Means of Prosecution does not Prevent Crime, page 1

For decades, possibly centuries, the hand of justice has favored methods of proving guilt after the fact, and methods of punishing the guilty. So we are talking about cameras, jails, automated cameras at stop lights, seat belt and speeding tickets, forensics, prisons, and prison labor, judges, juries, lawyers, parole officers, police departments, swat teams, MRAPs and Tanks, automatic weapons, breach load shot guns, infrared cameras, LRAD crowd control sound technology, data collection and aggregation centers, and events such as the demand by the government to access the phones of dead criminals. The entirety of the 21st century Warrant process, and its abuse or completely ignoring it - these are also examples of how much effort is put into coping with crime after the fact.

But these machines, spies, cointelpro types, undercover agents, government paid internet trolls and so forth - they are claiming these measures, most of them, are crime prevention capable. Some even go so far as to produce thought policing methods, artificial intelligence programs that compare the way people walk or their changes in facial expressions and so forth to predict criminal behavior. The main advertisement for virtually all portions of the criminal justice system, is that society will be more peaceful, that crime will go down, and that lives will improve.

But all of this is false.

These budgets, programs, spies, and equipment not only fail to prevent most crimes, but for every crime that is actually intercepted in advance, the infrastructure in place is responsible for the vast majority of identical crimes that are not prevented at all. A functional preventive approach to crime is virtually non existent. Looking at the four sources of crime, we have poverty, social rivalry, insanity, and criminal mentality.

Criminal mentality is just another word for evil. Evil is real, in this context, because people exist who wake up with the intention of doing bad things. These people are extremely rare, but they exist. That's why even in a fictional utopia such as Mayberry, a sheriff is needed.

Insanity occurs for diverse reasons and will never go away as long as people continue existing in the material universe under the same laws of physics. Even machines such as artificial intelligence processors are fallible, and for similar reasons. A pipe through a processor or a pipe through a brain can yield irrational thought processes in the event that total system failure is not the outcome. Even minuscule amounts radiation can cause processor or neurological problems. Even with the hardware intact, logic failures from paradoxical information, such as poor parenting or improper conversions of imperial and metric units can lead to what we think of as insanity. One of the outcomes of insane behavior is crime.

But these two issues, evil and insanity, are marginal, in terms of contribution to the total crime of the world.

Social Rivalry, such as jealousy, lust, adultery, peer pressure, religious and ideological opposition, nationalism, small town and big city rivalries, coupled with the presence of poverty, these problems are responsible for far more than 90% of all crime.

Especially poverty, and its friend greed.

But what does that have to do with the human efforts of resource distribution with regard to prosecution vs. prevention?

Follow the money.

Most police officers do not commit crimes for two reasons. The first is that they do not report each other when they do commit crimes, and in many instances are not subject to the same laws, so their actions while criminal from a civilian standpoint, are not actually criminal when they do it. There's an entire legal apparatus dedicated to providing special rights to officers that civilians do not have. Exempt license plates and resisting arrest being just two examples.

But the real reason, and this goes back to Plato's Republic - is that they have money. They are poor from the standards of politicians and aristocracy, but they are rich from the perspective of the homeless, working class earning minimum wage, and even lower echelons of the enlisted military. A cursory examination of the wage disparity will confirm this. The officer's income is a comfortable one, and if they find reason to complain, it is because of social rivalry with the truly rich, and envy of excess, often leading to corrupt officers and the establishment of the internal affairs departments.

But look closely at where the money is flowing from, and where it is flowing to. Look at the cost of paying for officers. All they do for society is capture criminals after crimes have been committed. The crimes are still committed. But for every officer that is paid by society, four full time minimum wage jobs disappear. If the officer is issued a squad car, or a helicopter, or a dispatch officer to guide them to the scene of the crime, then more jobs are lost. Society ends up with less people building tools, operating factory equipment, producing clothing, farming food, repairing roads, building bridges, practicing dental, optical, and general practice medicine.

But then they put people in jails and prisons. California claims it only costs $47,102 per year for inmates, which is about $23.50/hour for a full time job, and has over 100,000 prisoners. Meanwhile, New York City " paid $167,731 to feed, house and guard each inmate last year, according to a study the Independent Budget Office released this week." according to the 2013 NYTimes article. That's over $80/hour at a full time job, or eight people making $10/hour in blue collar labor. There are approximately 9,400 inmates in NYC, and about 76,000 in NY State with somewhat lower costs compared with the city incarceration.

Whenever revenue is generated by speeding tickets, toll fees, parking tickets, etc., that is money that has to change hands with overpaid government officials who do nothing but process these transactions (contributing nothing to society) and then a tiny fraction trickles upward to the departments that actually use the remainder to pay themselves. But that is money that is not being saved by citizens. It is money that is not going to a rainy day account, or to buy food, pay off a mortgage or loan. It is money that is not being invested wisely.

The problem isn't merely the fact that real jobs are lost paying for empty meaningless positions, or that the money for fines is being squandered. Let us not forget lawyer fees and justice fees, and fees for filing mountains of paperwork, or even the amount of fuel spent moving all these papers and officers and lawyers and prisoners around. Let us remember also that every prisoner is someone who is not actually in the work force, and worse,
if they are in the work force, they are slaves - indentured servants of the privately held prisons sewing clothing for government employees, planting crops, etc. Certainly you can imagine how happy people in orange uniforms might be to get paid slave wages and have to return to their prison cells each night.

But aside from the fact that these people are, slaves or not, no longer real parts of the economy, the whole world sees what's happening. That view is producing disgust and loathing on the part of the rich, and envy and hatred and greed on the part of the poor. The injustice is blatantly obvious. The lack of privacy, the government instilled paranoia, the lack of wages, and dead economy inculcate poverty and social rivalry.

edit on 19-2-2016 by skynet2015 because: (no reason given)