Our problem isn't insufficiently harsh punishment. Our problem is unlikely punishment. The US spends more on incarceration and less on policing and the justice system. You are less likely to get caught and punished in the US but if you get punished it's harsher. Yet studies have shown that a milder punishment that happens more swiftly and with higher certainty is much better for preventing crime.
Not sure that helps with mentally ill homeless but it's at least an improvement we could aim for
It has repeatedly been shown that the severity of punishment does not sway crime nearly as much as the certainty of punishment does [1]. This all feels like a byproduct of the hyper-individualism we have in the West and the US, especially.
[1] https://www.journals.uchicago.edu/doi/abs/10.1086/670398
For more serious anti social behaviour like gun crimes, violent crimes and drug trafficking there are very strong mandatory penalties up to and including corporal punishment and execution.
Conviction rates in these countries are upwards of 99%. So in cases of intervention a punishment is almost certain.
my Pakistani coworkers are absolutely wonderful. Sweet, hard-working, very enjoyable to talk to, but their families and lives are just a totally different universe and they don’t share it.
The honestly very poor black community around the area? they fucking hate us white people. like actively, all the time, no what no matter what you have or haven’t done they don’t like your ass one bit. i’ve seen inside some of the homes, and they are filled with independent black power movie posters about shooting Whitey. No kidding.
I know it takes a village, but when people are so very different and forced to be near each other, it doesn’t mean that they will socialize or help each other; it’s like living on two different planets. there’s all kinds of social research showing this now, and what you get is micro segregation along income lines, rather than everyone helping each other and lifting up the community together.
I wanted for most of my life for people to get along and the world to be a better place, thinking that education and modern access to information could somehow make things better. It seems that was entirely and completely wrong. when people have any kind of discomfort at all about new culture or new person or new idea? They pretty much just run away.
The people here on hacker news are probably an exception, because we are here searching for commentary and interesting ideas and new information.
Did you replace folks' smoke detector batteries for them?
The way I found to get around this prejudice was to go to church most Sundays and walk around with a sling bag full of 9V batteries and knock on doors to offer to maintain smoke detectors. (It probably didn't hurt that I was also good for bumming cigarettes off of and slowing down to have a chat.)
YMMV, but showing up and doing work was apparently what my neighbors in East St. Louis and Atlanta wanted.
It is not like that where I live.
The first generation of immigrants have trouble, natural enough. But are very keen that their children do better.
As for racism: Most racism here is systemic, from the state. There is casual ignorant racism, of course, but little hate.
What a mess has been made of your country. You should work to fix it.
It took us a lot of work to get here, and we have a long way to go. But I cannot imagine living in a society such as you describe.
The idea that we are soft on crime is insane.
Harsher punishments do not lead to lower crime.
Nonsense! Increase the punishment and it does. At the extreme, death for every crime, harsher punishments would totally eliminate criminal recidivism.