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Yesterday, I was out for a late morning run, coming up my city's main commercial and restaurant street towards the capitol square. As I approached a stoplight and took a little break in the sweltering heat, a man across the street was blaring music on Bluetooth speakers; mildly annoying, but common enough in the public square. What startled me was another man on the other side of the road who began rapping (for lack of a better description, since it was basically just yelling with a slight match to the cadence) a stream of invective - he was going to kick people's asses, motherfucker this, n-bomb that, people better not fuck with him, and so on.
Reflecting a bit, this made me think of the recent discourse on asylums and what to do, and it occurs to me that I think many people are still missing the actual point. The man I described above didn't show outward signs of any particular mental illness, I have no idea if he uses drugs, and while he did look like a vagrant, I don't know whether he sleeps rough or not. Do any of those things actually matter to me? In some sense, it would matter if there was a serious and treatable mental illness (e.g. schizophrenia), but I don't actually care whether he has diagnosable narcissistic personality disorder or is merely what we would colloquially describe as an asshole. What's to be done if there is no such diagnosis and no drug-induced psychosis, but merely an asshole yelling at people about how he's going to kick their ass? My answer is basically that I want police officers to exercise their discretion to inform him that his options are that he can knock it off, do it elsewhere, or they'll arrest him for disorderly conduct. We don't need to escalate to immediate criminalization, starting with "move along sir" is fine, but no, you don't get to keep yelling at people all day.
So much of the discourse about
bumspersons experiencing houselessness seems like we're just talking past each other. At the end of the day, I genuinely don't care what the state does with these people, I just want them removed from my neighborhood. This attitude is derided as not solving the problem, but that claim merely highlights that we don't agree on what the problem is. For the people that insist on handling root causes, that part will be up to them, I'm perfectly satisfied with literally any solution that removes the people that throw chicken bones and vodka bottles on the ground in the park. I'm not actually very interested in whether they're addicts, mentally ill, or simply terrible people. The answer from the BeKind crowd seems to be that everyone has the right to behave the way they want to and that I'm a very bad person for wanting these guys removed; this seems like an unsolvable impasse in preferences for how to live.I wouldn't be surprised if the person you're describing has been arrested in the past for disorderly conduct or maybe a low-level assault.
Anybody here watch police bodycam videos on YouTube? Post-BLM, there have been dozens of new channels (Midwest Safety is one of the largest) that upload bodycam footage daily. In almost every video, the person they stop and arrest is inevitably a repeat offender. Sometimes they're being arrested for the same offense – like domestic violence – but often times it's an entirely new thing.
The point is, a high percentage of these people have been convicted of multiple crimes but are always let out after a short jail or prison term. That's the issue as I see it.
I don't think the issue can be boiled down to "just keep more people in jail longer".
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comparison_of_United_States_incarceration_rate_with_other_countries
I mean sure it would probably work eventually, at great financial and moral cost, but the US is already topping the charts here. Presumably there are other solutions that would get you more bang for your buck.
For all these problems, whether it is homelessness or criminality like assaults and whatnot, there are two types of solutions. One is an immediate solution that simply puts a stop to the undesirable behavior, potentially by throwing the perpetrator in prison. The second attempts to address root causes that lead people to engaging in these behaviors in the first place. In my ideal world we would pursue both, as one does not exclude the other. But if my only 2 choices are "throw them in prison forever" or "build free mental health clinics and maybe they will choose to use them, maybe this will fix them and maybe in 10-20 years the problem will go away" I'm going with prison forever every time. The "prison forever" solution is guaranteed to make the problem (such as it is from my perspective) go away forever. If there is a homeless guy in the park there is really no chance of prison failing, in the sense that it is guaranteed to solve the problem I care about, that being that there is a homeless guy in the park I want to use. The other solution might work at some indeterminate point in the future. If there is a homeless guy in a park that I want to use there is only way to fix my problem tomorrow
The problem with the "root cause" thing is attempting to address the "root cause" never alleviates the symptoms. This may be because the claimed root cause isn't actually the root cause, or it may be because we can't actually do anything about the root cause. But basically that trick never works.
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I guess my problem with 'root causes' strategies is that the root cause of most crime is 'he's just like that'. Most 'root causes' that get highlighted by activists are just correlates of criminality (e.g. poverty) not causes. If poverty caused crime then our grandparents' generation (in every developed country) would have been extremely criminal during their youth, and they weren't.
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I would argue that if you pick door 1 in this thought experiment, you are a bad person. Almost certainly from a utilitarian perspective (life in prison vs small annoyances * some number of people, unless the number of people is ludicrously high).
I also want to stress that I'm not really caring about root causes either. Another solution that solves the problem in 1-2 years, if there was political will, and is also not abhorrent is: Build cheap-ass housing, screw the NIMBYs (probably compensate them tho), force them off the street.
The primary purpose of the housing isn't to fix the root cause. It's to make the force them off the street part morally justifiable because you've given them another option. (Plus it is likely to help the root cause, but that's not a load-bearing part of the argument).
Only if you lean towards a negative utilitarian perspective. The steady worsening of aspirational cities has incredibly high utilitarian cost from my perspective.
What's your take on something like Wireheading City? It seems no less feasible than any other proposal to force people off the street.
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Can I ask, what do you think is so bad about prison? If you're a homeless guy who goes to prison, you get a roof over your head, a bed to sleep in, three meals a day, and a certain amount of access to a gym, a library, and healthcare. If you're thinking 'freedom', well, there's negative and positive freedom, and a homeless, mentally ill person isn't positively free because they lack the resources and probably the wherewithall to actually do almost all activities, and are forced to spend much of their time scrounging for the basic necessities of life - in my opinion they may be more free in prison because their basic needs are met.
Can I also ask, on a totally different tack, in what sense is it unjust to send a law-breaker to prison? Why would you be morally 'bad' to do so?
I think you're painting far too rosy a picture of prison, and eliding over massive potentially negative harms (
such as the abhorrent 4% chance of rape every yearedit: less abhorrent, but still bad - 4% "sexual victimization", 2.6% chance of what most would typically call "rape" ). I think treating prison as anything but an extremely negative experience for the majority of inmates is not realistic.I agree that that mental illness and freedom have a complicated philosophical relationship. My general attitude would be results-focused:
This is a tough question, but the answer isn't to stop considering the rights of the homeless/mentally ill person at all.
If you're getting the impression that I'm anti-prison or anti-punishment in general I'm not. But it has to be justified, and that justification should include the cost to the law-breaker themselves. It's the general idea of proportionality - it's pretty uncontroversial the the punishment should fit the crime, and if you're discussing changing punishments you can't just saw "whatever I don't care". You actually have to suggest what's appropriate.
I've mentioned in other comments - I agree the current level of tolerance and punishment for this anti-social behaviour is too low, and this is also an issue that affects me personally. The answer isn't prison forever, or forced labour, you have to have a limit somewhere.
Down the rabbit hole a bit, but the actual report cited there doesn't seem like a 4% chance of what I would typically see referred to as "rape":
Plenty of bad stuff going around, but I think it's unhelpful to put these all in the same category.
Would you agree with the 4% if I softened my language from "rape" -> "sexual victimization" like the report uses? I suppose the "willing inmate-guard" relationships don't count for as much, but I still have concerns there.
And I would still argue that a 2.6% chance of "actual" rape is still very bad.
I challenge someone to refute the central point which is "Prison really, really sucks. Yes even if you're mentally ill and on the street." Any arguments would also have to explain why these people are not trying to get into prison with any regularity.
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