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Breakdown In Civil Order

When President Joe Biden flew into Oregon to try to shore up his party's nominee for governor he would not have had far to look to see the problem. He spent Friday night at the luxury Duniway Hotel in downtown Portland, a property at risk of foreclosure as visitors stay away from the city center. And if he had taken a morning stroll, he could have seen for himself the results of the 2020 decision to decriminalize hard drugs such as cocaine, heroin and methamphetamine. The casualties were everywhere. Two blocks from the hotel lobby a man was folded up on a street corner, his body draped around a rolled-up sleeping bag. Shoppers pretended not to notice his unconscious figure as they headed towards a Nordstrom department store. 'You walk with blinders,' said Charlene, a 21-year-old student, who carried a Zara bag. 'Otherwise you wouldn't come here at all.' In a small city center park, morning dog walkers strolled past benches filled with droop-headed drug users. One man flattened a piece of foil before putting a lighter to it, and inhaling the results through a pipe in plain view of a children's playground. Portland set a record for murders last year. It reported 90 homicides - shattering the previous high of 66 - and could be about to surpass it this year.
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Daily Mail

I hope social services are ensuring the junkies are getting the covid boosters.
 
TSwizzle said:
When President Joe Biden flew into Oregon to try to shore up his party's nominee for governor he would not have had far to look to see the problem. He spent Friday night at the luxury Duniway Hotel in downtown Portland, a property at risk of foreclosure as visitors stay away from the city center. And if he had taken a morning stroll, he could have seen for himself the results of the 2020 decision to decriminalize hard drugs such as cocaine, heroin and methamphetamine. The casualties were everywhere. Two blocks from the hotel lobby a man was folded up on a street corner, his body draped around a rolled-up sleeping bag. Shoppers pretended not to notice his unconscious figure as they headed towards a Nordstrom department store. 'You walk with blinders,' said Charlene, a 21-year-old student, who carried a Zara bag. 'Otherwise you wouldn't come here at all.' In a small city center park, morning dog walkers strolled past benches filled with droop-headed drug users. One man flattened a piece of foil before putting a lighter to it, and inhaling the results through a pipe in plain view of a children's playground. Portland set a record for murders last year. It reported 90 homicides - shattering the previous high of 66 - and could be about to surpass it this year.
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Daily Mail

I hope social services are ensuring the junkies are getting the covid boosters.
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A thing that our friends on the left seem to forget is that if you want urban, walkable, cities, you can't take public safety and quality of life for granted. Portland used to be a wonderful place to visit. Now, hell no.

www.outkick.com

Phil Knight Says He's 'More Conservative Than Nike' For Disagreeing With Oregon's Drug, Homelessness, Abortion Laws

Phil Knight considers himself "more Conservative" than his Nike brand after voicing his opposition to pro-abortion policies.
www.outkick.com www.outkick.com

Speaking with The New York Times, Knight shared an analogy that perfectly encapsulated Oregon’s broken politics.

“One of the political cartoons after our legislative session had a person snorting cocaine out of a mountain of white,” he shared. “It said, ‘Which of these is illegal in Oregon?’ And the answer was the plastic straw.”
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Does this concern with public safety extend to the roads? Speeding, reckless driving, running red lights, double parking, parking in front of driveways, parking in front of fire hydrants, ... are all bad for public safety. People get injured and killed in car accidents, and car accidents cause a heck of a lot of property damage. To get complete safety, let us permanently revoke the license of anyone who is caught doing any of these things, and have mandatory life in prison without parole for anyone caught driving without a valid license.
 
Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez on Instagram: “Let’s talk public safety. …”
Let’s talk public safety. By now, we know the traditional policy response to crime: Crime happens, policing budgets increase, crime happens more, budgets increase more, punishments worsen and surveillance expands (while surveillance tech + prison contractors make a lot of money in the process). But if our goal is to actually reduce + stop violence, we must ask: does this punitive approach even work? Are increased policing and prisons actually proven to reduce or prevent violence? What, if anything, DOES work? You’d be surprised at the data + results.
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There is so much pressure from media, lobbies, and political powers to imply that the more violence occurs, the more policing or incarceration is needed to stop or fix it. But after decades of committing to the endless cycle of budget increases and punitive measures over and over, we must eventually contend with the fact that if this traditional approach actually worked to stop or significantly reduce violence, perhaps it would have clearly proven so by now.
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I know how hard it is to question one’s own beliefs and assumptions. And in that spirit I want to enter this conversation with humility too. Here are some thoughts that have shaped my approach, and ways that we’ve acted on tangibly with our investments in community violence interruption programs at our public hospitals like Jacobi SUV (which has already proven to be more successful at halting reoccurrence of violence than almost any other measure we know of). If you can, please extend a little grace in listening to what I am sharing here off the cuff (there are some missed captions and stumbled words).
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But most importantly, my wish is that we become more capable of engaging these ideas seriously and be willing to converse and ask genuine questions in public. It’s okay to evolve and grow together, and we can do more than yell past each other or box each other into caricatures. Because ultimately, safety is asking something of each of us: how WE engage in relationships, harm, and healing - both personally and societally.
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Thank you @ayannapressley for hosting this beautiful evening in Boston with @ibramxk, @ilhanmn & @coribush 💜
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ibramxk = Ibram X. Kendi, ilhanmn = Ilhan Omar, coribush = Cori Bush

