Scientific policing

[a study paper is shown, with some of the text legible]
STUDY RESULTS
GIVING POOR PEOPLE MONEY REDUCES CRIME MORE THAN GIVING COPS THAT SAME AMOUNT OF MONEY
CONCLUSION
If you want to reduce crime, take care of your community's primary needs instead of funding cops so much

[an orange character in a suit has stamped a paper labeled MORE POLICE FUNDING BILL, and is grinning]
Heh, you think we don't know?

https://thebad.website/comic/scientific_policing

839 points · 78 comments · view on lemmy.world

78 Comments

danc4498@lemmy.world · 123 pts · 1d (13 replies)

Republicans are often seen to be better on crime. Not because crime goes down under republicans, but because they talk about cops and punishment more.

Easy sell: stop crime by going after criminals.

Harder sell: stop crime by preventing the things that make people criminals.

jtrek@startrek.website · 54 pts · 1d (3 replies)

People are pretty stupid and uncritically believe the myths about the republican party. Guy I worked with said "the republicans will unlock the economy" so he voted for trump. And then tariffs borked his business, and the war in iran probably killed some of his family. But he still jokes, as an iranian immigrant, about ICE abductions. Some people are just stupid.

danc4498@lemmy.world · 21 pts · 1d

Some people are stupid, but most I think are selfish and narrow minded, but also not stupid.

orca@orcas.enjoying.yachts · 9 pts · 20h

I met a Persian that hates other Persians and loves Israel. People are indeed stupid as fuck.

Enkrod@feddit.org · 4 pts · 10h

Yes, the propaganda is strong. Republicans have been objectively, scientifically proven bad for the economy, for blue collar workers, for crime, for reducing abortions, for religious freedom and for small government in the last... at least 5 decades.

But people believe that those are exactly the issues Republicans would address better than democrats.

HazardousBanjo@lemmy.world · 25 pts · 1d

That's exactly it.

The GOP cornered the moronic "Law & Order" narrative because they're fascists who want a police state.

Establishment Dems also want a police state but know their voterbase doesn't. So they try to sell a police state, under different words, and still refuse to talk about any actually meaningful alternatives. Its why cunts like Hakeem Jefferies refuse to fight to abolish ICE even though abolishing ICE polls better than "reforming" it.

Only DSA candidates are pushing real solutions. That's why establishment Dems are fighting them harder in 1 year than they've fought Trump in 10 years.

ChristerMLB@piefed.social · 19 pts · 1d

Same with conservatives in Europe – and it's also the same with government efficiency. They get "issue ownership" because they talk about it a lot, but I've never heard of conservative politicians who've actually made government more efficient.

NoneOfUrBusiness@fedia.io · 13 pts · 1d (1 reply)

It's a harder sell, but it's impacted by media straight up not talking about policy that way. Investigative journalism in America (and probably the broader West) is essentially dead, so the public becomes wildly uninformed and has to go off vibes.

danc4498@lemmy.world · 10 pts · 1d

Definitely true. I think it’s a big part because of who owns the media.

QueenHawlSera@piefed.social · 8 pts · 19h

Americans are not a mature people. They find it scarier to be without a gun than to be without a doctor.

Their mentality on crime is that they wanna punish bad guys. They don't care about justice, they just wanna "fight bad guys" like in an action movie. We can see this in how they obsess over Lindsay Clancy. They don't care that she has psychosis and would be better served in a mental institution, they saw that she did something bad and they wanna see her punished.

The reasons for her actions are not important, the fact that there's a better solution is not important, the fact that Not Guilty By Reason Of Insanity doesn't mean she gets to go home is not important.

She's a bad guy, and bad guys get punished.

Americans favor punishment over rehabilitation not because rehabilitation doesn't work (Other countries that focus on it show that it definitely does), but because they are immature and care more about "Fighting bad guys" than actual justice.

