from the what-about-stained-glass-windows? dept.
In the "broken windows theory," as it has come to be known, such characteristics convey the message that these places aren't monitored and crime will go unpunished. The theory has led police to crack down on minor crimes with the idea that this will prevent more serious crimes and inspired research on how disorder affects people's health.
...
However, the researchers did find a connection between disorder and mental health. They found that people who live in neighborhoods with more graffiti, abandoned buildings, and other such attributes experience more mental health problems and are more likely to abuse drugs and alcohol. But they say that this greater likelihood to abuse drugs and alcohol is associated with mental health, and is not directly caused by disorder.
So...disorder causes mental health problems which causes crime?
(Score: 1) by Chocolate on Saturday May 18 2019, @03:28PM (15 children)
For awhile I lived in places with graffiti that was not a dumping ground for humanity or anywhere special and in some places without. The more signs of damage gangs violence danger whatever else bad things humans do to themselves and others the more on edge the place feels. A month ago they started tagging this area turning white walls into declarations of their glory or maybe just signals of their discontent. Police won't do jack about it. It's too low on the priorities. Can't say I blame em really. The penalty though is a slap on the wrist maybe a tiny fine. So the taggers keep tagging so the place goes downhill. They caught one of them a while back. Normal looking guy in his 30s who just liked to get out on the weekend to paint over bridges and walls and stuff. Other than shooting them on sight do we really have a solution?
Bit-choco-coin anyone?
(Score: 2, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday May 18 2019, @04:13PM (2 children)
Paints have been developed that allow any spray applied on top to be washed off with a regular hose or a power washer. Then you end up with stickers, whatever you call that paste / paper combo, etc.
Murals are generally effective as faggers don't like to ruin art.
(Score: 2) by Hyper on Saturday May 18 2019, @04:25PM (1 child)
In the past year stickers have become The Thing to use all over the place. It may be better than paint and must certainly looks nicer but it's still graffiti.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday May 19 2019, @08:31PM
I prefer my stickers to be mass produced corporate slogans that reinforce the mass produced messages broadcast on all other communication media. 0800 588 2300 EMPIRE!
(Score: 2) by fyngyrz on Saturday May 18 2019, @05:33PM (3 children)
I think your typical citizen definitely tends to avoid areas with a lot of damage, shuttered businesses, abandoned vehicles, sidewalk gatherings of obviously normal-work-capable individuals, and property-rights-violating graffiti (as distinct from art placed on areas set aside for such purposes, sponsored by the town/city, etc.)
That's a kind of solution: feedback.
Unfortunately, it's feedback that will make a bad place into an even worse place, while areas with the funds and will to keep their environs orderly, clean and well-policed will continue to draw people's attention, patronage and approval away from the run-down areas. We have seen this repeatedly.
Short of solving the underlying problems of individual and family poverty, that's also what I expect to see in the future. With Republicans steering the ship, or at least keeping the rudder from moving, the odds favor increasing poverty and misery in such areas as the distance between the haves and the have-nots is increased.
--
Fact: Celery is 95% water
and 100% not pizza.
(Score: 2, Flamebait) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday May 18 2019, @06:04PM (1 child)
the odds favor increasing poverty and misery in such areas as the distance between the haves and the have-nots is increased.
Yet the areas in the untied states with the largest dichotomy of the haves and have nots is run by democrats by a wide margin. Take San Francisco or Portland for example. Considered (if I may take a point here) one of the largest homeless populations in the united states. Yet somehow this is republicans fault? I would posit to you that perhaps their programs are failing at a large scale but they keep throwing more wood on the fire and blaming everyone but themselves for the failure. Promising they will get it right this time 'pinky swear'! On the one hand running the jobs off to the other side of the world and turning around and saying it is the big bad republicans fault for not caring enough. We systematically removed all the low earning jobs from our society with minimum wage and large tax burdens on small businesses. How do you learn to do better if you can not even get an entry level job? Almost everyone starts at the bottom. You are being gaslighted into thinking that any of them give a damn about what is really going on other than their bank account.
