RareAcumen posted:

Throw in 'and a threat' and we're really getting somewhere!

Two Ton 21 posted:

Two Ton 21 posted:

baw posted:

So Madison has problems with race, and the mayor even admits racial disparities in law enforcement.


The Madison PD and municipal leadership both seem willing to allow the protestors to air their grievances and investigate them.

One thing that really pisses me off about people posting about these things on Facebook is how they will focus and obsess over the details of the case that catalyzed the protest movement while ignoring the underlying injustices that they are actually protesting against.

Like your fat idiot friend will be able to tell you in sharp detail every goddamn second of the court's timeline for Michael Brown, but are completely loving ignorant of the federal report that came out last week highlighting how hosed-up things have been in Ferguson. Or your other moron lily white friend who call the protestors ignorant bastards and claims that everything in Madison is fine because he's lived there for his life and knows there aren't racial problems.

RareAcumen posted:

See, now you're missing the 'armed' part of the equation.

And that even gets muddied when you're, hypothetically, open carrying in a state that has that as a legal right!

Radish posted:

I thought all the D&D libertarians went to play Eve then died from malnutrition.

paranoid randroid posted:

They all got brain parasites from drinking unpasteurized milk.

Two Ton 21 posted:

Don't you LARP as a black person?

SedanChair posted:

"The heat is off, I can finally post!" -racists

Slipknot Hoagie posted:

Lily white? Hmm, sounds racist. Yes I guess some people do know about the crimes that people have committed rather than think about how unequal the hateful white man's world is. I had to laugh out loud when I read the quote you posted that we need to spend more money for services instead of on prisons. Reminds me of the MS Paint cartoon where the pastor says "we need more money for the programs". It's almost as if some of the stereotypes are true. Although, that seems to me to be like blackmail. Give us more money, or we'll do more crimes, we warned you! I'd rather crimes didn't get done whether or not money is spent, for my part.

SedanChair posted:

"The heat is off, I can finally post!" -racists

theflyingorc posted:

Actually that's still pretty funny

Slipknot Hoagie posted:

Lily white? Hmm, sounds racist. Yes I guess some people do know about the crimes that people have committed rather than think about how unequal the hateful white man's world is. I had to laugh out loud when I read the quote you posted that we need to spend more money for services instead of on prisons. Reminds me of the MS Paint cartoon where the pastor says "we need more money for the programs". It's almost as if some of the stereotypes are true. Although, that seems to me to be like blackmail. Give us more money, or we'll do more crimes, we warned you! I'd rather crimes didn't get done whether or not money is spent, for my part.

Slipknot Hoagie posted:

Lily white? Hmm, sounds racist. Yes I guess some people do know about the crimes that people have committed rather than think about how unequal the hateful white man's world is. I had to laugh out loud when I read the quote you posted that we need to spend more money for services instead of on prisons. Reminds me of the MS Paint cartoon where the pastor says "we need more money for the programs". It's almost as if some of the stereotypes are true. Although, that seems to me to be like blackmail. Give us more money, or we'll do more crimes, we warned you! I'd rather crimes didn't get done whether or not money is spent, for my part.

SedanChair posted:

Congratulations, your Puritan tightwad attitude is literally the cause of all problems in America that are not explained by overt racism.

FAUXTON posted:

When you consider Atwater's famous strategy, you could make the case that the puritan tightwad attitude is in part perpetuated by racists who believe social services not exclusive to whites should be abolished.

Two Ton 21 posted:

Slipknot Hoagie posted:

Lily white? Hmm, sounds racist. Yes I guess some people do know about the crimes that people have committed rather than think about how unequal the hateful white man's world is. I had to laugh out loud when I read the quote you posted that we need to spend more money for services instead of on prisons. Reminds me of the MS Paint cartoon where the pastor says "we need more money for the programs". It's almost as if some of the stereotypes are true. Although, that seems to me to be like blackmail. Give us more money, or we'll do more crimes, we warned you! I'd rather crimes didn't get done whether or not money is spent, for my part.

