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Body Camera Study Shows No Effect On Police Use of Force Or Citizen Complaints (npr.org)
An anonymous reader quotes a report from NPR: Having police officers wear little cameras seems to have no discernible impact on citizen complaints or officers' use of force, at least in the nation's capital. That's the conclusion of a study performed as Washington, D.C., rolled out its huge camera program. The city has one of the largest forces in the country, with some 2,600 officers now wearing cameras on their collars or shirts. In the wake of high-profile shootings, many police departments have been rapidly adopting body-worn cameras, despite a dearth of solid research on how the technology can change policing. "We need science, rather than our speculations about it, to try to answer and understand what impacts the cameras are having," says David Yokum, director of the Lab @ DC. His group worked with local police officials to make sure that cameras were handed out in a way that let the researchers carefully compare officers who were randomly assigned to get cameras with those who were not. The study ran from June 2015 to last December. It's to be expected that these cameras might have little impact on the behavior of police officers in Washington, D.C., he says, because this particular force went through about a decade of federal oversight to help improve the department.
It's to be expected that these cameras might have little impact on the behavior of police officers in Washington, D.C., he says, because this particular force went through about a decade of federal oversight to help improve the department.
I don't think this is the real cause. What happens is that people get used to cameras, just like celebrities or people on reality TV shows forget to keep a poker face after a while because the cameras are always there.
lucm, indeed.
Because most district attorneys are too chickenshit to bring charges against a cop. If a DA does bring charges all the cops turn into instant crybabies and threaten to stop doing their jobs. Also notice how the charges are rarely direct, mostly its a grand jury who decides and the DA can influence how its run. Then you have the police unions.
Ever read about how Jeffrey Dahmer was almost caught? A naked and intoxicated 14 year old boy ran out of Dahmer's apartment and the police were called. All the black neighbors said the boy was underage and didn't belong there. The cops didn't listen and gave the boy back to Dahmer to be murdered. Google his name John Balcerzak.
Only the State obtains its revenue by coercion. - Murray Rothbard
Because police officers will happily turn off the cameras whenever they know they'll get in situations where they'll look bad. And given that there are no consequences for doing so, this will continue to be the status quo.
Crime Privacy Police Complaints Drop 93 Percent After Deploying Body Cameras https://yro.slashdot.org/story...
Fuck you. Privatized police would be incentivized to do whatever maximized profit, which is likely increased incarceration when the prison system is privatized but publicly funded. Privatize the funding of prisons then maybe.
The point, as I understood it, is that we have footage that shows what really happened, as opposed to when cops lie about the mortal danger of a black person running away from them,
Those who do not learn from commit history are doomed to regress it.
"We're hoping to run another study, this time with the cameras turned on."
Could be both are right, thanks to this gem from the article you just posted:
"Against all expectations, there was no significant difference in complaints between officers wearing cameras that week and those going without."
Yep, that quote came straight out of the article (and, in fact, the summary) that claimed the 93 percent drop.
The difference in claims is subtle, yet significant. The 93 percent drop is a before and after comparison. The "no difference" is a with and without comparison. Put simply, once the cameras were rolled out, ALL officers started behaving better, whether they were wearing cameras or not. So there was a huge drop from before, but no difference between officers during.
The more recent publication does not make it clear whether they are comparing before-and-after or with-and-without. Though the wording definitely suggests they may just be comparing with-and-without.
Furthermore, there is this statement "because this particular force went through about a decade of federal oversight to help improve the department." So the officers were already in the spotlight before the cameras were rolled out, receiving oversight that would, presumably, be keeping them on their best behavior. If that oversight was effective, we would expect a drop in complaints when that oversight began, and no drop in complaints when the cameras were rolled out (since everyone just stayed on their best behavior).
That only happens when they are paid according to the incarceration rate. I can't think of a worse incentive to give, can you?
Any sufficiently unpopular but cohesive argument is indistinguishable from trolling.
