it's heavy lifestyle restrictions that lead to anti-social behavior in the first place. by far the most common crime is property crime, people usually commit it out of desperation and lack of opportunity. the degree of personal freedom in a capitalist state is defined by wealth, which creates a natural incentive to steal. then when they do, those people are put in prison, where they connect with other labeled criminals, all of whom face significantly lower chances of being hired, making sure that doing anything else in their life except crime will be as difficult as possible. aren't those heavy lifestyle restrictions enforced on people by government?
replyThere is a reason that crime goes up a ton when existing tools for survival disappear (e.g. disaster scenarios). When people have paths to prosperity, the need to do crime goes down. When the marginal value of crime is low, people don't do it. You can get there with draconian punishments, but you can also get there with, like, a strong social safety net and general prosperity.
replyWhile not the only reason, one reason that my coworkers won't steal my wallet if I leave it somewhere is that the $20 is mostly irrelevant to them given the general level of prosperity at my office.
I'm willing to bet most burglars aren't motivated to do crime due to suffering from starvation-level poverty; there is hardly ever a "need" to do crime -- i.e., a scenario wherein doing something criminal is the only way to survive. You totally neglect the moral angle and reduce it to a barebones cost/benefit sort of judgement, which is reflective of this popular view of criminals as hapless victims of fate or of society, and who are almost righteous in their choice to do crime. Oh, and the only solution is more welfare.
reply> aren't motivated to do crime due to suffering
replyGood thing I never said that!
> Oh, and the only solution is more welfare
Nor that!
I said that for many people crime is a rational approach to more prosperity. That doesn't mean folks are near starvation and have no other choices, it just means that criminal options may be more appealing than other ones. If you create accessible, non criminal pathways to prosperity, crime decreases..if you remove them, it goes up.
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