What if we actually got 'tough on crime?' LZ Granderson in the LA Times, today.

[CaliforniaPeggy]

We have one of the highest incarceration rates in the world. One of the largest police forces. We have more guns than people. And yet, Americans are still scared.

Crime. Again.

This is not a rant about defunding the police or freeing people who have broken serious laws. This is about being “tough on crime,” which Americans are not. We just like to say that we are. But history shows we’re tough only on criminals.

~snip~

We’re not “tough on crime.” We’re tough on people who are vulnerable. Usually poor. Disproportionately Black and brown. Voiceless. We tell ourselves we’re tough on crime, but there are cities that have outlawed giving food to homeless people. How exactly are we defining “crime” if that’s an infraction?

~snip~

And just as we did in the ’70s and ’80s, we’re having a national conversation about being tough on crime through a lens that ignores the policies that foster crime and, with it, mass incarceration.

~snip~

To be tough on crime would be to recognize that it’s no accident our prisons are disproportionately filled with our poor and most vulnerable. That was the design.


All of it at the link:

https://www.latimes.com/opinion/story/2023-03-08/tough-on-crime-policies#:~:text=To%20be%20tough%20on%20crime%20would%20be%20to,being%20truly%20tough%20on%20crime%20would%20take%20work.

[onecaliberal]

1. We're not tough on crime. If we were, the former occupant of the white house would be in prison.

3/4 of the GOP would also be in prison. Laws are only for the poor and politically powerless.

[Farmer-Rick]

8. Well said.

Like the post, we are tough on poor and powerless people.

[hippywife]

2. This exactly!

Our politicians, media and citizenry need to stop falling for copaganda, start reaching out with a helping hand rather than a billy club or taser.

[drmeow]

3. We also are not tough on

white collar crime

[Silent3]

4. Let's get tough on the biggest criminals

Like Trump and his cronies. Wouldn't that be nice for a change?

[Chainfire]

5. I guess he wants to shoot dead more sunglasses thieves.

The biggest thieves in this nation live in mansions and buy politicians. Those are the ones I want to see busted.

[Hekate]

7. You think that's really what LZ, a Black man, is saying? Did you actually read the column ...

… at the link?

Try again.

[Hekate]

6. LZ Granderson is always worth reading, and this is a keeper. Thanks, Peggy. nt

[Lonestarblue]

9. I've long thought that one of our most useless approaches to crime and other major issues is

that we only look at the effects (and usually politicize them) and never the causes because identifying causation draws attention to bad political policies. Whether effects are intentional, as Nixon’s War on Drugs was, or unintentional, the policies causing them need to analyzed. Yet we have a media that rarely even looks at the effects, much less doing the hard task of connecting effects with causes.