The researchers could not detect any change in police behavior with or without body cameras.
So the explanation is "Those police officers were straightened out by the Feds earlier...."
Then why the hell did you study that department?
Caution: Contents under pressure
To be useful, they need to do a study where police misconduct is rampant.
Like St. Louis, or Baltimore.
At least the mayor of Cleveland had the guts to fire the cop caught on video.
If you don't know how much use of force was before there were body cameras, how do you conclude there was not reduction? You cannot control what cannot be measured is a basic science given.
NPR's studied a topic which needs some study - "What are the affects of body cameras?" Then it presumes the correct question is, "Does this affect police behavior?" Of course, that question in the end does not matter. What matters is whether citizens unjustly treated by police offered a better final outcome for police brutality cases and whether police officers unjustly accused by citizens with whom they interacted also provided a better final outcome in their cases. It's a shame NPR didn't seem to ask THAT question. (Or the person posting here didn't suppressed this portion of the question...)
{^_^}
Well there's your problem: huge cameras!
Did you expect anything else in Trump's America?
I have to ask, wouldn't these "huge" cameras make his hands look even smaller?
I am armed because I am free. I am free because I am armed.
To be useful, they need to do a study where police misconduct is rampant.
No, they just need a study where they can prove that all footage was recorded and processed. Can they turn off cameras?
What was the percentage of damaged recording (audio or video)?
Chicago Police Hid Mics, Destroyed Dashcams To Block Audio, Records Show
That is SO true!
Of course the altered footage never shows a beating. You can count on those being valid.
With current tech, the camera could be a button, or a shoulder pip, the cop might not know.
When this country was founded there were only private 'police' forces. You could hire a night watchmen, or a locality might pay for one. It's one of the reasons for our adversarial justice system: the idea is not that the government was tracking down evildoers, but that you personally would go to a magistrate with sworn evidence, obtain a warrant, and if necessary obtain the bunch of thugs necessary to arrest the person who wronged you (dueling was also an accepted alternative). It does have a certain libertarian appeal to it, but as law enforcement is a service which is required to be universal, [1] privatizing it amounts to a private tax, and [2] it's less efficient. Police forces were introduced originally (in London, by one Robert Peel, from whence they derived the nickname 'bobbies') as a cost-saving measure.
Anyone wishing to return to the days of private police is an idiot, an anarchist, or more frequently both.
Those who advocate genocide deserve every protection afforded by law, and none afforded by common human decency.
Maybe we have so many Slashdotters having run-ins with police from buying all that crack they smoke before posting here.
I am armed because I am free. I am free because I am armed.
How would you privatize police?
Because we already have private police we know how it's done. We've long had the concept of "citizen arrest" so a private police officer is just someone hired to enforce the law, including arresting those that violate the law.
Who would make sure to privatize the police fairly? You or some politician?
The courts. While citizen arrest allows for short term detainment the restricting of a person's freedom is itself a serious offense, so people typically don't arrest another for minor matters.
What about the people who can't pay for police? Like the homeless and the poor? Those non-customers would be harassed like crazy. I don't see how this would be an improvement over what we have today.
Why would the poor be harassed like crazy? Presumably they'd have some ability to defend themselves. You think the Second Amendment was to protect the right to hunt? No, it's to make sure even the common person is empowered to defend themselves. Also, I presume even private police would not stand by as criminals harass the poor. Arresting them means the wealthy employers can see the officer keeping crime around them in check.
Another thing is that even if we have private police that does not mean a lack of a sheriff or other kind of law enforcement to keep things in order. The word "sheriff" has been synonymous with "jailer" in many cases. A police officer, privately or publicly employed, would be required to present the accused to the sheriff. The sheriff might let the accused go right there if he/she thought the charge was bullshit. The sheriff would be required to present the accused to a judge, and if the crime was serious enough a jury would be involved. The police, or even the sheriff, could not impose any punishment without a trial.
