Posted on 01/04/2019 6:53:16 PM PST by OddLane
The latest fad in criminal-justice activism is the concept of “survival crime.”
The theory holds that the homeless, the poor, and people of color commit property crimes and low-level infractions in order to secure their basic survival. Any enforcement of these laws is thus a violation of their basic human rights and should be relaxed—that is, local governments should stop enforcing any laws that “criminalize homelessness” and “criminalize poverty.”
Survival crime theory is the flipside of Broken Windows theory. They deal with the same class of offenses—mainly property crime, drug possession, and public nuisances—in precisely the opposite way. Broken Windows theory argues that everyone is responsible for their own behavior and that, if we permit low-level crimes, it will lead to a general breakdown in law and order. Survival-crime theory, by contrast, argues that local governments should decriminalize these offenses because vulnerable individuals have been compelled by social conditions to commit them...
(Excerpt) Read more at city-journal.org ...
I heard this same theory back in the 1970s.
Didn’t work then.
The bigger picture is that this country massively overcriminalizes everything and in turn makes criminal an obscenely outsized percentage of the population.
Nonsense. Everyone always has a choice. There are other ways to obtain food and money than stealing or hurting someone to get it.
I believe the problem is selective enforcement of ever increasing laws on people. Theft has always been a crime. Adultery has always been a crime. Murder has always been a crime. We are not reinventing the wheel by wanting criminals of these basic types of crimes punished.
Americas problem is that more and more things are made illegal or cimial, many that were legal for a very long time prior, and also so many regulations and codes to hang people on, that if they would desire, fine or jail each and everyone living in the country. The selective enforcemntof these laws, regulations and codes, destroys everyones faith in the justice system, which is a laughing stock mockery of a corrupt system.
“The theory holds that the homeless, the poor, and people of color commit property crimes and low-level infractions in order to secure their basic survival. Any enforcement of these laws is thus a violation of their basic human rights and should be relaxed—that is, local governments should stop enforcing any laws that “criminalize homelessness” and “criminalize poverty.”
Don’t have a problem with that, as long as the crimes are committed against communist politicians and their leftist supporters. If the crime is committed against productive citizens, they are hunted down and hanged from lampposts.
That’s a win-win situation.
Be careful who you rob...
Hey. We are all just trying to survive this crazy world. Dont make me have to kill you in the process.
Que up looter guy.
This nation has food stamps, food banks, soup kitchens, etc., out the wazoo. Nobody is committing crime to feed themselves or their babies, they are doing it to feed their habit.
That guy rescuing all that beer has one out the wazoo, also.
I was taught it in 1973 in a sociology class. It just might work this time.
What We the People should do is make homelessness and poverty so untenable that those who are homeless and in poverty work their asses off to NOT be homeless or in poverty!
“If you give it to them, they will come!”
Life’s lesson is “root hog or die!”
Those who are GENUINELY unable to care for themselves certainly deserve a hand up, but there are WAY TOO many “Fakers and Takers!”
Purge the welfare rolls! Makem work!
Best not try this survival crime crap on me.
I agree, but it’s also true that these localities, particularly in California and the Pacific Northwest-and in my own city-are increasingly decriminalizing property crimes. To the point where some places are beginning to resemble the UK-including laws encroaching upon and sometimes nullifying the 2nd Amendment.
VDH has made this point repeatedly in relation to the tiered system of justice, particularly as it distinguishes citizens and illegal aliens-in the state of California.
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