Want to fix poverty and crime? Jobs and money, clear them up every time. But long term usage of social programs does not do anything. One guy I know gets full gov assistance for dandruff (food stamps, section 8, SS). You pay for that every time you pay your taxes. I am not saying to get rid of these things. But lets not radically scale them up either. We need to build ways for people to get out of these welfare traps, not tangle them in further. The dandruff guy? Will never work again (he is in his 40s). He is very comfortable with his lifestyle. Why should he? He is getting well over 1300 a month free. I have many examples where our democrat gov is failing us. But yeah lets pretend its the republicans. Its not. Its us.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday May 19 2019, @08:37PM
Ah dandruff and political zingers, nice one! That explains the 10s of thousands of homeless people that live on the streets near me. If only I had known, I'd have given them all shampoo and a copy of Ayn Rand's memoirs. Oops she ended up on welfare - scratch that, it sends the wrong message.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday May 18 2019, @08:39PM
With Republicans steering the ship, or at least keeping the rudder from moving, the odds favor increasing poverty and misery in such areas as the distance between the haves and the have-nots is increased.
Yeah, Goddamn Republicans, gonna get reelected again [politifact.com]
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday May 18 2019, @05:36PM
Promote them to Banksy
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday May 18 2019, @07:47PM (6 children)
Since (at least according to you) that life is so cheap that using paint should be a capital offense, why don't we shoot you instead?
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday May 18 2019, @09:43PM
Wypipo dindu nuffin
(Score: 1) by Chocolate on Sunday May 19 2019, @01:19PM (4 children)
Not all shots are fatal. Would ya like to learn this first hand since ya seem to lack experience within this realm?
Tell ya what, grab yerself a can of spray paint, come on down to the local, we'll grab some BBs and see how we go?
mmmkay?
Bit-choco-coin anyone?
(Score: 2) by Freeman on Monday May 20 2019, @06:19PM (1 child)
It's all fun and games until someone loses and eye.
Joshua 1:9 "Be strong and of a good courage; be not afraid, neither be thou dismayed: for the Lord thy God is with thee"
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday May 20 2019, @08:25PM
And then it's hilarious!™
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday May 20 2019, @08:30PM (1 child)
Same AC here. Let's do it! I'll enjoy watching you carted off to jail for Assault.
Given the high quality of prisons in Alabama [usatoday.com], let's meet in Birmingham.
It sounds like you'd fit right in with the folks that are already there. I imagine you'll be wearing diapers soon after you arrive as your sphincter will be ripped to shreds.
Good times!
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday May 21 2019, @10:44AM
That sounds suspiciously like a public service. Maybe the judge will give credit where credit is due. Give the good Samaritan a prize for their good works. Congratulate their spirit. Onwards and outwards to find evil doers to punish with backing of our societies protectors.
(Score: 5, Interesting) by Runaway1956 on Saturday May 18 2019, @04:08PM (6 children)
Millions of Americans are imprisoned for petty crimes, and the prison-for-profit SOB's make a killing off of them. Ask any of the rich bastards how it's working out for them.
(Score: 2, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday May 18 2019, @04:28PM (3 children)
In new york they found most crimes were committed by a very small portion of the population. They also found if you gave them a nudge early on they did not walk up the ladder to heavier crimes. They also found sharing information between the burrows helped a lot too. At one point walling off New York was considered a interesting if not grandiose idea. Walk through central park at night? Thats a mugging. Times square a shithole. Now? Not even close. I think the results speak for themselves. But sure draw whatever conclusions you want.
This is literally a call to let people molest other peoples property with impunity. What of the rights of the people who own those walls, windows, and benches? Do you consider that 'OK'?
The correct way is a staggered system of progressively harsher penalties. Caught once 10 hours community service picking up garbage and some small fine and restitution. Then 20 the 40 then 80 then so on. Eventually they will get the point DO NOT DO THAT. Do not throw them in jail. Make them spend time cleaning up their own and others mess.
Maybe fix the problem before they get into prison? Cut off the supply of the 'rich SOB'? Fix the laws to have sentences that fix the issues too. Make the perps do it.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by Runaway1956 on Saturday May 18 2019, @06:06PM (2 children)
You're on the right track, with community service. But, you're starting far too low. First offense should be about 40 hours - a week of labor, for most people. Double the weeks with each offense. That should kinda-sorta roughly equate to value of work equalling the value of the damage done, with the first to third offenses. As the "hard core" petty criminal progresses, he should be giving more value than he destroys. When he figures that out, maybe he acquires enough sense to understand that he's losing. "Why am I doing $4,000 worth of work, for $150 worth of damage? It makes no sense. Maybe I need to stp busting shit up!"
