#8 Criminal behavior and crime suppression are antagonistic forces. In times past the suppression was more organized but rigidly managed, the criminal was opportunistic but mostly individualized behavior. Warehousing large numbers of the criminal class for years, and the credible threat of so doing acted as a suppression factor as long as public support saw the relative efficacy of the process. You commit a crime, you get caught, you are fairly judged, and you are warehoused. Today, each part of this process has been fragmented. LE is hyper-rigidly monitored and in casses involving POC, potentially career ending even if precise rules are followed if the community climate has become racialized. Crimnal behavior has become culturally normative amongst many urban minorities, and more importantly, organized effectively, usually in tribal/gang structures. The criminal justice system has been undermined by racial reasoning despite massive evidence to the contrary, and disparate outcomes are rampant where prosecutorial integrity has been compromised. Finally, warehousing has been demonized as unjustly punitive to one segment of society, despite all the evidence that occupants were overwhelming deserving of their occupancy. Voila, our current growing problem. The old paradigm works quite satisfactorily, but so much of it is so corroded by mistrust and neglect, the restorative actions will have an initial tsunami of visible effect that may likely overwhelm any political force employing them. Hence the drift in urban areas towards impoverished cancers of public apathy, corruption, violence and political sedition. The fix at this point, is growing towards a quite ungly set of alternatives, none of then pretty, and most terminally destructive of the traditional American dream. I wish it wasn't so, and hope I am delusional in my dotage, but if not, fort up my friends, fill the larders and find ways to hold what you have locally! |