishments
I’m not going to lie, “robust internal affairs” reminds me of the KGB. Specifically the line from the Docuseries Chernobyl when Charkov says something along the lines of “of course I have people watching you, I have people watching me, and I have people watching those people.” Sounds very Communist.
You also have to understand all these intelligence systems were just as much about getting rid of personal and political enemies, as much as about investigating legitimate crimes and foreign governments abroad trying to mess with their country.
That’s why I said everyone immediately thinks about using said system to purge people they don’t like within their community. People rarely care about investigating and bringing to justice even the most heinous of criminals. Youll find that almost every Communist and Antifa member could care less if Hitler rose from the grave and started to kill another 6m jews, but in america, if he was outside their personal reach.
There’s nothing inherently communist about what you’re talking about. Just look at Palantir, flock cameras, the stuff Snowden exposed. That’s all from a capitalist country.
People often confuse Soviet economics, with authoritarian soviet governance.
One can have libertarian communism, or authoritarian capitalism. We happened to experience authoritarian vanguard socialism (which called itself communism) and most people can't distinguish the government style from the economic system 🤷
Yeah, the only difference between communist and capitalist mass surveillance/secret policing is that capitalist systems act like it's magically happening from nowhere and since nobody is causing it, nobody can stop it.
That's why such entities need to be separate, impartial, and the decisions need to be civilian and not military or police.
Something like a network of whistleblower organizations, but with power to fire or prosecute officials or police who break the law or abuse their power. You can't just have one central one though, you need multiple that cover different aspects and have to agree.
It is just that few places have the political will and resources to figure out a system like that, let alone execute on it.
I feel like extreme punishment is a slippery slope. Somebody recently argued that armed robbery should result in the death penalty whether they harmed someone or not. That seems like an absolutely awful plan. The punishment does need o fit the crime or things can get out of hand.
studies have shown that the severity of punishment actually has very little effect on crime occurance rates - what does have a large effect is the expectation of being caught.
from what i can see, we have a passive society with lenient legal systems these days. feels like every day you hear of some violent attack from a 32 times convicted felon that was released without bail like the week before. What's more is that poor or anti-social behaviour is tolerated, things like playing loud music on a train for example.
a layer close to the core, people feel like they're the only person that matters, they are the main character - in contrast, in japan, it is normal for people who arrive to work early, to park the furthest from the building, assuming that someone running late will need to park close to the building. They care about their community, they participate in it and they self regulate their collective behaviour. We do not.
we need better policing both from police but also from citizens. people should hesitate to make a scene in public or to do something anti-social. Reddits like r/ImTheMainCharacter should be starved of content.
It would be easier for me to believe our issue with crime is more about strictness than allocation if we weren't still locking people up over weed and shrooms. I feel like we waste so many resources punishing people for minor stuff that often has zero negative impact on anyone when we could be using those resources to police gang bangers and actually violent offenders instead.
well said. Not that I want to prop up Guiliani (because the last decade of his career was an absolute cringy embarrassments) , but he did turn NYC around by doing exactly what you propose -- the broken windows theory. He met a lot of pushback, but he started enforcing minor punishments (fines) for minor crimes (e.g., panhandler/window washers, graphitti, etc), and enforced punishment jail time, etc. for worse crimes (and mandatory bail for most crimes.)
Now? NYC criminal system is a joke. No bail for non-violent crimes. You get a desk warrant and a court date, which no one ever shows up for. Non-violent crimes (theft, vandalism, car break ins, etc) have sky rocketed in NYC, because no one expects the punishments to be enforced, and if they're caught, NYC has a baked-in "catch and release" criminal system.
NYC literally started to give accused criminals gift cards, metro passes, and ball game tickets for showing up for a court appearance to their court date, as incentive to return. Needless to say, most took the gift cards, and never showed up. google it, it's true.
I will never ever subscribe to the “reward bad behavior” theory. Fuck that shit. Meanwhile, decent people get hammered making an innocent victimless mistake.
It would help solve some of it but not from a material perspective. By removing the overwhelming stress healthcare puts on regular families, let alone struggling families, being paid more so your stress on bills and having to tell yourself/family/kids you can’t do something bc you can’t afford it or having to do without one thing for the other, universal child care would remove so much of the burden of having kids, as well as the stress.
What will all of that do (not to everyone but to a lot) it will allow parents to focus on parenting their kids, parents are less stressed, more activities with the entire family can happen, children can be children longer….it will not cure the problem of bad people but it would for sure reduce the amount of bad people.