The real hard headed dick who doesn't seem to be learning can be housed in a barracks-like environment, instead of being sent to jail or prison. Dumbass owes six months worth of work, and only shows up sometimes? Put him in the barracks, with some pretty strict rules about his off-time, and near-constant supervision. Make him understand that jail is worse, and that's the next stop, if he doesn't grow up.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday May 20 2019, @12:33AM (1 child)
Kinda reminds me of the "Chain Gangs" we used to see when I was a kid.
It was a pretty efficient way of securing and supervising the ones assigned to it.
No, nobody could MAKE them work, but the ones that did earned some sort of tokens that could be exchanged for cigarettes or tastier food.
Really sucked to have an addiction to tobacco. You found yourself indebted to everyone right quick to keep your monkey happy. Maybe that is why the Powers That Be seemed to be all intent on using the media and any other technique available to encourage tobacco use. Once someone had the monkey on their back, it was much easier to motivate them to take the jobs that no one else wanted.... to satisfy the monkey. Everyone you could sway to your product became yet another soul to exploit. Well motivated by the monkey he accepted from you.
I remember passing chain gangs on the way to Grandma's house when I was a kid.... it gave Dad a thing to point out to a young child, like religion, to set in the meme early in life before other memes got in... "Trust and Obey" for the church, as we all knew the Church taught us to be "Fishers of Men", fishing for Kneelers. And if you ran afoul of the Law, one might end up on one of those chain gangs. Sure did not look to be much fun.
But it worked. A lot of us saw those chain gangs and stayed out of trouble.
(Score: 2) by Runaway1956 on Monday May 20 2019, @05:04AM
Yes, my idea is akin to the chain gangs. But, there were two problems with chain gangs, that we want to avoid.
#1 - chain gangs consisted of convicted prisoners, who may or may not have had any choice in joining the gang. Better sheriff's departments offered some reward for working on the chain gang, as you suggest, and they didn't force the prisoners to go on the gang.
#2 - the local sheriff's departments usually profited from the labor done by the chain gang. The department's money might be used to keep the patrol car fleet new and shiny, or go toward road maintenance, or it might even go into the sheriff's and judge's pockets for personal use. However corrupt the distribution of money may or may not be, it isn't right that government profit from the prisoner's labor. The lion's share of the money earned by the prisoner should go toward restitution to the victims, most of the remainder should go into the prisoner's pocket.
I can't stress enough how oppposed I am to the whole Prison for Profit scheme. There is little difference, IMO, between today's private prisons, and yesteryear's chain gangs that made individual sheriff's unbelievably wealthy. Just as we have congress critters today who become multimillionaires on a salary of $150,000 to $250,000, so we had sheriff's being paid five digit salaries, but becoming millionaires.
The scheme is much too similar to slavery for my taste.
(Score: 5, Insightful) by JoeMerchant on Saturday May 18 2019, @05:52PM (1 child)
I think the correlation with mental health issues can be explained by straight economic reasons: poorly maintained neighborhoods have lower property values, people with "mental health issues" have lower earning potential... Q.E.D.
🌻🌻 [google.com]
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday May 19 2019, @04:36AM
"I think the correlation with mental health issues can be explained by straight economic reasons: poorly maintained neighborhoods have lower property values, people with "mental health issues" have lower earning potential... Q.E.D."
Once again, people, repeat after me: correlation is not causation. You're welcome.
(Score: 3, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday May 18 2019, @04:08PM (2 children)
Seattle has been experimenting with letting minor crimes:
https://www.king5.com/article/news/local/seattle/seattle-failing-at-handling-chronic-criminal-homeless-report-says/281-6d4c41a1-60d9-4f3d-8380-4a3de66b527e [king5.com]
KOMO News documentary, Seattle is Dying: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bpAi70WWBlw [youtube.com]
Pushback against the KOMO News report: https://www.seattletimes.com/seattle-news/data/is-seattle-dying-not-if-you-look-crime-rates-from-the-80s-and-90s/ [seattletimes.com]
One anecdote: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lltLYG6Dgj0 [youtube.com]
(Score: 2) by Reziac on Sunday May 19 2019, @04:20AM (1 child)
If you make minor offenses not a crime, naturally your crime rate drops...
And there is no Alkibiades to come back and save us from ourselves.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday May 19 2019, @02:20PM
That's the thing, there's been massive increases in jaywalking and traffic offenses since the city decided that it was racist to enforce them. Apparently, people of color can't figure out how traffic laws work.
