For those of us who live with this as you refer to itWM: I have to agree with Laura, even though I seem to find myself in the thick of the mess. All we ever do is throw a bunch of money and work at the symptoms--we spend damn little addressing the cause, so much so that it's probably a miracle that so many do get out of the cycle of poverty and despair. School and library budgets get cut. Unfunded mandates get laid on us by the feds, so that just to meet the law we go into debt. Some days I feel like we're playing croquet with the Red Queen with live flamingoes for mallets.
"petty crime" and worse on a regular basis, it is a
high price to pay to be asked to risk being shot,
having our children shot, being mugged or beat up,
having our houses robbed or vandalized, having
bicycles and cars stolen or vandalized, etc. etc.
WM: Pontificating? How much work have we all done or are doing to push the agenda that makes a change? I know I often feel exhausted with meeting with neighborhoods, cops, council members, friends and neighbors just to make a little space in the mess from which to maneuver taking all the time, money, and energy away from addressing the issues.While I agree with Lauras philosophy on the root causes of crime, it is really hard to accept being a "sacrificial lamb" for criminals while society pontificates on what can and will end poverty, illiteracy, domestic violence, racism etc. etc. etc.
WM: Barb, listen to yourself. You're no more than a couple of paychecks away from being in the same situation as that daring and desperate gunman who rolled your husband in your back yard. Yet we're both meeting with the police whose function is to make sure, according to Tony Bouza, that the wealthy are spared us all rising in revolt and tearing their neighborhoods apart. Ergo, we prey on each other for the crumbs.While we are finding meaningful ways to address these social ills, we continue to concentrate people with a high likelihood of becoming "petty criminals" or worse in the same space as the people who are most likely to be victims of crime.
When you couple that with theWM: Chinese society is over 5,000 years old and holds the best collection of records showing that even before they invented gunpowder, humans had more than adequate ways of stealing from, murdering, and injuring each other. No one on the planet is any more generations than anyone else on the planet from the rough and ready cannibals we once were. In many ways we are still cannibals, though we've pretty much giving up literally gnawing on each other.
way we legislate prostitution and drugs and the fact
that we have over 200,000,000 hand guns on the streets
of the U.S. you create a fabulous opportunity and
supermarket for rampant criminal activity.
WM: This notion completely astonishes me. Any one of us, were we as desperate as these others, would do the same thing. Lucky for you, lucky for me, we "don't have to steal to eat" as the Artful Dodger sang in the musical. Even if we went broke, since we're all at least minimally educated we cannot ever be in the same situation as the least fortunate among us. Where my family comes from this notion of upright citizens was called "lace curtain Irish" as opposed to "shanty Irish." Both are equally under the thumb of the British, but they take on airs against each other.Unfortunately, in the mix of this wonderful world I have just painted you have good upstanding citizens who are just trying to get by.
WM: This is both a myth and a dream. Our constitution says we strive toward basic civil rights for everyone, but both the framers and those who have had power with that constitution since, have not achieved that goal. It was, after all, written by the wealthy and through the perspectives of the wealthy, white males who wrote it--they didn't even include their own wives in this edenic constitution!We are trying to earn enough to stay in our homes or apartments, feed and raise our families, keep the things we have accumulated, and enjoy some semblance of safety and security. These are basic civil rights for citizens in the U.S.
So, while people suggest "petty criminals" run aroundWM: Let's look at it from another angle. Suppose that we were to make jail time fit both the crime and the needs of the criminal. Would we educate (forced education, weird concept), ameliorate, medically treat, socialize the inmates? How would we do that? How would we re-integrate the inmates once they looked, spoke, and behaved just like us?
without incarceration or consequences for fear of
becoming a nationalistic society, and while they are
on a quest to establish a better criminal justice
system, they are also asking a lot of people to
sacrifice their basic civil rights and live in
veritable criminal war zones.
Right now as one of the people who is sacrificing herWM: What I say is that by "helping" the criminals, we are helping ourselves. Do we want to change their behavior--give them tools. Or do we want to hang 'em quick and bury 'em quicker still? Or let them lay around in prison watching TV, pumping iron and resentment until both are magazine buff? Now that's scary.
basic civil rights to live in a neighborhood populated
with "petty criminals" I am selfishly more interested
in hearing how the law enforcement and criminal
justice system think we can be helped than how we
should be helping the criminals.
I will admit that I do have the choice to move. ButWM: Read that constitution more carefully, then remember how many houses have been taken for public and private purposes over the two centuries of its existence. Or ask the Indians, like Laura; they've got a tale or two that mentions what happens when it's a we-they situation between two cultures.
somewhere in our constitution is a basic civil right
that says I shouldn't have to move to be safe and
secure in my home.
WizardMarks, Central
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