That’s a good point. I can tell you from firsthand experience that the abundance of cameras in our society absolutely have a profound effect on the ability of law enforcement to solve individual crimes. To the point you are making how do we transfer those successes into reducing the level of crime?
My thoughts on that are probably not very popular on here and those are to just build larger jails and equip those with drug rehabilitation options. The larger jails allow us to not just kick the people back on the streets immediately but compel steps that help eliminate recidivism. Another source of criminal behavior is mental illness. I have no clues on how to fix that except perhaps concentrate on the causes.
All these cameras and recording devices exist for that same reason Advil exists in that it helps a toothache. Doesn’t really solve the problem but fights the symptoms.
If you think prisons turn criminals into law abiding individuals, or that that's even their purpose, you've got some more figuring out to do before teaching.
The US already has the largest prison population in the world and yet still has extremely high crime on par with countries that lack functioning goverments. So how exactly are more prisons and arrests going to lower crime when it has failed to do so for decade after decade?
Your cure is worse than the disease! Our risk of violent crime is lower now than almost any point in history. We make crime better by improving the lives of the average person. Jails don't fix socioeconomic issues, they in fact make them worse.
If that was true, there would be no crime in London.
The current system is all downsides - no privacy while the police ignore crimes like bike thefts despite ample CCTV coverage. Worse, CCTV and other surveillance tools are used with glee to target protestors who the government dislike.
Completely agree. Generally speaking, America’s homicide closure rate isn’t great compared to other western countries and is unfortunately trending downward in recent years.
I can certainly understand concerns about privacy but the other sides of this discussion should not be ignored.
How would that work? Assume that I'm willing to bribe the underclass with welfare to prevent crime (hell, assume I'm only worried about the worst types of crime)... how much bribery for how much reduction?
Flock won't prevent you from being stabbed by a homeless junkie. It might help catch the guy and prevent him from stabbing someone else (until he's released three months later).
Knowing this, wouldn't you prefer that we spend the money on crime prevention programs that "bribes" the underclass, instead of in a system that won't prevent crime at all but will rob all of us of privacy?
Barring any massive mental illness, humans are great optimizers. Crime is basically the optimal policy within environmentm where illegal activites with their added risk have a potential much greater reward than leading your life normally and doing things by the book.
Its not hard to inject money in the right places to either decrease the reward, or increase the risk.
Holy false dichotomy Batman. The amount of crime you can reduce by funding decent law enforcement training and a working law system and just by having a general halfway welfare system dwarfs the effects these privacy invading solutions could ever produces. Absolute lunacy to believe that.
"Never give power to authorities that wouldnt want them to have if someone you didnt like was in charge"
While I fully agree with your statement, until we as a society learn to self regulate and prevent things like orange man happening, its best that we live in a world where people in charge have as little power as possible.
Having adequate law enforcement training and funding, is not mutually exclusive with leveraging technology for more effective enforcement. In fact that's where some of the funding goes. I would be interested in seeing some data reflecting a reduction in crime as a result of increasing the welfare system, as you claim.
I mean compared to corporate written Wikipedia articles from privacy invading dystopian nightmare companies the evidence that welfare reduces crime is so obvious that even a quick google search drowns one in 3rd party validate studies:
But again, by the time we did all the non privacy invading stuff that doesn't target me as a law abiding citizen the discussion about these devices becomes moot because crime isn't that much of a problem anymore.
I'm yet to be convinced that the removal of privacy has any effect on the level of crime, nor do I believe that to be the primary motivation for it
Nor a viable solution to the problem.
That’s a good point. I can tell you from firsthand experience that the abundance of cameras in our society absolutely have a profound effect on the ability of law enforcement to solve individual crimes. To the point you are making how do we transfer those successes into reducing the level of crime?
My thoughts on that are probably not very popular on here and those are to just build larger jails and equip those with drug rehabilitation options. The larger jails allow us to not just kick the people back on the streets immediately but compel steps that help eliminate recidivism. Another source of criminal behavior is mental illness. I have no clues on how to fix that except perhaps concentrate on the causes.
All these cameras and recording devices exist for that same reason Advil exists in that it helps a toothache. Doesn’t really solve the problem but fights the symptoms.
If you think prisons turn criminals into law abiding individuals, or that that's even their purpose, you've got some more figuring out to do before teaching.
The US already has the largest prison population in the world and yet still has extremely high crime on par with countries that lack functioning goverments. So how exactly are more prisons and arrests going to lower crime when it has failed to do so for decade after decade?
Your cure is worse than the disease! Our risk of violent crime is lower now than almost any point in history. We make crime better by improving the lives of the average person. Jails don't fix socioeconomic issues, they in fact make them worse.
If that was true, there would be no crime in London.
The current system is all downsides - no privacy while the police ignore crimes like bike thefts despite ample CCTV coverage. Worse, CCTV and other surveillance tools are used with glee to target protestors who the government dislike.
Completely agree. Generally speaking, America’s homicide closure rate isn’t great compared to other western countries and is unfortunately trending downward in recent years.
I can certainly understand concerns about privacy but the other sides of this discussion should not be ignored.
https://www.npr.org/2023/04/29/1172775448/people-murder-unso...
Before discussing trade-offs between those two, what about prevention of crime?
How would that work? Assume that I'm willing to bribe the underclass with welfare to prevent crime (hell, assume I'm only worried about the worst types of crime)... how much bribery for how much reduction?
Flock won't prevent you from being stabbed by a homeless junkie. It might help catch the guy and prevent him from stabbing someone else (until he's released three months later).
Knowing this, wouldn't you prefer that we spend the money on crime prevention programs that "bribes" the underclass, instead of in a system that won't prevent crime at all but will rob all of us of privacy?
4 replies →
Barring any massive mental illness, humans are great optimizers. Crime is basically the optimal policy within environmentm where illegal activites with their added risk have a potential much greater reward than leading your life normally and doing things by the book.
Its not hard to inject money in the right places to either decrease the reward, or increase the risk.
3 replies →
Those who would give up essential Liberty, to purchase a little temporary Safety, deserve neither Liberty nor Safety.
When do we start removing white-collar crime?
What crime? The system is working as designed. /i
[dead]
Holy false dichotomy Batman. The amount of crime you can reduce by funding decent law enforcement training and a working law system and just by having a general halfway welfare system dwarfs the effects these privacy invading solutions could ever produces. Absolute lunacy to believe that.
"Never give power to authorities that wouldnt want them to have if someone you didnt like was in charge"
While I fully agree with your statement, until we as a society learn to self regulate and prevent things like orange man happening, its best that we live in a world where people in charge have as little power as possible.
But we want to build fancy tech and not listen to those annoying humanists, so no
Having adequate law enforcement training and funding, is not mutually exclusive with leveraging technology for more effective enforcement. In fact that's where some of the funding goes. I would be interested in seeing some data reflecting a reduction in crime as a result of increasing the welfare system, as you claim.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flock_Safety#Efficacy
I mean compared to corporate written Wikipedia articles from privacy invading dystopian nightmare companies the evidence that welfare reduces crime is so obvious that even a quick google search drowns one in 3rd party validate studies:
https://academic.oup.com/qje/article-abstract/137/4/2263/658... https://news.uchicago.edu/does-welfare-reduce-crime https://law.yale.edu/sites/default/files/documents/pdf/Intel... https://pp.ethz.ch/news/2025/03/higher-welfare-payments-redu... And probably a gazillion more
But again, by the time we did all the non privacy invading stuff that doesn't target me as a law abiding citizen the discussion about these devices becomes moot because crime isn't that much of a problem anymore.