(Score: 4, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday May 18 2019, @04:11PM (5 children)
Draw whatever conclusion that suits your needs.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday May 18 2019, @05:09PM (4 children)
"Both sides!"
(Score: 2) by The Mighty Buzzard on Saturday May 18 2019, @07:02PM (3 children)
Massive tangent here but that made me think of the buttered toast tied to a cat perpetual motion machine and wonder if you couldn't just butter both sides of the toast and achieve the same effect. Or butter the cat.
My rights don't end where your fear begins.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by pipedwho on Saturday May 18 2019, @08:41PM
If you butter both sides of the toast, not only will it fall to the ground, but it’ll probably bounce back up once and land on the second side to a zero kinetic energy resting place.
Buttering the cat has some merit, but then you just have a ‘buttered cat’ without the negative pole of ‘buttered bread’ to balance the rotor.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday May 18 2019, @09:26PM
I prefer leaving my marbles on a titanium pedestal with a grounding rod attached to the bottom. The paradox that occurs every morning when I walk in the room makes eveything else "just work." Easiest wiring job too.
(Score: 3, Informative) by MostCynical on Sunday May 19 2019, @01:39AM
too hard to hold on to buttered cats
"I guess once you start doubting, there's no end to it." -Batou, Ghost in the Shell: Stand Alone Complex
(Score: 5, Interesting) by RamiK on Saturday May 18 2019, @04:34PM (7 children)
Sure broken windows theory might not work per-say, but the broken window fallacy does: The rich lobby federal, state and municipal government to lower taxes and not invest in education, health care and infrastructure. The people grow unemployed, poor and desperate. The people commit crimes. The people are sent to private prisons at the tax payers' expense. The profits the prisons make enrich the wealthy.
Net loss for society. Net gain for the rich: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Parable_of_the_broken_window [wikipedia.org]
compiling...
(Score: 2, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday May 18 2019, @05:36PM (4 children)
> per-say
per se [cambridge.org]
(Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday May 18 2019, @05:39PM
We should let them have the colloquial spelling to help distinguish it from the legal definition.
(Score: 1, Offtopic) by Runaway1956 on Saturday May 18 2019, @06:12PM (1 child)
I thought he was referring to Percy. Take your pick.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Derek_Percy [wikipedia.org]
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Percy_Levar_Walton [wikipedia.org]
https://www.cleveland.com/court-justice/2017/09/execution_date_set_for_clevela.html [cleveland.com]
Don't like any of those? Find your own!
(Score: 2) by MostCynical on Sunday May 19 2019, @01:42AM
OKay [phrases.org.uk]
"I guess once you start doubting, there's no end to it." -Batou, Ghost in the Shell: Stand Alone Complex
(Score: 2) by RamiK on Saturday May 18 2019, @11:49PM
Sad thing is, I thought those were two separate idioms since I actually took Latin in uni so I was taught to pronounce per-say vs. per-se without schwa, with a guttural rhotic and without the ey at the end: [pɚːˈseɪ] vs. [pɛrˈse].
compiling...
(Score: 2, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday May 18 2019, @05:39PM
How the gov conspires to help us and fucks us. Remember to think of the children. http://steshaw.org/economics-in-one-lesson/ [steshaw.org]
The profits the government programs make enrich the wealthy.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DsTKAqHwj0s [youtube.com]
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k_PHsvGu5hc [youtube.com]
All the while telling you what to focus on and ripping you off. It is called misdirection in magic. It works very well.
(Score: -1, Offtopic) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday May 18 2019, @06:02PM
"The rich" == "the government" == "the corporations"
(Score: 3, Funny) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday May 18 2019, @04:42PM (1 child)
I feel like committing crimes too.
Oh... I thought this was about M$.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday May 18 2019, @09:44PM
haahahahahah le funny M$ joek
(Score: 5, Informative) by ledow on Saturday May 18 2019, @06:51PM
Was buying a house a few years ago. Estate agent shows us one, the house looks run down, places along the road are graffitied, but you get a lot for your money. Then we ask why it's been empty a while when he mentions it. He says, quite openly, there were druggies using it and they've been thrown out now.
Literally a quarter of a mile away, another house. Similar size, looks lovely, no druggies, same price.
Which do you choose? It's not hard.