SedanChair posted:

"This meeting of Black Thugs Without Father Figures Local 76 is called to order. How is our extortion of white America through committing crimes going?"

"Not incredibly well, we're just getting shot by the police"

"Don't lose heart! Keep playing the 'knock out game.' Eventually whites will capitulate and provide us with social services!"

SedanChair posted:

"This meeting of Black Thugs Without Father Figures Local 76 is called to order. How is our extortion of white America through committing crimes going?"

"Not incredibly well, we're just getting shot by the police"

"Don't lose heart! Keep playing the 'knock out game.' Eventually whites will capitulate and provide us with social services!"

Slipknot Hoagie posted:

Not since the appeasement of Adolf Hitler have I been so thoroughly extorted, very well then, give the blacks their payments. Loosen the golden purse strings and release the payments directly into the ghettos. It's less costly than the alternative, which is law enforcement and incarceration.

Randbrick posted:

First off, I have to give you kudos for coming right out to say that you see no daylight between "black people" and "criminals." The overwhelming majority of criminal defendants are not black. That would not surprise anyone with half a mind given to the occasional thought, as black people make up about 13% of the population. They do tend to realize much harsher sentencing than white people, due to...reasons(???)

Second, just so you know, the overwhelming majority of any given criminal docket is reserved for people who have committed such heinous trespasses against the public dignity as "driving on a suspended operator's license due to unpaid fines and fees," and, "smoking marijuana," and a related family of offenses against statute without the barest hint of public safety impacts or moral weight.

Third, I don't know that you've honestly even defined what you want to see happen from a law enforcement system. The majority of criminal felony offenses are small possession crimes, ie. possession of a controlled schedule 1 or 2 substance. I recognize two schools of thought on these offenses. The first is that it is an offense where the perpetrator and the victim are the same person, and that we are protecting people from themselves by way of incarceration. If that is the case, show me how that works to the benefit of the actual perpetrator or victim. The second is that the victim is society at large, which is endangered by the defendant/victim's drug use. Again, if that is the case, show me how that works to the benefit of society at large.

I'm happy to talk about either of those moral frameworks with you, or to explain the actual outcomes and how those outcomes serve neither interest. But I can't discern an actual moral or pragmatic position in your petulant smarm, so I'm unsure just what you want to see happen by way of incarcerating people, unless you regard incarceration as a good unto itself. Given that you clearly don't know anything about...any of these issues, you may have to find the willingness inside yourself to admit you don't know everything, or that you've held ideas in your head that may in some respect be mistaken. I'm not overly confident that you're willing to do that.

But if you can find in yourself the marginal courage to admit that you are not omniscient, or that you are not blessed with infallible reflexive preconceptions, I'd love to have a discussion. If you can't, or if you'd prefer instead to gratify your sense of persecution and enable your personal narrative as the lone voice of proper moral thinking, I can also insult you pretty fluently.

Slipknot Hoagie posted:

Not since the appeasement of Adolf Hitler have I been so thoroughly extorted, very well then, give the blacks their payments. Loosen the golden purse strings and release the payments directly into the ghettos. It's less costly than the alternative, which is law enforcement and incarceration.

spacetoaster posted:

You really didn't need to post all that. Your first sentence was all we needed to know your sense of irony doesn't exist.

Randbrick posted:

Well, someone went and got himself got himself a fresh pair of meanypants out the laundry.

Randbrick posted:

There is no social program in existence that costs more relative to its benefits and positive outcomes than incarceration. Incarceration is a money pit. Literally leaving drug addicts on the streets shooting up at bus stops with absolutely no response of any kind beyond cleaning out the corpses after every cold night is cheaper and more cost-effective than the county jail. Similarly, emptying the jails of habitual shoplifters would free up more than enough money for the state to provision every single retail business with a free commercial insurance policy to cover inventory loss. There is nothing less effective at preventing crime and rehabilitating people than the American model of criminal justice and incarceration, and there is nothing more expensive, either.