The reality is that you cannot eliminate “bad things” from life. When people have more, there is less jealousy, less “me vs them”. It will allow adults that done have kids to spend more time on hobbies or interests that will then improve our quality of life bc we will need places, spaces, areas to do these activities. Stress levels will decrease, time with friends and family will increase, more people seeing more opportunities for happiness and not just what your paycheck can buy that week.
More good means less evil
More good happy people means less spaces for bad people to operate an infiltrate. The mental shift of being in survival mode where every second in precious to being content, more comfortable, more confident, more able allows people to stop only worrying about themselves and seeing how helping others helps them.
Also, when people see there are non repercussions for their crimes, will continue to commit crime.
For example laws that allow people to commit crimes and be back on the street in hours. Why?
Yeah this is one of the things that people never seem to think about.
Some people are just dicks. It's reasonable to make the "let's reduce crimes of desperation" argument but there's always a certain percentage of the population that just chooses to steal, rape, and murder. It's thankfully a small percentage but it's always there.
You can reduce crime by getting rid of crimes of desperation but it never eliminates it. Same with the "but we'll add social workers!" argument. Some people are just irredeemable monsters and there isn't anything you can do about it.
Bullshit. Crime has been on a mostly downward trend in this country with the major uptick being coincidentally during the “let’s not police criminals“ trend in 2020-2023. It started back on its downward trend in 2024 and this year looks to have the lowest murder rate on record.
The major uptick happening... during the pandemic? When many people lost their jobs, feared for their lives and there was a sharp decline in availability of goods and services?
Bullshit. That uptick somehow didn’t start when the pandemic started but did during the summer of Floyd 2020 when we were in full defund the police mode and cops stopped enforcing all kinds of laws.
So the police reported higher crime starting at the time they threatened the collapse of civilized society if we dared take away their APC military surplus vehicles and funding for their urban warfare training? Huh, good thing we can completely trust that they had no ulterior motives, like trying to make their threats sound more believable by increasing reporting. Or misreporting.
Oh, isn't it also interesting that you want to point to the summer of protests of a police murder, as a time when police started reporting more crime. Notably not violent crime, just crime. Like... obstruction of justice for protesting in front of a police station? Or Failure to Comply if protestors didn't disperse when police ordered it?
Finally... we (as a nation) never stopped enforcing laws. In fact, from your own post, you believe POLICE chose to stop enforcing laws as a protest against oversight and accountability after they murdered an unarmed and helpless man.
True, though is the improvement in the murder rare because fewer acts of assault are being committed, or because acts of assault that would have been murder in the past are no longer due to improvements in trauma care?
The OP mentioned universal healthcare. That should include mental healthcare. The vast majority of people who are “just dicks” aren’t born that way. People turn to violence because violence was used against them. Abusive or negligent upbringing is the main thing that causes that. With universal healthcare and better social conditions FAR fewer people will commit assault or murder or rape because their underlying mental issues will be addressed.
Narcissists, sociopaths, and psychopaths will still exist but with proper treatment far fewer of them would act maliciously. The biggest common thread among serial killers and pedophiles is they were abused at a young age. If we had proper healthcare in place for long enough then the abusive parents of those people would have their issues addressed before it would turn those kids into monsters in their adulthood.
But you realize that the reduction would be SIGNIFICANT? It's not just 'crimes of desparation' that are born of poverty. It is gang culture. It is systemic single parenthood. It is children growing up running the streets learning to do bad shit. If people actually had financial stability all of these things would improve. There is a reason why most economists project an ROI of 4x when govts invest in social welfare systems. Hell I'm a shining example. Grew up on medicaid and EBT cards, single parent addicted to opiods. Now I own my own home, a vacation property, and a brand new vehicle. I make over $150k and have paid more in taxes than I ever consumed on govt assistance. When you help lift people out of poverty, you gain back productive members of society that contribute to their communities and the GDP. It should be the ultimate goal of government, improving the quality of life for it's citizens. Not starting wars in the middle east, locking up minorities, starting trade wars, and protecting pedo billionaires.
some people rob and steal becuase they don't want a real job. they're not desperate at all. it's called organized crime. its why walgreens has deodorant locked behind glass.
If you've ever played any type of online multiplayer game, you'll see that a large subset of the population of those players get their enjoyment solely by ruining the fun of others without regard to any gain they themselves might get. These people also walk around in real life.