I was under no illusion that a quarter of a mile away there's drug-dens, hell, it's an inner-city area, of course they are. I'm also under no illusion that those people can't walk a quarter of a mile to commit crime that they'd rather not do on their own doorstep. I'm also quite aware that they are likely to go to the more affluent areas if they want to commit crime because there's little point burgling your neighbour who also lives in a bit of squallor, either.
It's not about that. It's a factor among dozens. It's not a positive factor. If you walk into a company office as a customer and the paint is peeling and the lights are broken, and the floor is peeling away and the chairs are old and cracked, it gives an impression. That the people there just don't care. Same for neighbourhoods. It doesn't create crime, absence of it doesn't immunise you to crime, and plastering over the cracks doesn't magically make it a better place. If anything, nicer areas are likely to have people with more money, and thus crime is more likely to be targetted in those areas - people don't walk through slums flashing their iPhone, but a few streets away they may well be doing so. But it's an impression of how much people care in the local neighbourhood.
The broken-windows are not an indicator of crime, they're an indicator of community. I don't want to live next to some of the people's houses that I've driven past on the way to work - full of rusting and broken vehicles, more vehicles with flat-tyres and poor paint jobs just sitting out on tow trucks outside in the road, gardens up to your waist in building waste, fences left dangling for years at a time, broken garden walls just left like that, etc. Those people have no care for their neighbours, and little pride in their own possessions and property. So what are the chances that they're respect your boundaries, your requests, or not give a shit about yelling at 3am when they come home drunk?
It's one factor that's both causative and caused by a neighbourhood that's stopped caring about others and itself. Crime might well *migrate* away from such an area - that's where the criminals live and there's nothing there to nick any more! Overall it balances it out.
But the cost of sending round a road-sweeper, a lick of paint occasionally, making sure street furniture is painted and repaired, and things like that is absolutely minimal in comparison to the difference in makes in a neighbourhood in terms of house prices, etc. And you find in neighbourhoods that are looked after, people are more likely to complain about the run-down house with the broken windows, hanging-off gate or whatever else, and it gets fixed. It's when people stop giving a shit and just leave it that you know you need to get out... I've seen mattresses sitting outside house boundaries on a public road for MONTHS. Even the council haven't bothered to come and take them away. Phone boxes whose glass is smashed so often, they just replace it with plastic and let the kids scratch their names into it still.
It's got little direct correlation to crime, but crime is a single concern to a police force. Having a nice community for kids to grow up in is much more important. Even if there are no crimes committed, growing up in a shithole is just disheartening... what's the point of making your own house neat when the guy next door has a museum of rotting cars piled up next to your fence?
I look for the following things when buying a house, not related to the house itself at all:
- What's it like at certain times of day? Morning, afternoon, evening, late-night, weekend and weekday. I go out of my way to walk or drive past any house I'm looking to buy at all those times. It saved me a lot of places that looked nice during the day but were the places where the local schoolkids all waited for the bus and threw crap in every garden and generally caused trouble. Nighttime checks tell you about pub throw-out times, who's staggering home past your house and throwing up / falling into your front garden each night (actually had it happen several times), daytime checks tell you whether it's a dead area - has everyone gone to work and the whole road unoccupied? Or are there a handful of elderly couples mowing their lawn, saying hello to everyone who passes, and keeping an eye on things?
- General disrepair. Graffiti, broken windows, all this kind of thing.
- Parking. Amazing how many places are suddenly a parking nightmare because they're on the school run, or near an event and you can't park outside your own house.
Those are gauges not just of "how quiet will things be around here" but also "how respectful is the local community".
I've never been burgled. I've literally had neighbours either side of my house burgled days apart in the same manner, but they skipped over my house in the middle. It doesn't matter how nice a house you choose, crime is an import/export business - you take things from the rich areas and stash them in the poor areas. But in both cases, my neighbours were able to ask neighbours, get CCTV footage (from my house too), get help and aid (they were a large Irish family, and people literally offered them meals and to take their kids in while they dealt with it), and soon after one of my neighbours sent police to my door because they'd been chatting in the street with someone who lived nearby, was talking about going on holiday, got the houses confused thinking that it was me they'd been talking to, and reported movement in my house to police, believing that we were supposed to be on holiday at that time.
This is after I championed a portion of the street and other neighbours with waste collection problems, and got the problem solved for everyone. I wouldn't have bothered in a shit-hole area. People won't even talk to you there. When there was a power cut, everyone came out to look and started offering each other the food they could cook because some people were electric-only and others had gas.
Community is underestimated, even if it doesn't appear on crime stats.