That's Stand Up To Violence, not Sport Utility Vehicle / Suburban 'Uge Vehicle, and it's at Jacobi Hospital. AOC describes it as working by persuading victims of violence not to seek revenge, with the persuaders being those who have gone through such things.
 
AOC said that her ideal is a society that doesn't need prisons or police. Seems hopelessly impractical. :( Almost like creating a society of virtuous anarchists. Then she said that abolition is about the journey to that state.

She then noted people asking about what will you do with all the rapists. She says that it is not a coincidence. Then she said that the criminal-justice system often fails victims of sexual assault. I think that she's right about that. Many people seem to believe that all the healing that should ever be necessary is getting to watch the retribution against the perpetrator.

She cites the statistic that 80% of sexual assaults are by someone that the victim knows, and that 80% of sexual assaults are never reported to the criminal-justice system. She then says that an assault victim has to decide whether or not to tear their family apart, to suffer the extra trauma of turning in a father or an uncle or a boyfriend or whoever.

Then she talks about having a society that changes men and people in power and how we see gender.

She notes Angela Davis's book "Are Prisons Obsolete?" and called prisons dumpsters for society's failures. Like mental health and poverty and lack of housing, while saying that our current system is the best one. She then noted that our criminal-justice system does nothing directly for victims, that it often seems to presume that sentencing the perp is all the restoration that a victim should ever need. She notes that victims typically don't have access to mental-health resources, and that their families typically aren't cared for.

She mentioned bell hooks talking about the curious circumstance that many abusers are themselves survivors of abuse. Then noting something mentioned earlier, charging $15/minute for a prisoner to talk to someone. That does not do much for family values.

Then talking about punitive childrearing, like sending a kid to their room or hitting them, and then says that we should not ask "how do we punish?" but "how do we change?" and "how do we actually make sure that this never happens again?" and "how do we restore and center the people who have been harmed?" Instead of focusing all our attention on "how do we torture a person?"

She then asks "Why do we define every person by the worst thing they ever did?" rather than what they could possibly be.

That was the end.

I think that that is inadequate, because some people are lacking in conscience and empathy:  Psychopathy ~ Psychopathy: Developmental Perspectives and their Implications for Treatment - PMC What does one do about them?

I'm not totally opposed to prisons, and I think that people should pay for their crimes, but they should pay appropriately, and not in some racially-discriminatory or classist fashion.
 
Home - Restorative Justice - that site has been redone since I last looked into it.

From Three Core Elements of Restorative Justice - Restorative Justice

I like this: "Before offenders can participate, they must take responsibility for their wrong and want to make amends."

That leaves open the question of what to do about those who refuse to do so.

Also: "The victim’s need for healing. Victims heal through the encounter and its outcomes." and "The offender’s need to make amends, as offenders must atone for wrongdoing and work to regain good standing in community. Encounters empower offenders to make amends directly to victims and potentially community members." and "The community’s need for relational health and safety. Family, friends, and others support victims and offenders as they heal and reintegrate into community."

Restorative Justice Theory of Change - Restorative Justice

Under "Breaking the Cycle of Crime": "Many factors contribute to breaking cycles of crime, but Prison Fellowship International (PFI) finds two drivers to be most relevant and effective as best practices we promote among our regional partners. First, prisoners form new positive self-identities that replace past negative self-identities, and second, they develop healthy social relationships that support them when they return home. These ideas are interconnected: prisoners are more likely to seek and develop healthy social relationships as part of the self-identity transformation process."
 
lpetrich said:
AOC describes it as working by persuading victims of violence not to seek revenge,
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The purpose of the state’s monopoly on violence is that victims do not have to take revenge; the state does that for them. The state catches, prosecutes, and punishes. Seeking to persuade victims not to report crimes or to press charges is cruelty to the victim. A policy that is soft on offenders simply creates more victims.
 
