https://www.city-journal.org/s...N2tHhJzPErTaM4tG-51M

Crimes of Survival

A new trend in criminal-justice reform rationalizes stealing.



The latest fad in criminal-justice activism is the concept of “survival crime.”

The theory holds that the homeless, the poor, and people of color commit property crimes and low-level infractions in order to secure their basic survival. Any enforcement of these laws is thus a violation of their basic human rights and should be relaxed—that is, local governments should stop enforcing any laws that “criminalize homelessness” and “criminalize poverty.”

Survival crime theory is the flipside of Broken Windows theory. They deal with the same class of offenses—mainly property crime, drug possession, and public nuisances—in precisely the opposite way. Broken Windows theory argues that everyone is responsible for their own behavior and that, if we permit low-level crimes, it will lead to a general breakdown in law and order. Survival-crime theory, by contrast, argues that local governments should decriminalize these offenses because vulnerable individuals have been compelled by social conditions to commit them.

The idea of “survival crime” is not new, and has floated around in academic circles for decades. And for people living in a slum in Caracas, Peshawar, or Khartoum, there might be a moral argument that stealing food for oneself or one’s family is a justified “survival crime.” But the United States isn’t Venezuela, Pakistan, or Sudan. The federal government currently spends more than $1 trillion a year on anti-poverty programs, including general assistance, food stamps, housing vouchers, SSI, and WIC. Every city in America has a network of churches, food banks, and charities that offer direct assistance. And, more broadly, we’re living in an era of record-low unemployment and, in cities like San Francisco, New York, and Seattle, record-high minimum wages.

The problem is that cities like Seattle and San Francisco have not just “decriminalized homelessness” or “decriminalized poverty”—they have increasingly decriminalized crime. Over the past five years, the classification of survival crime has expanded well beyond stealing the proverbial loaf of bread. In California, for instance, Proposition 47 downgraded theft of property valued at less than $950 to a misdemeanor, meaning that the police are unlikely to pursue even habitual shoplifters and thieves. The predictable result: a statewide rise in petty theft. Seattle and King County recently released new guidelines calling on police officers to stop arresting individuals for all “homelessness-related crimes,” with the goal of “eliminating racial disproportionality” and ensuring that policies “do not penalize homelessness and poverty.” Meantime, city and county prosecutors have dropped thousands of misdemeanor cases against “vulnerable populations.” All this has caused widespread frustration among residents and law enforcement officers. As one veteran Seattle cop told me: “We have basically stopped enforcing the law against the homeless population. Political leaders don’t want it and prosecutors won’t pursue charges. It’s a waste of time.” In New York City, the NYPD has backed off from arresting people for subway fare evasion, on the grounds that enforcement has a disparate impact on the poor; farebeating has risen sharply since the new policy was enacted.
While concern is growing that these permissive policies have led to an increase in property crime, the greatest risk of survival crime theory is that we are slowly creating a parallel justice system: one for average citizens and another for politically-favored identity groups. Activists have successfully made the case that we must sacrifice equality under the law to address wider social inequalities. They are effectively arguing that our bedrock principle of “equality protection of the laws” is simply a mechanism of state oppression against the homeless, the poor, and people of color—a radical reversal of its original constitutional meaning.

If activists are successful in this revaluation of the law, there is no obvious limit to the extension of survival-crime theory to other favored identity groups. There is already a growing literature that survival-crime protections should be extended to the LGBTQ community, sex workers, and recipients of public benefits. Under the catch-all doctrine of intersectionality, they can be extended ad infinitum, depending on the political whims of the moment. In a short time, our legal proceedings may no longer begin with the question “what is the crime” but “who is the criminal”—Lady Justice may finally take off her blindfold and play a new role as the arbiter of two separate legal systems, depending on who stands before her.


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The reverse broken window theory.

This article refutes that and is only 8 years old.

quote:

Crime and the Great Recession
Jobs have fled, lawbreaking hasn’t risen—and criminologists are scratching their heads.

https://www.city-journal.org/h...recession-13399.html

quote:

In California, for instance, Proposition 47 downgraded theft of property valued at less than $950 to a misdemeanor, meaning that the police are unlikely to pursue even habitual shoplifters and thieves. The predictable result: a statewide rise in petty theft.

It is even worse than that. If caught, the thief has the option of doing the time or going into a "theft prevention program" where they (in theory) learn not to steal. The ones with any brains select the program. The problem is there is no teeth at all requiring them to actually go, so they sign up and then don't show. When they get busted again, they do the same thing again. There was a program that featured a "frequent flyer" from down in LA somewhere who had been arrested something like 17 times in a year. His quote was, "This law is a license to steal." There are apparently gangs that will break into stores with 20 or thirty people and grab stuff up. They check price tags and make sure that no individual has more than $950 of merchandise. I try not to be too harsh, but I am not sure that the folks in the middle east don't have a more rational approach to theft...

Help me understand something here, please guys. How does the economic status of thieves affect the losses suffered from people that were stolen from or society in general? Does having a lower income person steal from you affect you less than if it's Bernie Madoff?