(Score: 5, Interesting) by sshelton76 on Saturday May 18 2019, @09:41PM (2 children)
I read the article with interest and I don't see the connection between what they are calling broken windows theory and what it really is, or at least what it was when I was getting my degree and had to research the topic.
Broken windows is a theory about decay, not about crime. Crime is often a symptom of decay, but broken windows theory states, "people need beauty and order in their lives, but become blind to the blight they live in, feeding into a spiral."
This whole idea is just about decay and gentrification. A window breaks in a neighborhood. The owner does not have resources to fix it right away. So they place a sheet of plywood in the window thinking "I'll get around to it soon". Soon comes and goes, eventually the plywood wears on the owner's self esteem, they begin to feel depressed. They let other little things go such as paint, weeds whatever. It would be bad enough if it were limited to one owner. But the sight of the boarded up house with peeling paint and weeds in the yard has a psychological effect on the neighbors. They feel a little less happy and as a result they begin to let things go. Not all at once. It is just little things that begin to pile up. In the space of a few years though, the neighborhood looks run down. People move out because the surroundings make them feel uneasy. This leaves the buildings abandoned for longer periods of time as the landlord tries to find a new renter, or the bank finds a new buyer.
That one house sitting there getting worse and worse by the day, attracting homeless druggies to come in, stay warm and shit on the floors, keeps a downward pressure on the rest of the neighborhood. Eventually the neighborhood becomes substantially low income and poverty stricken. No one has enough money to fix the places up and in most cases they are working 2 or more jobs just to pay rent and bills with no time to put into maintenance or raising their offspring. This leaves the children alone to be raised by public schools, the neighborhood kids, anyone but the parents. The children all come to agreement that they themselves aren't worth much because the neighborhood looks like shit and mom and possibly dad aren't around enough to be much of an influence. They feel they have very little left to lose and they tend towards criminal activity as a result.
Police presence changes nothing. It isn't about "The cops are close man! We better be good". It's about "fuck it, 3 hots and cot for a few years sounds pretty good compared to the cockroaches in my Cheerios this morning and if I don't get caught I'll have enough money to get mamma the hell outta here".
If you want to deal with crime, you deal with poverty first. Poverty is the #1 cause of violent crime in the USA because poverty prevents familial bonding and reduces the available opportunities to improve. But there are poor people everywhere and not even a sizable fraction of them go on to engage in criminal activity. There are also rich kids who commit crimes of the same caliber. Usually though you will find the criminal rich kid did not have at least one stay at home parent, just like the poor kid. It is this lack of a parent at home that drives crime because parents are supposed to instill morals. So if you want to break the cycle you must do so by increasing opportunities for mothers to stay at home and raise their young and that means better pay with a stronger emphasis on the role fathers must play (including paying men with stay at home wives a little more than someone who isn't supporting a family). Yet there is also the need to reverse the cycle of decay, i.e. gentrification, otherwise the people in improved circumstances will move to better digs at the earliest available opportunity.
Gentrifying neighborhoods does help a lot with the psychological component of an ordered society because beautiful places and spaces make people feel good and making people feel good motivates them.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-O5kNPlUV7w [youtube.com]
https://www.latimes.com/business/realestate/hot-property/la-fi-hp-neighborhood-spotlight-compton-20180602-story.html [latimes.com]
(Score: 0, Disagree) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday May 19 2019, @01:51PM (1 child)
When prison looks better than life you have a serious problem to deal with. For start why does prison look so attractive? Fix that for a start. Move the prisoners to tents instead of nice warm cells. Get rid of the TV and internet. Sweep the prison for drugs. Block cell phones. Tailor the three meals to keep a person alive. Give the prisoners something to do to improve their state and rehabilitate without significantly increasing the cost of their upkeep. Minimize the cost of prisons as much as possible. Offer an alternative to prisons that people can sign up for - public housing?
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday May 19 2019, @08:54PM
Or another way to do it: make prisons better. Think of it as a State intervention. Give the offenders a path out, teach them skills, show them what positive reinforcement looks like and feels like. It's a pretty sick puppy who doesn't actually like doing well and being appreciated. Those ones can stay locked up.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday May 19 2019, @08:34PM
It may be that people with a drug problem and mental issues (these goes far more hand in hand than we like to admit) end up living in these neighborhoods thanks to either the rent being rock bottom, or that they inherited the places and can't afford to move.