That's what I don't get about this conspiracy theory of a private police and prison industry putting people in prison to make money. Everyone in prison must have a trial, often before a jury. If people want to see this system short circuited then demand everyone be put before a jury. Even if there is a claim of a judge being paid off then the jury should stop this short.
I am armed because I am free. I am free because I am armed.
That's what I don't get about this conspiracy theory of a private police and prison industry putting people in prison to make money. Everyone in prison must have a trial, often before a jury. If people want to see this system short circuited then demand everyone be put before a jury. Even if there is a claim of a judge being paid off then the jury should stop this short.
I have a couple of questions for you.
1. Which country has the largest proportion of private prisons?
2. Which country puts most more of its citizens in prison than any other country?
If your answer is "USA" then congratulations you win. You are about 7 times as likely to be thrown in gaol in the land of the free than in China.
There are many wonderful things about America (like e.g. NM) but your justice system isn't one of them. And until you collectively stop believing you're the best at everything and look at the cold hard facts it will not improve.
SJW n. One who posts facts.
I have to wonder about anything from a government agency looking after another government agency. I do believe that we need government agencies keeping an eye on other government agencies, but I won't place too much trust in such reports without something backing it up. What we have is an agency created by the mayor to do what they claim to be independent and scientific observations on other city agencies. Just how much corruption, abuse, fraud, and so forth is such an agency willing to find? If they find something wrong then the mayor looks bad, and I'm pretty sure these people have an innate tendency to not bite the hand that feeds them.
So they claim to do a scientific and statistical analysis of the data they collect. Well, statistics can tell you anything if tortured enough. So they discovered no decrease in complaints of misconduct against the police after body cameras were deployed. There's so many things that can be veiled in this conclusion. Perhaps a lot of police misconduct simply went unreported. Were the cameras always on when they should have been? Was there any punishment of officers based on the footage from these cameras?
If the city of DC wants to keep crime down then I'd like to see them do a study on their weapons laws. They had what was an effective ban on the ownership of firearms struck down a decade ago, and the ban on issuing concealed carry licenses struck down in the courts fairly recently. The DC government seems to think that keeping firearms from the city was an effective crime control method. Did they do a study on that? I suspect that they did but they didn't like the results so they kept it to themselves.
I'll have some faith in this government department actually doing their job of keeping the government in check when they release a report that is critical of how the government is performing.
I am armed because I am free. I am free because I am armed.
China is a prison. Their prison population is over one billion.
No it isn't and no it isn't. While you keep denying the facts, things will never improve.
I'm not going to say that the USA is perfect, it's obviously not. Comparing the USA to China just does not follow.
Kind of the point though. Lots of people here hold up China as "the big evil" and yet you're still much, much more likely to be thrown in prison in America.
Look: your country has the highest proportion of incarceration in the world. You can pick literally any other country for comparison and you'll look worse in this regard. Feel free to go through the other 147 and rationalise as to why the US is perfectly fine having such a higher incarceration rate.
I'll take my "wonderful things" about America over the "justice system" that China offers.
That's the problem, you're so obsessed with what everyone else is doing wrong that you can't see the wood from the trees.
They'll shoot people that speak out against the government. The government has developed a habit recently of destroying houses of worship. There are suspicions that they've done this with people still inside. There's no bill of rights there. There's no trial by jury. There's no elections, except those where the Communist candidate always wins.
Exactly! They do all those things and yet the USA still manages to imprison 7 times as many people! That's fucked up.
SJW n. One who posts facts.
They don't need to run a PR campaign. They have lobbyists, and Jeff Sessions..
Donald Trump, on a crusade to make Nixon look respectable
People seem to ignore the fact that a decade of oversight actually creates an organizational culture where doing shit that makes the whole force look bad isn't tolerated.
