The first argument is totally specious. There is a huge difference between not a felony and decriminalization. In Oregon, stealing less than $100 is a not a felony. It is a Class 3 misdemeanor with penalties of up $1250 fine and 30 days in jail. Decriminalization means there is no penalty. There is no relationship between the two.
I was going to make a similar point, so I will jump in here. Not a felony is one thing, but misdemeanors still get you a record and jail time up to a year, not to mention fines etc. not prosecuting at all means there is no effective punishment, particularly for multiple offenses as you have to get strikes on your record before three strikes laws come into play.
So regardless of the floors and strikes etc, if shoplifters are not being arrested, tried and convicted there is no (effective) penalty and the offense is decriminalized.
I say effective because if you are arrested and tried that is a bit of a penalty even if you are not convicted. The process can be the punishment.
One thing that occurred to me while writing this is how semantically complex anything around "soft on crime" can be. Does Chesa Boudin want to mostly not convict people of crimes, and give the softest possible penalties on things like shoplifting? Almost certainly, that's pretty much a description of his campaign promises.
Is he "soft on crime"? There's a lot wrapped up in that phrase, a lot of negative implications. Is he *definitely* wrong that this will reduce crime? I don't think so but obviously there's a disagreement there. Is a diversion program "no punishment"?
So on and so forth. You could get in the weeds for days on this one without accomplishing anything at all.
I agree, and the weeds are really where you need to be to understand the process. My sense is that there are multiple failure points in the legal process, such that criminals can sort of decide how much punishment they want to deal with for the same offense. Maybe some don’t mind the diversion programs, while others skip out on the programs knowing the penalty for that is also very low. Maybe you only get punished for skipping out on the programs if you get caught after and then only if the state cares to look into it. My guess would be that if the serious repercussion points (arrest and trials) are soft the less serious points are softer still. If so, any criminal willing to push things and see what they can get away with will find the answer is quite a lot. And of course pushing to see what they can get away with is sort of a key habit of criminals.
I think we might have a different understanding of the word "criminalization" and its permutations. You are using it like I'd use "legalize", which is to completely remove penalties. At least during the history of cannabis, I've mostly seen it used in the "not a felony" sense.
Kind of a moot point for me since that's how ADS framed it as opposed to my words, and I think they just sort of meant something like "made it soft and ineffective, causing problem X" anyway.
'(D) the value of the property stolen is less than $2,500 and the defendant has been previously convicted two or more times of any grade of theft;'
Whoops! Texas has a three strikes law. So while their floor is pretty high if they’ve been caught stealing bubblegum twice and convicted, that third pack of Bazooka Joe still costs pretty dearly."
Consider clarifying your paragraph. It looks to me like the floor is pretty high if they *haven't* been caught two or more time; when they have, then the monetary floor is ignored (because of the two priors).
Changed to: "Whoops! Texas has a three strikes law. So while their floor is pretty high, if they’ve been caught stealing bubblegum twice and convicted that third pack of Bazooka Joe still costs dearly. "
Misplaced comma makes a whole lot of difference there. Thanks!
Come to San Francisco, ask me or any of my long-time neighbors if we feel safe? We will talk your ears off. The data calestenics you've done means zilch.
I'm not sure what I'm getting scolded for here; is it believing or not believing that there's a problem?
For the record I don't strongly believe either; I just did sort of a deep dive into the data and didn't find it particularly compelling either way. I'm an outsider to your city, as you note. The data is bad enough that I'm not even sure what direction you are pissed off at me from; what would you prefer I do here?
Sometimes data isn't all that great, and you do the best you can with what you have. The alternative here is something like saying "Well, I'm right aligned, so team left-aligned must have fucked up by default" and I'm not sure why that would be better.
Thanks for sending. I wish the article was a little data heavier, but it ends up tracking a lot with the kind of stuff I hear from people who live there - basically that it's pretty visible bad in a way the data doesn't reflect. It does bother me that every article on the subject ends up saying something like this:
"Mr. Boudin, a former public defender, said his office hasn’t changed the way it prosecutes property crimes from the previous district attorney, George Gascon, who is now district attorney in Los Angeles and facing his own recall campaign. The office’s rate of filing charges against people arrested for burglaries and thefts dipped to 41% in Mr. Boudin’s first year in office, but increased to 58% in 2021, similar to the rate during Mr. Gascon’s tenure."
There's such big differences in how he handles arrests, like how often he sends shoplifters to diversion programs, that his actual filing rate doesn't matter as much as you'd think. The most productive article someone could do right now is looking to see if people actually show for their diversion programs, and what happens when they don't, but nobody seems super-interested in doing one right now. I'd do it myself, but I don't know where to start.
Every Democrat city, where the population isn’t exclusively wealthy like Martha’s Vineyard, is a shithole. The problem is not necessarily just the Democrat policies. The problem is that the people who live there are degenerates. That’s why Democrats keep getting elected.
It’s a chicken and egg problem. Is it the Democrat policies or is it the fact that the population is almost entirely degenerate people who like Democrats? Bit of both probably.
The good news is that ADS’s desperate, pagan clawing to rescue Democrats with “robust nuanced data context science” will not work. Nobody’s buying it.
For his next piece he should write about how a flood of millions of destitute people who don’t speak the language is actually good for your country……..unless it’s Europe in which case Ukrainians showing up is a crisis.
The first argument is totally specious. There is a huge difference between not a felony and decriminalization. In Oregon, stealing less than $100 is a not a felony. It is a Class 3 misdemeanor with penalties of up $1250 fine and 30 days in jail. Decriminalization means there is no penalty. There is no relationship between the two.