Sanctus@anarchist.nexus · 3 pts · 21h

I will be the greatest president. Using my superior prescient abilities I will stop the events that produce criminals to begin with. The entire country will be crime free at the end of my term. With the strength of a tactician's mind America will be the greatest country in the world

mouth breathers cheering as the end of Shall Never Surrender from DMC4 plays over loudspeskers

Everyone is 12 in America dude just sound like a confident supervillain and your are good.

nanometer1625@thelemmy.club · 2 pts · 21h (1 reply)

This definitely used to be true, but now that they're okay with the leader of their party using the FBI to cover up his own child sex abuse scandal, any Republican who asserts that they're tough on crime is going to lose that debate.

Imgonnatrythis@sh.itjust.works · 1 pts · 1d

If the pope would crack down on crime more with all that Vatican money the republicans wouldn't have to spend so much on crime. Pretty much nothing bad is really their fault fyi.

cRazi_man@europe.pub · 53 pts · 1d (19 replies)

You mistakenly think that the purpose is to reduce crime and improve people's lives.

People in power (and unfortunately most people not in power also) think that there is a "fair" order to things. Those deserving will be successful, and the undeserving will not (and should not and must not) get anything. The strength of the power of the police+law is to protect the deserving from the undeserving. Not to make a fair or just or happy society. There are many who would happily lobby to refuse all emergency services, rights, legal protections, healthcare, etc to those who are "undeserving".

jtrek@startrek.website · 26 pts · 1d (15 replies)

That's the heart of conservatism: hierarchy

There are many who would happily lobby to refuse all emergency services, rights, legal protections, healthcare, etc to those who are “undeserving”.

I go on about this a lot, but the book "Dying of Whiteness" has examples of that. One guy literally was dying but still didn't want those people to have free health care, even if it would save his life.

frisbird@lemmy.ml · 10 pts · 1d (14 replies)

You say that as though Liberalism didn't immediately start with hierarchy. Liberalism literally said that power should be in the hands of the wealthy, not the hands of the hereditary aristocracy. Liberalism emerged precisely because merchants got super wealthy and then found that no matter how much money they had, the king decided if they got land. So Liberalism emerged as something to replace the hierarchy of the nobility with, specifically the hierarchy of wealth. All the "universal" equality shit of liberalism was invented to get the poor peasantry to agree. There was never a single day of liberalism anywhere on planet earth that saw an absence of hierarchy.

schipelblorp@sh.itjust.works · 6 pts · 1d (1 reply)

I think you were schooling me a few weeks ago on this subject, and I never responded. If that was you, thank you for your infomative response.

frisbird@lemmy.ml · 4 pts · 21h

Possibly, I often try to bring the history of Liberalism and Conservatism into view when people clearly just mean "good" and "evil" but borrow terms from political philosophy without examining them.

jtrek@startrek.website · 1 pts · 1d (11 replies)

Bit of a waffles and pancakes response, or maybe squares and rectangles.

I am inclined to agree with you, but don't see what you're saying as a contradiction of what I said.

frisbird@lemmy.ml · 3 pts · 23h (10 replies)

Conservatism emerged as a response to Liberalism. Hierarchy is at the heart of the society that creates both of them, neither of them are about hierarchy. The heart of conservatism is the preservation of a status quo that itself is maintained entirely through systems that produce stability. The heart of liberalism is the preservation of a status quo through mercantile dynamism, where one person may be at the top of heap one day and fall to the bottom the next without necessarily resorting to violence.

I think it is inaccurate at best, and deliberately misleading at worst, to say hierarchy is the heart of conservatism. History isn't a vibe.

jtrek@startrek.website · 2 pts · 23h (9 replies)

Conservatism is built on support for monarchy, the most hierarchy of hierarchy.

frisbird@lemmy.ml · 3 pts · 22h (8 replies)

No. Conservatism is a reaction to Liberalism. Liberalism is a hierachical system with different mechanisms than monarchy. Conservatism was not reacting to the hierachical aspect of Liberalism but to the stability aspect. Because it was a reaction to Liberalism, it didn't need to defend hierarchy, it only needed to defend the systems of power distribution that Liberalism was attacking.