In cities where oversight is lax, you end up with an organizational culture that works to sweep things under the rug, stonewall journalists trying to find information about incidents, etc. The community stops trusting the police force to protect them because it isn't.
I think you are so obsessed with comparing the incarceration rate with that of tyrannies
And you're too busy chanting USA! USA! USA! in your head to see that the USA! has the highest incarceration rate in the world. Higher than places like China, higher tha Russia, higher than any of the Western democracies in Europe, higher than the worst shitholes and higher than the happiest countries.
Stop obsessing over china and fix your shit.
By the way, did you know long term solitary confinement is generally considered as torture, since it destroys most people's mental state?
perhaps we enjoy such prosperity and freedom in the USA
Do you? the mean prosperity is high sure, but you also have a pretty poor gini index. As for freedom, it's still laughable that you hammer on that trope when more people are in prison per capita than any other conutry in the world.
Here's a clue for you: you're not free if you're in prison.
No, I did not. I am simply questioning the claims of a conspiracy to arbitrarily jail so many people.
Gotta be something, because you lot have half the entire world's prison population.
I'm sure a lot of people in prison right now don't belong there.
Yep.
I just find it hard to believe that private prisons have much of anything to do with the high rate of imprisonment. :)
SJW n. One who posts facts.
Threads like this are why I read comments first, article second. I come here because there is always a good chance someone has already debunked or analyzed the article before me. Good job, thanks.
would resolve most cases of police brutality almost instantly.
Unfortunately it is usually resolved in favor of the police. When evidence goes missing, it is treated as missing, no matter how questionable the circumstances. Take this case for example, when a Baltimore police officer allegedly raped a woman, the condom vanished from the evidence locker, and the prosecutors moved to continue the case without the DNA evidence. This stuff is scary!
Stop obsessing over china and fix your shit.
I didn't bring up China, you did.
You think I can snap my fingers and fix the problem? That's assuming that this is s problem. Maybe those people belong there.
It's not like we aren't trying. We got the federal government interested in enforcing immigration law again, and we're building that wall on the Mexican border, that's got to help. I expect drug law reform to help too. We're seeing stupid laws against firearm report suppressors go away, that means we won't be putting people in prison for protecting their hearing. We're seeing concealed weapons and "stand your ground" law reform too, that means fewer people in prison for defending themselves. We're seeing more jobs, as in digging for coal, building oil pipelines, and building nuclear power plants. Working people are less likely to resort to crime. It looks like we're going to see an income tax cut, that will help too with reducing poverty and the crime it produces.
What else would you like to see done?
I am armed because I am free. I am free because I am armed.
I brought up china as a stark example: a notoriously repressive regime has one seventh the incarceration rate. You're not free if you're in prison and an awful lot of you are.
You think I can snap my fingers and fix the problem? That's assuming that this is s problem. Maybe those people belong there.
Of course not, but until you and others like you admit there is a problem, it'll never be fixed. It's interesting though that you still entertain American exceptionalism to such a degree. If indeed they all deserve to be there, then that makes the average American much more crooked than the average, well, anyone else.
I've lived in America, and that's bull.
It's funny that you think those things will fix stuff though (well apart from drug law reform, that's sorely needed).
You're not going to see much digging for coal or nuclear because there are much cheaper alternatives. Natural gas fracking more than anything else has done in coal. Nuclear in the current climate, especially in the USA where there are abundant renewable resources is also more expensive than the alternatives.
Gun laws won't help either. You have some of the most permissive gun laws in the world and the highest incarceration rate, so there's no evidence that making them even more permissive will lower the rate.
And the wall, lol that's just funny.
SJW n. One who posts facts.
That would be People's Republic of Korea. The whole country is the private property of the Kims, including the prisons.
Of course not, but until you and others like you admit there is a problem, it'll never be fixed.
I admitted three or four times now that there are problems with the current justice system. I also spelled out a dozen of reforms in laws coming to address the problem. WHAT DO YOU WANT?