I was going to make a similar point, so I will jump in here. Not a felony is one thing, but misdemeanors still get you a record and jail time up to a year, not to mention fines etc. not prosecuting at all means there is no effective punishment, particularly for multiple offenses as you have to get strikes on your record before three strikes laws come into play.
So regardless of the floors and strikes etc, if shoplifters are not being arrested, tried and convicted there is no (effective) penalty and the offense is decriminalized.
I say effective because if you are arrested and tried that is a bit of a penalty even if you are not convicted. The process can be the punishment.
One thing that occurred to me while writing this is how semantically complex anything around "soft on crime" can be. Does Chesa Boudin want to mostly not convict people of crimes, and give the softest possible penalties on things like shoplifting? Almost certainly, that's pretty much a description of his campaign promises.
Is he "soft on crime"? There's a lot wrapped up in that phrase, a lot of negative implications. Is he *definitely* wrong that this will reduce crime? I don't think so but obviously there's a disagreement there. Is a diversion program "no punishment"?
So on and so forth. You could get in the weeds for days on this one without accomplishing anything at all.
I agree, and the weeds are really where you need to be to understand the process. My sense is that there are multiple failure points in the legal process, such that criminals can sort of decide how much punishment they want to deal with for the same offense. Maybe some don’t mind the diversion programs, while others skip out on the programs knowing the penalty for that is also very low. Maybe you only get punished for skipping out on the programs if you get caught after and then only if the state cares to look into it. My guess would be that if the serious repercussion points (arrest and trials) are soft the less serious points are softer still. If so, any criminal willing to push things and see what they can get away with will find the answer is quite a lot. And of course pushing to see what they can get away with is sort of a key habit of criminals.
I think we might have a different understanding of the word "criminalization" and its permutations. You are using it like I'd use "legalize", which is to completely remove penalties. At least during the history of cannabis, I've mostly seen it used in the "not a felony" sense.
FWIW, the wikipedia/dictionary level definition seems to track with how I understand it: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Decriminalization
Kind of a moot point for me since that's how ADS framed it as opposed to my words, and I think they just sort of meant something like "made it soft and ineffective, causing problem X" anyway.
"a felony:
'(D) the value of the property stolen is less than $2,500 and the defendant has been previously convicted two or more times of any grade of theft;'
Whoops! Texas has a three strikes law. So while their floor is pretty high if they’ve been caught stealing bubblegum twice and convicted, that third pack of Bazooka Joe still costs pretty dearly."
Consider clarifying your paragraph. It looks to me like the floor is pretty high if they *haven't* been caught two or more time; when they have, then the monetary floor is ignored (because of the two priors).
Changed to: "Whoops! Texas has a three strikes law. So while their floor is pretty high, if they’ve been caught stealing bubblegum twice and convicted that third pack of Bazooka Joe still costs dearly. "
Misplaced comma makes a whole lot of difference there. Thanks!
Come to San Francisco, ask me or any of my long-time neighbors if we feel safe? We will talk your ears off. The data calestenics you've done means zilch.
I'm not sure what I'm getting scolded for here; is it believing or not believing that there's a problem?
For the record I don't strongly believe either; I just did sort of a deep dive into the data and didn't find it particularly compelling either way. I'm an outsider to your city, as you note. The data is bad enough that I'm not even sure what direction you are pissed off at me from; what would you prefer I do here?
Sometimes data isn't all that great, and you do the best you can with what you have. The alternative here is something like saying "Well, I'm right aligned, so team left-aligned must have fucked up by default" and I'm not sure why that would be better.
The Wall Street Journal has a March 20 article on this topic: "Petty Thieves Plague San Francisco. ‘These Last Two Years Have Been Insane.’" https://www.wsj.com/articles/crime-san-francisco-petty-thieves-small-businesses-11647797642
Thanks for sending. I wish the article was a little data heavier, but it ends up tracking a lot with the kind of stuff I hear from people who live there - basically that it's pretty visible bad in a way the data doesn't reflect. It does bother me that every article on the subject ends up saying something like this:
"Mr. Boudin, a former public defender, said his office hasn’t changed the way it prosecutes property crimes from the previous district attorney, George Gascon, who is now district attorney in Los Angeles and facing his own recall campaign. The office’s rate of filing charges against people arrested for burglaries and thefts dipped to 41% in Mr. Boudin’s first year in office, but increased to 58% in 2021, similar to the rate during Mr. Gascon’s tenure."
There's such big differences in how he handles arrests, like how often he sends shoplifters to diversion programs, that his actual filing rate doesn't matter as much as you'd think. The most productive article someone could do right now is looking to see if people actually show for their diversion programs, and what happens when they don't, but nobody seems super-interested in doing one right now. I'd do it myself, but I don't know where to start.
Re: the Walgreens closures in SF: I’m here in Berkeley, and they’ve closed two of them in the last few months.
Every Democrat city, where the population isn’t exclusively wealthy like Martha’s Vineyard, is a shithole. The problem is not necessarily just the Democrat policies. The problem is that the people who live there are degenerates. That’s why Democrats keep getting elected.
It’s a chicken and egg problem. Is it the Democrat policies or is it the fact that the population is almost entirely degenerate people who like Democrats? Bit of both probably.
The good news is that ADS’s desperate, pagan clawing to rescue Democrats with “robust nuanced data context science” will not work. Nobody’s buying it.
For his next piece he should write about how a flood of millions of destitute people who don’t speak the language is actually good for your country……..unless it’s Europe in which case Ukrainians showing up is a crisis.