You're doing vibes and it isn't working.

jtrek@startrek.website · 1 pts · 22h

My vibes align with Wikipedia, at least

Conservatism is a cultural, social, and political philosophy and ideology that seeks to promote and preserve traditional institutions, customs, and values.[1][2][3] The central tenets of conservatism may vary in relation to the culture and civilization in which it appears.[4] In Western culture, depending on the particular nation and the particular time period, conservatives seek to promote and preserve a range of institutions, such as the nuclear family, organized religion, the military, the nation-state, constitution, property rights, rule of law, aristocracy, and monarchy.[5][6]

I don't know if I've heard it described as a reaction to liberalism

yucandu@lemmy.world · 8 pts · 1d (1 reply)

If you're born into money, you have two options:

Either you believe you don't truly deserve all this money, and you live with the existential angst and dread this causes you until you slowly kill yourself through drugs and alcohol, or you give it all away and live as a poor nomad.

OR you believe you truly deserve all that money. And since you know you didn't actually DO anything to get it, it must be because you were BORN better than everyone else. Genetically superior.

Which do you think most people choose?

schipelblorp@sh.itjust.works · 6 pts · 1d

And if you're not born into money it's:

  1. You can be rich if you just apply yourself.

or

  1. You are trapped in a system that will keep you in poverty your entire life no matter what you do.

Which message would you choose?

Edit. And if you grew up rich and wanted to protect the system that put you in charge of a media company, which message would you choose to propagate?

LibertyLizard@slrpnk.net · 6 pts · 1d

Voters think that though. Waking them up from the illusion may help.

Plus, honestly, most people drink their own kool aid so I wouldn't be surprised if our leaders did believe this despite all evidence. The desire to think of yourself as a good person can overpower most evidence.

Maroon@lemmy.world · 23 pts · 19h (1 reply)

They're trying to build a prison,

They're trying to build a prison,

They're trying to build a prison,

FOR YOU AND ME TO LIVE IN

Another Prison System,

Another Prison System,

Another Prison System

Harvey656@lemmy.world · 7 pts · 18h

Minor drug offenders fill your prisons, you don't even flinch

All our taxes paying for your wars against the new non-rich

QueenHawlSera@piefed.social · 18 pts · 19h (4 replies)

The cruelty is the point

FistingEnthusiast@lemmy.world · 5 pts · 11h (3 replies)

And it's profitable in 'Murica

Private prisons should not exist

Doc_Crankenstein@slrpnk.net · -1 pts · 10h (2 replies)

Private prisons should not exist

FIFY

FistingEnthusiast@lemmy.world · 2 pts · 8h (1 reply)

Ohhhhhh, just fuck off with that mawkish bullshit

Nobody likes prisons

They should not be a place of punishment, but of rehabilitation

But your soap-dodging horse-shit goes beyond naivety, firmly into the swamp of stupidity

This kind of idiocy is the sort of shit that RWNJs seize upon to try to discredit the efforts of us who actually want to make the world a better place

Grow the fuck up.

Doc_Crankenstein@slrpnk.net · -2 pts · 8h

Oh fuck off with your naive and uneducated take on the abolition of police and the carceral justice system.

Educate yourself on the anarchist perspective and do some growing up yourself first.

StumblingWasabi@lemmy.today · 17 pts · 1d (1 reply)

bUT tHeY DId'Nt EaRN iT

BarneyPiccolo@lemmy.today · 23 pts · 1d

Neither did the cops.

Arcanepotato@crazypeople.online · 11 pts · 1d (1 reply)

Two separate thoughts:

I think people interested in policing should read:

  • Angela Davis: Are Prisons Obsolete ( pdf | audiobook )

  • the prison industrial complex exists to protect capital not to protect people.

Tollana1234567@lemmy.today · 1 pts · 12h

its a pipeline to funnel money into the politicians pockets/campaigns.

tomatolung@sopuli.xyz · 10 pts · 21h

Also worth remembering that Crime in the US is at a near low overall. Violent crime is at a historic low, while non-violent crime is also low with the exception of retail theft. https://www.fbi.gov/news/stories/violent-crime-falls-at-historic-rate-new-fbi-data-show

So less money for Police, more for Mental health professionals, as that is a huge percentage of their callouts. But why would politicians want to keep people off the streets by a universal income, and gainfully employed and healthy... oh wait bureaucratic inertia and campaign finance corruption... 🤦

myyass@lemmy.world · 7 pts · 22h (4 replies)

So the point missed is that the goal is prison labor. Why pay someone to process toll booths on a computer for a few dollars a day while having the taxpayer cover their expense and pay for the prison?