Perhaps it would help if you could be more specific on the problem. The imprisonment rate is just a symptom, that's not the problem. Unless you can point to some of the problems then I find it hard to see that there's anything to fix. Again, maybe those people belong there. Not all of them belong there, I'm quite sure of that. Maybe 10% of them don't belong. Maybe it's 90%. Unless you can spell out the problem, not the symptom, then it's hard to fix. I gave about a dozen fixes and you dismissed all but one. Are you saying all we need to do is fix our drug laws and we'd be done?
I am armed because I am free. I am free because I am armed.
If the cameras show no difference in the number of complaints against police even when there are now video records of what happened, this could mean that the police were not doing anything wrong before, and the cameras are just proving that. Would that be so surprising? The police have undergone endless training programs and public scrutiny for accusations of overly-violent behavior for many years now. Maybe their accusers are just not telling the truth.
It's actually .7%, you forgot to multiply by 100 to get a percentage based on the 2013 statistics. That's about 1-in-every-140-people. Think about it, if there were 1000 / 1000 people in jail would that be 1% of the population or 100%? According to those same 2013 stats, America has both the most total and the second-most per-capita (behind some 100,000 citizen African island country).
Let's run with this! Do a statistics study "How likely is smoking crack to turn you into NERRRRRRRD!!!!" Whether we use 80s "Nerd" as a negative or 2010s "Nerd" as a positive depends on whether it is in our interest to demonize or promote crack usage.
Doesn't matter. So long as the police are not culpable to anyone but themselves, police misconduct will continue.
http://www.cnn.com/2017/08/02/us/baltimore-police-body-camera-videos/index.html
Consider this, which includes a video at the bottom of police officer planting drugs, walking away, turning on camera, then "finding" those same drugs.
A Baltimore news station showed the internal police department procedures for actually going through this footage. They are of course understaffed and there's way too much video. The guy basically goes through "I watch initial contact. See if there are any signs of anger in the officers or citizen's voices. If not, then I SKIP FORWARD A FEW MINUTES and see how the tone is there."
Until these cameras are ALWAYS ON, there are punishments for obstructing them, and the video is AVAILABLE OUTSIDE OF POLICE, what oversight is there?
Just to explain the private prison issue:
1. Private prison companies (along with prison guard unions) lobby the various state governments for harsher penalties for victimless crimes like drug use and prostitution and such.
2. I was just reading recently where private prisons are also able to harass inmates and get them to do something stupid so that their "time off for good behavior" is reduced, resulting in a longer sentence and thus more revenue for the prison.
They're incentivized to keep non-violent people longer, so that's what they're going to try to do.
Do you have ESP?
Fired on the spot? How about making them equally accountable as any other citizen for their actions? When police were introduced, it was not necessarily intended that they be armed -- in Britain where the concept originated, they still aren't. Over here, of course, we have the Second Amendment, so police required no-one's permission to carry guns. Being permitted to carry a gun is implicit permission to use it, but giving these people an additional shield of law means that we are accepting that the government has the right to kill you without trial for any reason they deem sufficient. This may or may not have been the best idea ever.
It's not necessary, by the way, to invoke analogies to firefighters: there are already about twice the number of private security guards as police. Since police were originally a cost-saving measure over private security, I believe it's fair to count them as private police.
Those who advocate genocide deserve every protection afforded by law, and none afforded by common human decency.
Or perhaps there was nothing broken with police procedures and the whole thing was overblown. Now they have video evidence to back it up.
We can all blame Nixon and the drug war for high incarceration rates. Until we stop the drug war, things will not change. The previous administration understood that. The current administration is an abomination with Sessions who wants to bring that back. Ultimately, just removing republicans from political power will help things immeasurably.