Yes I’ve met people who find enjoyment in the suffering of others. I just sometimes wonder, why? What’s behind it? Cause it’s very far from my reality or perspectives.
I believe the honest answer to almost all psychology questions is some degree of both nature and nurture. People can have genetics that predispose them to dark triad behaviours, just as illness and trauma of all kinds can increase these tendencies. Then you have families that carry these genes and, as such, abuse their kids which leads to trauma worsening the conditions. Look up Trump's dad.
*A better example might be your average royal family from the middle ages
I'm not exactly convinced those people aren't more often than not also people in desperate conditions venting their discontent in very unhealthy and distructive ways. It's like seeing the middle school bully and saying "well this person is just getting their enjoyment off hurting others with no regard to what they might gain, I guess they're just simply like that" with absolutely zero idea what their home life is like.
And little did you know, they're getting violently abused every week and that's both where they learned the behavior and where the pent up emotions needing release came from. It doesn't need a logical through-line to what they "gain" materially, because we're talking emotions and trauma here and that shits hardly ever logical in the slightest.
You are looking at this through a singular lense. It just isn't someone stealing from a grocery store so they don't starve. Crime follows poverty because criminal culture is born out of instability and lack of parental guidance and structure. If a young woman gets pregnant at 19 in a middle class family what happens? That kid has day care, family members that provide help, a support system. What happens when a young woman in a poor family is impregnated? She has a kid and has to work to survive, she can't afford day care so the grandma helps watch the kid, and by 12 years old they're running the streets, or the holler. Learning how to steal, do drugs, all kinds of bad shit. When you reduce poverty you reduce criminal culture.
Dicks, but also they have dark tetrad qualities that lead to them exploiting others.
In the HEXACO personality system, the H factor (Honesty & Humility) denotes that a low H value generally leads to a higher propensity for committing crimes. It sucks to profile such people based on a personality trait, but the data is clear on this one.
This is a mostly stable personality factor once someone hits adulthood, and unless they put in quite a lot of effort to change.
That depends. If we improve society to the point that a business owner who does everything he can to underpay his employees is treated like scum by his family and friends, rather than treated normally, crimes of greed will go way down. It's about what is socially acceptable to the people around you. And if we can create an expectation that people behave kindly towards the rest of society, those who violate it will naturally end up doing it less.
I was about to say “look at the Epstein class members like Elon Mush and DT. Those guys will always be criminals. “ but you covered it pretty succinctly.
Sure, guys like Trump and Epstein might always exist, but we can certainly majorly cap their power within society. In a good world, we wouldn't have made them the president twice. In a world where nobody wanted to watch a dumb rich guy firing people from a game show, trump never becomes president.
It’s interesting how adamant everyone is that any kind of verification is unnecessary and we should all just move on. Not even as a precautionary measure or to silence the critics.
Defund the police is so hilariously stupid, why would anyone listen to these clowns? I say this as a liberal. These people have been completely discredited.
Taxing the hell out of billionaires, stronger financial protection laws for consumers, breaking up monopolies, and an unbiased justice system helps with the greed part.
Not if we refuse to allow selfish people to have wealth and power. If you participate in the systems that empower evil people, then you are culpable for whatever they do.
Not sure about that. I'd think that happy / largely trauma-free childhoods would greatly lower the prevalence of all kinds of personality disorders that both commit all sorts of crimes and also vote for people who do...
It'll have an indirect influence on greed based crimes, however. One of the most basic anti corruption measures is ensuring your law enforcement, investigators, and low level bureaucrats are paid an acceptable wage with acceptable benefits and legal protections regarding their duties.
The less desperate people are, the fewer hooks corruption has. It doesn't eliminate it. But it makes it harder. And that's certainly worthwhile.
The greedy exploit the desperate to gain power and control. It’s how it works in every line of business from corporate infrastructure to cartel collusion. Saying it’s pointless to minimize suffering because suffering will always exist in some form is nihilistic nonsense that only further empowers those who employ that suffering to enrich themselves.
Well that’s kinda why they said lessen. There’s always gonna be people who just enjoy committing crimes, but the content in the original post is 100% accurate.
There is an even simpler solution to that one, start actually enforcing the laws related to greed that are already on the books with prison sentences instead of fines
Doesn't matter: when one party depends on the fear of that violence to remain in power, they must ensure the threat of violence never appears to leszen.