Sharkticon@lemmy.zip · 8 pts · 21h (1 reply)

No that's just a part of it. Another huge part is having a large militarized and brutal police force that you can use to against the people.

WorldsDumbestMan@lemmy.today · 2 pts · 11h

They are creating an underclass. They want people to struggle, they actively create situations for you to fail, so they can have an excuse to put you in a lower position. Wealthy people very much have a zero-sum mindset. The lower you can sink, the higher they are relative to you.

But to do this, they need to justify it somehow. They create cruel "tests" to decide if you will be a serf or slave. So yes, they even make tiers between the "lesser" people.

But that is only a small part of what the powers that be do here, there's multiple layers to this.

AVincentInSpace@pawb.social · 2 pts · 18h

The thing about capitalism is that slavery is extremely fucking profitable.

myyass@lemmy.world · 1 pts · 18h

Both of your comments are valid points.

IndustryStandard@lemmy.world · 5 pts · 22h

Thanks Mamdani

Tollana1234567@lemmy.today · 4 pts · 12h

GOP/DNC both support the status quo that police unions(not true unions0 should be funded, it keeps thier interests in line.

Lushed_Lungfish@lemmy.ca · 1 pts · 22h (2 replies)

Not just money though. You need to also have social support programs.

grue@lemmy.world · 10 pts · 22h (1 reply)

No, even no-strings-attached cash works.

I'm not saying social programs aren't good, just that your claim that money doesn't help without them isn't true.

Lushed_Lungfish@lemmy.ca · 2 pts · 22h

I'm not saying that money doesn't help. I'm saying money is a good first step.

BradleyUffner@lemmy.world · 1 pts · 6h
[ removed ]
Cris_Citrus@piefed.zip · -1 pts · 12h

Him face is an octogon

zzffyfajzkzhnsweqm@sh.itjust.works · -3 pts · 12h (15 replies)

Is it true thouh?

Because in my country we have quite strong social support. And whole communities of minorities stopped working because of that. And they often fill their free time with offence (speeding, fights, gun offence...) and crime (like selling guns, drugs...) for extra money. In past two years we stopped this and now condition social support with behaving.

NoneOfUrBusiness@fedia.io · 2 pts · 8h

and crime (like selling guns, drugs...) for extra money.

I hope you can see the contradiction here. You just said they don't work and now say that they do illegal work. That should be your first clue that something about your information is wrong, because obviously these two things can't be true at the same time.

More broadly, the idea that "whole communities of minorities stopped working" because of social welfare is, frankly, bullshit. And not just that, it's the kind of bullshit that gets repeated everywhere (see: welfare queen rhetoric in America), because its purpose is to rile up working class people of the majority ethnicity against minorities. The fact of the matter is: People like having financial security and nice things, so the vast majority of people aren't going to stop working because they're getting the pittance of money that counts for social welfare in even really generous countries. When people don't work, that's almost always because they can't work (see asylum seekers for another example), so whoever is telling you that dirty gypsies are lazily living off your tax money is feeding you bullshit. When it comes to Romas specifically, Romas have been shut out of polite society for centuries now, and it'd be ridiculous to assume that it stopped overnight. But we don't have to assume; we know it hasn't. It's no coincidence that countries without intense and longstanding anti-Roma hatred also don't have stereotypes about dirty Gypsies living off your tax money.

In past two years we stopped this and now condition social support with behaving.

So is there evidence that Roma crime is in any way correlated with social welfare or are you accepting that this "solution" worked based on vibes?

x00z@lemmy.world · 1 pts · 11h (1 reply)

condition social support with behaving

This should be a given right?

Doc_Crankenstein@slrpnk.net · -1 pts · 10h

No. Fuck means testing bullshit.