The idea is not to spend more and more money to create programs that exist alongside the current criminal justice model. Creating systems to work alongside the American criminal justice system is just painting racing stripes on a car with no tires. The idea is to create alternatives which stand for themselves. Optimizing outcomes is difficult and complicated. Doing better than godawful terrible is not. The question, then, is how many more people, many of whom are admittedly pretty awful, you'd like to feed into the volcano before the hungry god that lives in the caldera sees fit to deliver us from poverty and substance abuse.

Two Ton 21 posted:

Slipknot Hoagie posted:

Not since the appeasement of Adolf Hitler have I been so thoroughly extorted, very well then, give the blacks their payments. Loosen the golden purse strings and release the payments directly into the ghettos. It's less costly than the alternative, which is law enforcement and incarceration.

Randbrick posted:

First off, I have to give you kudos for coming right out to say that you see no daylight between "black people" and "criminals." The overwhelming majority of criminal defendants are not black. That would not surprise anyone with half a mind given to the occasional thought, as black people make up about 13% of the population. They do tend to realize much harsher sentencing than white people, due to...reasons(???)

Randbrick posted:

There is no social program in existence that costs more relative to its benefits and positive outcomes than incarceration. Incarceration is a money pit. Literally leaving drug addicts on the streets shooting up at bus stops with absolutely no response of any kind beyond cleaning out the corpses after every cold night is cheaper and more cost-effective than the county jail. Similarly, emptying the jails of habitual shoplifters would free up more than enough money for the state to provision every single retail business with a free commercial insurance policy to cover inventory loss. There is nothing less effective at preventing crime and rehabilitating people than the American model of criminal justice and incarceration, and there is nothing more expensive, either.

FAUXTON posted:

But then people wouldn't endure pain for their sins and the world will descend into chaos.

Slipknot Hoagie posted:

Not since the appeasement of Adolf Hitler have I been so thoroughly extorted, very well then, give the blacks their payments. Loosen the golden purse strings and release the payments directly into the ghettos. It's less costly than the alternative, which is law enforcement and incarceration.

tsa posted:

I know this might be a shock to some here but having a lawful society is actually a good thing. See: recorded history.

tsa posted:

That's why there's things like odds ratios, which would show that minorities are dependents at significantly higher rates than non-hispanic whites (who are actually a minority w.r.t being a dependent). Of course there's many different explanations for why this could be, for example poverty could explain much of the disparity. But even that would probably be insufficient as the types of poverty experienced by whites vs. non-whites. It could be possible that the discrepancies in how poverty is experienced between groups leads to different types of crimes, different severity in crimes and so on. (in other words there is a race-poverty interaction effect) This thread tries to simplistically shout RACISM at every instance because actual analysis is hard and calling other people names is easy and fun I guess.


There is a lot of work to be done but the absence of enforcement will lead to more crime- according to every study on the subject. Criminals aren't idiots, if they think there is basically a 100% chance of getting caught they aren't going to do that thing. While length of incarceration tends to be a non-significant affect for most crimes, the probability of arrest/incarceration is a factor taken into account in nearly every crime outside of crimes in the heat of passion. Interesting note: white collar criminals tend to form a Bayesian model, which takes into account estimates of the probability of arrest along with the estimated length of incarceration Given successful prosecution (basically looking at the expected values / variances in outcomes).

I agree completely for looking and correcting root causes, but if a law exists it should be enforced equally, consistently, and fairly. With your drug addict example, the problem is trying to deal with medical issues through the law in the first place. With shoplifting we should be looking at why it is occurring. How we should deal with someone stealing bread is much different than how we should deal with a teenager stealing a stereo or a Hollywood actor stealing a dress for the thrill of it. But you don't throw out the law with the bathwater, prevention of shoplifting is obviously in the public interest and having formal rules or "laws" against that sort of thing seems to be a rather sensible thing to do.


I know this might be a shock to some here but having a lawful society is actually a good thing. See: recorded history.