
Chicago gave hundreds of high-risk kids a job; violent crime arrests plummeted - theoutlander
http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/wonkblog/wp/2014/12/26/chicago-gave-hundreds-of-high-risk-kids-a-summer-job-violent-crime-arrests-plummeted/?Post+generic=%3Ftid%3Dsm_twitter_washingtonpost
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dmix
Poverty = recruiting base for violent organizations

Poor state = lack of security (under-funded police or over-burdened courts for
example)

Prohibition = creates market incentives for violence and coercion

These reasons are 100% why economic intervention should always be answer #1 to
violence and crime. Not more warfare or tough justice.

I'd even take this position beyond the war on drugs and apply it to the war on
terrorism as well. As we saw in Afghanistan, what good was spending trillions
on war when we leave them with a non-existent economy or infrastructure? The
only massive industry there is now opium and funds are going straight to the
adversary.

Same with the American drug war. Thousands of impoverished kids with their
fathers dead or in jail on drug charges, no long-term career possibilities
except an extremely accessible job market built on violence.

I'm not promoting pacifism, security is essential. But social/market
liberalism, combined with creating economic support infrastructure, and
investing in a strong legal systems against corruption (so it doesnt end up
like Africa).

The only way practical justification for more war/justice is via some
emotional gratification of getting 'revenge' on some unsavory class of people
in society by the controlling class. Because how could the goal really be to
minimize or stop the problem when the failures of that strategy are so obvious
to anyone who spends a moment critically analyzing the history of it?

~~~
vdaniuk
Everything, with the exception of pacifisim, you say is logical and rational,
however failure of the revenge/"justice" strategy is either by design or
emergent from stakeholder conflicts of interests.

Why not promote pacifism? Existential security of the US is guaranteed by
military supremacy, average daily life security of the US citizen in
comparison with other western countries is quite low.[0]

I think that the main problem of the US society's approach to
punishment/justice/war is rooted in deontological ethics, which stems from
high religiosity and "american values" propaganda.

Adopting a more consequentialist ethics approach would help to switch social
consensus from punishment to rehabilitation, from doing what is
"right"(definition that is coopted by politicians and media) to doing what is
useful.

One can only dream. I believe that AI originated societal change is more
probable than massive perception shift, though.

[0][http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_intentiona...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_intentional_homicide_rate)

[1][http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deontological_ethics](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deontological_ethics)

~~~
ivanca
We don't need social perception shift, they just need to do it. We have seen
they do many things that the public disagrees with (eg. NSA Spying, Iraq war,
etc) they might as well do something good.

------
lsiebert
I really wish people would look at jobs programs, education programs, mental
health care and similar public welfare efforts as an investment in making
society better. We are all better off in the long term with less crime and
unemployment.

Every person committing crimes and going to prison, or unemployed or employed
in criminal activity is a person who could be not only doing less harm through
crime to their community, but also, with proper support, meaningfully
contributing to GDP.

The real important thing here is the ease at which a significant impact can be
made to change people's behavior towards the better with a minimal (literally
minimum wage) investment. Criminality is not an inherent trait, at least not
for the majority of individuals. It's a product of environmental factors. And
the effect increased after the work was over.

The potential increase in property values from reduced crime alone are
interesting.

------
mbubb
The Red Hook Initiative has a few interesting projects in their neighborhood
in Brooklyn. I have casually followed them since Sandy and am very impressed.

One project was to setup a mesh wifi network and they made a 'digital
stewards' program so the kids and young adults in the neighborhood could learn
how to maintain and troubleshoot the hardware and software.

The program seems to have legs

[http://rhidigitalstewards.wordpress.com/who-we-
are/](http://rhidigitalstewards.wordpress.com/who-we-are/)

------
carsongross
So maybe preserving jobs, along the lines advocated by US populists for the
last 200 years, isn't quite as idiotic a social policy it has been made out to
be by the mainstream left, neo-conservative right and libertarians?