WorldsDumbestMan@lemmy.today · 1 pts · 12h (5 replies)

Conclusion: Lobotomize all civilians and put them to work, to protect them from the evils of personal time.

zzffyfajzkzhnsweqm@sh.itjust.works · -3 pts · 12h (4 replies)

This is your conclusion... My conclusion is to stop giving as much social support to people who abuse the mechanism.

Maybe one thing that was not clear: If you were poor enough, government was not allowed to take your social support. Which means people were commiting offences and were not punished for them like the rest of us. They did not have to pay. Our jails are full and I hope you also do not want to put people in jail for minor offences.

WorldsDumbestMan@lemmy.today · 4 pts · 11h (3 replies)

Sounds like a thought crime. Off to the pony miniaturization factory with you!

FistingEnthusiast@lemmy.world · 4 pts · 11h (2 replies)

He's talking about Roma people

It's racism, but OP doesn't see it as such, because Roma people are apparently less human than other humans

WorldsDumbestMan@lemmy.today · 1 pts · 11h (1 reply)

Well hello FistingEnthusiast! I'm not sure you responded to the right thread.

I made a sarcastic comment that he took literally.

FistingEnthusiast@lemmy.world · 4 pts · 11h

Oh, I got your point

I was explaining how OP's racism is apparently different, because the people concerned are Roma

The Roma have faced systematic discrimination for centuries, and they were among the groups Hitler was very enthusiastic about wiping out

Felis_Catus_Domesticus@lemmy.world · 0 pts · 12h (2 replies)

Sounds like you let the wrong "minorities" in, mate..

zzffyfajzkzhnsweqm@sh.itjust.works · 2 pts · 12h (1 reply)

They (roma) are native in my country. With as much right to this place as me.

FistingEnthusiast@lemmy.world · 2 pts · 11h

And yet, you seem to see them as less deserving

FistingEnthusiast@lemmy.world · -2 pts · 12h (2 replies)

Damn, you're kinda shitty

Tell us that you enjoy a position of privilege and don't understand that others aren't as fortunate without telling us that you enjoy a position of privilege and don't understand that others aren't as fortunate

zzffyfajzkzhnsweqm@sh.itjust.works · -1 pts · 12h (1 reply)

Jusy because I want to know if this commic is backed by actual research?

We really have strong social support. People in my country can live just on social support. People are still poor, but can survive.

Maybe that is not the case in your country... But in Slovenia it became a real issue no social program was able to solve. I still support our social support programs. However conditioning a part of social support with paying for your offence penalties turned out to be a success...

While majority still does not want to do that, some individuals and some whole communities where this is normalized decide to stop working and live poor life with no stress of work.

It did not help them, they are a minority. However same minority successfully integrated in other parts of our (small) country so it is not a minority issue. 30 years of really trying to integrate them did not work because unconditional social support allowed them to isolate even further and crime gave them an extra buck so they could afford some luxury.

Do you have a better solution for that issue?

FistingEnthusiast@lemmy.world · 5 pts · 11h

You're talking about Roma people

People who are consistently discriminated against and displaced

It's racism

What you're talking about (and evidently endorsing) is racism

A_Chilean_Cyborg@feddit.cl · -3 pts · 19h

Ugh, this reeks of firstworlder.

prime_number_314159@lemmy.world · -15 pts · 1d (3 replies)

Is this meant to be funny, or is it meant to be a commentary on actual reality? As far as I'm aware, studies strongly support the idea that policing is more effective per dollar at reducing crime than any attempt so far to reduce crime with welfare.

I searched a bit to see if there was a new paper this comic was based on, and didn't find one.

Bad@jlai.lu · 20 pts · 1d

https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC12750604/

https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S004727271830210X

(the comic is based on french studies, but equivalent american ones weren't hard to find)

schipelblorp@sh.itjust.works · 13 pts · 1d

Do those studies include the ~$60,000/yr it costs to incarcerate someone per year?

ReptilianCleric@lemmy.zip · 5 pts · 20h

You sound willfully unaware, and as a result it's hard to resist an inflammatory response.

Please research this with an open mind. You may fond yourself surprised at how strongly it will affect your worldview.