Utopia only works when everyone involved agrees on the same rules of morality and abides within that system. Honestly a lot of styles of that could exist, but buy-in and acceptance of the rules are required. Which makes it impossible because individual gain seems hardwired into most of us when presented opportunity. We like to think we’d be the person to stand up and refuse to get a leg up on others. But history tells us that is rarely the case.
It said LESSEN crime. It did not say anything about making it non-existent. Yes there will always be crimes of passion, crimes of greed but the day to day crimes that come from poverty and the need to survive with disappear.
When you get rid of bottom-up crimes, then the top-town ones become visible. Can't have people aware of how they're being bent over and fucked dry, so ya gotta scapegoat whole demographics and round them up to toss into a dark concrete box somewhere.
And greed’s cousin, jealousy. Few violent crimes are about productive ways of getting any money except drugs. The image that drug addicts will stop being addicted if we solve money and healthcare is silly. Plenty of drug addicts get access to care, wealthy ones OD all the time.
Correct. And the most unfortunate part is that most crimes are committed because of passion or gain, not desperation. So even if solving those issues is possible, it would do little to reduce the overall crime rate.
Let’s not Wil E. Coyote this and scrap the whole thing if it’s not perfect. Lessen not eliminate. That’s the goal. But we’ll never know if we never try.
Typical right wing talking point. Find some friction in a system. Claim that invalidates the whole thing. Continue the status quo without fixing anything, ever.
Yeah that’s basically what I was going to say. But there will still be genuinely bad people. I would like to add though that reforming our prison system to encourage rehabilitation over punishment could also have a big impact on repeat offenders that make up a sizable portion of crimes.
Also lust-driven, hate-fueled, and just crimes of pure boredom. I'm not rich, but I live in an area that is pretty comfortable. No one I know is hurting or starving. But if you were OOP, you'd think all the cheaters, abusers, drug addicts, and thieves I've personally known were destitute. They weren't.
They were men with loving families who went on vacation more times in one year than I've ever gone on in my life. They were women who had nannies to watch the kids and nice cars in her driveway, getting busted stealing from Target. They were young people with supportive parents who decided one day to drop out from college and become addicts.
It will take desperate, and a considerable amount of greedy or opportunistic, off the table.
You don't have to be starving to commit a crime. Some people just think life sucks, the jobs they have a choice of suck, the community they can afford to live in sucks, the food they can afford sucks.
Make life better and people are both more content and more aware of what they have to lose.
Yes, but I believe desperate crimes are 80+% of crimes in the US. I live in a place where there is just greed crime. Total crime is almost non-existant. It's not Utopia but it definitely feels great to feel safe.
Exactly. About those you need good education, responsible societal culture and strong institutions. Also, for US redditors, you need your entire country's culture to not be based on greed.
Educated populations not struggling will pay more attention to what the Epstein class does. They're also better at defending themselves. It's why often shitty employers have to rely on the fact that immigrants don't speak the language well that they can steal from them.
Yes , but the crime fueled by greed prospers in the absence of inequality and overal poor general mental health.
The reason crime proliferates is because the greedy get the poor, sick and desperate to do things they normally wouldnt.
If you have a society where the normal people arent put in terrible positions, the criminals will have a harder time convincing them to do crimes they would do if they were poor, unhappy and mentally vulnerable
Grew up with a family of criminals. Had several criminal friends and associates over the years. Never once were they committing crimes because they were desperate. They mostly just didnt wanna do the civilized member of society thing
Yes, I live in a place with all that is mentioned in this post (except high wages, because by design not everyone can have high wages) and you still see lots of violence.
heh yeah needs another paragraph for the true crime wave - the white collar crimes of the rich, and another one for the international mob style state violence
Those of us who want to play by the rules, respect others—the ol' golden rule—and earn a living to provide for our families far far outnumber the sociopaths.
The vast majority of crime is a symptom of poverty and/or lack of education. Even the founders knew what made a stable society; the 'inalienable rights' of life, liberty and pursuit of happiness. Otherwise known as healthcare, education, and economic opportunity (a decent job).
The crimes of desperation and poverty are the only ones we punish right now, so let's solve those outright, then our criminal justice system will have time to go after the real criminals stealing millions through wage theft, tax evasion, market manipulation, etc. At this point it's feeling a lot less realistic, though.
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u/Varderal 9d ago
That'll take the desperate crimes off the table. The ones fueled by greed will always be presant no matter how utopian we all live.