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lpetrich said:
Does this concern with public safety extend to the roads?
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Yes. And when progressives say cops shouldn’t pull up over cars with expired tags or otherwise be lax in enforcement, you know, for social justice, you get more traffic fatalities. As we got since the summer of Floyd.
 
Oleg said:
lpetrich said:
AOC describes it as working by persuading victims of violence not to seek revenge,
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The purpose of the state’s monopoly on violence claims the monopoly of the legitimate use of physical force within a given territory is that victims do not have to take revenge justice; the state does that for them. The state catches, prosecutes, and punishes. Seeking to persuade victims not to report crimes or to press charges is cruelty to the victim. A policy that is soft on offenders simply creates more victims.
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FIFY

“Politics as a Vocation” (1918), the German sociologist Max Weber
 
lpetrich said:
Then she said that the criminal-justice system often fails victims of sexual assault....

She cites the statistic that 80% of sexual assaults are by someone that the victim knows, and that 80% of sexual assaults are never reported to the criminal-justice system. She then says that an assault victim has to decide whether or not to tear their family apart, to suffer the extra trauma of turning in a father or an uncle or a boyfriend or whoever.
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Jon Krakauer is a great writer of non-fiction. So when I saw his Missoula in a used book store recently I bought it without even checking to see what it was about! It is a detailed look at college rape scandals in Missoula, Montana, apparently typical of how college rapes are handled across the country. The victims who sought prosecution of their rapists were often victimized again for their efforts.
 
lpetrich said:
Does this concern with public safety extend to the roads? Speeding, reckless driving, running red lights, double parking, parking in front of driveways, parking in front of fire hydrants, ... are all bad for public safety. People get injured and killed in car accidents, and car accidents cause a heck of a lot of property damage. To get complete safety, let us permanently revoke the license of anyone who is caught doing any of these things, and have mandatory life in prison without parole for anyone caught driving without a valid license.
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You sure you want to go with this? Your "cars kill people too" is the same kind of nonsense the right wing gun nuts use to minimize gun violence.
 
Oleg said:
lpetrich said:
AOC describes it as working by persuading victims of violence not to seek revenge,
Click to expand...
The purpose of the state’s monopoly on violence is that victims do not have to take revenge; the state does that for them. The state catches, prosecutes, and punishes. Seeking to persuade victims not to report crimes or to press charges is cruelty to the victim. A policy that is soft on offenders simply creates more victims.
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Criminal justice is about two things, making people be responsible for the crime they commit and attempting to prevent acts of crime. Regarding the second half of that statement, I find it peculiar how people will whine about both recidivism as well as plans, projects, etc... that try to address recidivism. Criminal justice, sociology is terribly complicated, and non-uniform.

Clearly, people commit crimes either from desperation or apathy or arrogance or anger or a mix of the three. Looking at this as simply a 'put them away, lock the door' policy is really really REALLY short-sighted. Why? Because if a former criminal is released after appearing to have matured and being capable in society and they don't commit any crimes... we don't hear about it. We hear about the released felon who committed a crime a month after release. This creates a very unreliable medium for determining how a criminal justice system is working.

And when you have people obsessed about trying to cry out atop the mountains that the sky is falling, they'll never have a remotely complete picture of the justice system, what it does, how it does it, and how effective it is or isn't. They just cry out about the madness.
 
thebeave said:
lpetrich said:
Does this concern with public safety extend to the roads? Speeding, reckless driving, running red lights, double parking, parking in front of driveways, parking in front of fire hydrants, ... are all bad for public safety. People get injured and killed in car accidents, and car accidents cause a heck of a lot of property damage. To get complete safety, let us permanently revoke the license of anyone who is caught doing any of these things, and have mandatory life in prison without parole for anyone caught driving without a valid license.
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You sure you want to go with this? Your "cars kill people too" is the same kind of nonsense the right wing gun nuts use to minimize gun violence.
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Yes and no. The difference is that this is about "tolerance" for laws. Think of it like sports. The rule book isn't changing from play to play or game to game. The refs have to decide the limits of how rules are enforced. This is applied to laws as well. Unless in the South, one doesn't get a speeding ticket for going 1 or 2 mph over the limit. That is above the limit, and punishable depending on how the law is written.

The level of tolerance for laws is often based on public safety or the mere ability to apply it, but sometimes its based on other less Constitutionally bound reasons or worse yet, inertia.
 
Oleg said:
lpetrich said:
Does this concern with public safety extend to the roads?
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Yes. And when progressives say cops shouldn’t pull up over cars with expired tags or otherwise be lax in enforcement, you know, for social justice, you get more traffic fatalities. As we got since the summer of Floyd.
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Do you also believe that your getting out of bed in the morning is the cause of the sun “rise”?
 
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