It would really suck if you actually needed to steal in order to feed yourself, but it's simply not the case at all. You can get food stamps, you can get rental assistance, you can get food bank food, you can get church supplied food, and you can sit at an intersection and people will just hand you cash to buy food. So what does survival crime really mean if there is in fact no need to steal to survive?

quote:

Originally posted by Skins2881:
Help me understand something here, please guys. How does the economic status of thieves affect the losses suffered from people that were stolen from or society in general? Does having a lower income person steal from you affect you less than if it's Bernie Madoff?

It would really suck if you actually needed to steal in order to feed yourself, but it's simply not the case at all. You can get food stamps, you can get rental assistance, you can get food bank food, you can get church supplied food, and you can sit at an intersection and people will just hand you cash to buy food. So what does survival crime really mean if there is in fact no need to steal to survive?

It all depends on how you look at things. If you are a sane and rational person who cares about equality of opportunity, the economic status has no effect at all. A crime is a crime, end of story.

If you are a GDC who is braindead enough to believe in equality of outcome (except for feathering your own nest of course), then it totally matters as any and all strategies (including allowing theft by those less well off) are totally rational as long as they are redistributing things in the right direction and you don't personally get ripped off.

When do we declare open season on these folks?

Anchorage is a good example of it except they went way beyond San Francisco. Car theft isn't even pursued.

I was shocked when my buddy started sharing with me the downward spiral since I left in Nov '14.

quote:

Originally posted by tatortodd:
Anchorage is a good example of it except they went way beyond San Francisco. Car theft isn't even pursued.

I was shocked when my buddy started sharing with me the downward spiral since I left in Nov '14.

Anchorage is a big surprise. I thought Alaska was more sane than that.



.

quote:

Originally posted by TigerDore:

quote:

Originally posted by tatortodd:
Anchorage is a good example of it except they went way beyond San Francisco. Car theft isn't even pursued.

I was shocked when my buddy started sharing with me the downward spiral since I left in Nov '14.

Anchorage is a big surprise. I thought Alaska was more sane than that.

Two words: Governor Walker

Him being elected in 2014 was the perfect storm. Sitting Republican governor was very popular and didn't even have to have a campaign to win the primary and was polling 20+ points ahead of the Demonrat. One problem in Alaska is that the Lt Gov is a separate campaign so you don't get to choose your running mate. The guy that won Lt Gov Republican nomination was Anchorage's mayor who had pulled a Scott Walker on firefighters and policemen. That normally conservative group of people refused to vote for the governor because of the Lt Gov being on the ticket.

On top of the above, the guy who certifies election ballots was running for US Senate and came in 3rd place in the Repubican primary. He was pissed at the Republican Party and this will be important in a minute.

Right after the primary, the AFL-CIO refuses to endorse anyone and calls a meeting between the independent candidate and Demonrat candidate. After the meeting, there is an announcement that the Independent (Walker) would be on the governor and the Demonrat would be the Lt Gov on the ballot. In other words, the two men who won their Lt Gov primaries were thrown under the bus. Remember the pissed off guy who certified election ballots, he signed off on this abomination within seconds of it arriving on his desk and somehow there were no lawsuits over it.

Now, the Republican governor is neck and neck with the combo ticket and has to mount a campaign with 8 weeks before the election. He lost by less than 4000 votes and Walker became governor. One of Walker's first acts was signing a bill on these so called crimes of survival and it emboldened the homeless and criminal class.

He was going to lose the 2018 election so he dropped out. Hopefully, the new gov and legislator can fix this anarchy of the homeless and criminal class.

quote:

Originally posted by Skins2881:
Help me understand something here, please guys. How does the economic status of thieves affect the losses suffered from people that were stolen from or society in general?

Answer: you're racist, check your privilege.

This is the mad cow disease effect of accepting political correctness. First one adopts a false PC principle like, say, one person has a claim to what another earns because he needs or wants it. Then the mad cow effect takes place and metastasizes the idea into what we read in this story. It is moral relativism. Next step to full scatacephally is the mutation that race is a consideration for wealth transfers. See how they run?

Lady Madonna, children at your feet
Wonder how you manage to make ends meet
Who find the money when you pay the rent
Did you think that money was heaven sent.

quote:

Originally posted by TigerDore:

quote:

Originally posted by tatortodd:
Anchorage is a good example of it except they went way beyond San Francisco. Car theft isn't even pursued.

I was shocked when my buddy started sharing with me the downward spiral since I left in Nov '14.

Anchorage is a big surprise. I thought Alaska was more sane than that.



.

Thank the former governor Bill Walker. He endorsed and signed off on SB 91, the criminal justice reform act. Basically unless one shoots a moose, no one goes to jail in Alaska. Instead of being arrested, a summons is issued for personal recognizance. OUI (the Alaskan equivalent of DUI) is a misdemeanor offense now.

So big surprise with criminals knowing they won't do time for minor offenses like shoplifting, and auto thieves knowing they won't be locked up and only issued a summons to appear, the crime rate has skyrocketed.

Wow, I can see an epidemic of porch pirating in areas that are enacting these leniency laws.