That's hilarious. Have you ever worked at a corporation? Ever notice when all the lower pegs get fired, but not the managers or executives? All of us office workers have seen that. There is firing on the spot if you have no real political power, but the people who are encouraging such a thing would be off the hook. So yeah, maybe individual bad egg might get fired most likely because they got caught, but there would still be a systemic policy encouraging bad egg behavior.
People who believe privatized police or fireman or whatever is some panacea are blind to the realities. Every system is open to social engineering and pressure add the profit motive and it gets worse especially when it comes to crime.
Speaking of Robert Peel, his principles of policing by consent are pretty damned enlightened and we could really benefit from paying attention to them today.
If you want a vision of the future, imagine a youtube comments section scrolling - forever.
Once the cameras are ubiquitous, the police legacy of he said/she said system abuse (from either side) is permanently put onto a better track.
It's always the case that the most effective deterrents are the ones so effective, they never get used.
Contrary to displays of mind-numbing stupidity (intentional or inadvertent) that one sometimes encounters, one can not cross these "inactive" rows out of the game theory matrix without changing the equilibrium solution.
As for early adoption, probably the first rat onto the floating ship is the rat who determines there isn't going to an immediate differential that basically demonstrates how completely full of shit he was, not all that long ago. Every police force is going to clean up their act over the five year period before body cameras become standard issue, precisely to avoid this acute political embarrassment. Huh. Who would have guessed? Yet another robust game theoretic matrix, reporting for active duty: fear of foreseeable future embarrassment.
Police chiefs are notorious for weathering the kind of embarrassment that they can ultimate succeed in sending to hell.
That demonstrates power.
"We just lie to achieve our conviction rate" lies, however, closer to Putin's pay grade, than to your average Miller's Crossing-era chief of police.
Operational failures are no reason to stop the data collection. More accountability needs to be had. More transparency of the video needs to be made.
Everyone in prison must have a trial, often before a jury. If people want to see this system short circuited then demand everyone be put before a jury.
Sure, except everyone in prison awaiting trial and everyone in prison after a trial was bypassed by plea bargaining. So, according to this result of my quick search, maybe 5% of people in prison have had a trial. After you first convince the citizenry to pay for 19 times more due process, then try and sell me your other ideas.
1. Private prison companies (along with prison guard unions) lobby the various state governments for harsher penalties for victimless crimes like drug use and prostitution and such.
Well, they are doing a terrible job at that because marijuana is now legal in some form in 30 states, that's well over half of the population. I suspect it's closer to 3/4ths than 1/2 but I'm not going to do the math right now. That's not saying we don't have a long way to go yet for removing these victimless crimes but if the goal is to pass more laws to create more prisoners then they seem to be losing a lot of ground on that lately.
Lobbyists and unions don't vote, people do. If people are tired of seeing innocent family and friends go to prison then they will use the ballot box to get them out. There's also the soapbox and the jury box. Let's just leave that last box to defend our liberty out of this, we're far from using the cartridge box right now.
I am armed because I am free. I am free because I am armed.
To be useful, they need to do a study where police misconduct is rampant. Like St. Louis, or Baltimore.
You mean, where violent crime is rampant, and cops' lives are far, far more at risk? Yeah, that's what you actually meant.
Don't disappoint your bird dog. Go to the range.
It's been 6 months since Ferguson voters overwhelmingly approved bodycams for Ferguson cops. It's only been in the last week or so that the city website has even acknowledged the vote happened and the requirement exists. And less progress has been made on acquiring them, as best we can tell.
We'll see how long it takes for the next step to occur.
There's no time like the present. Well, the past used to be.
Kinda sorta. Read this to get an idea of what it was like in London prior to the Met. You had night watchmen, constables, beadles and other parish officials, volunteer laymen, and various degrees of hired thugs. You can explore the differences between those things and what we consider a police force these days if you like. New York City also had some sort of more-or-less official system of night watchmen before the NYPD which you should be able to find more information about if you choose.
As to the clarity of the language, well...it was half-past eleven, I was some intersection of intoxicated and insomniac. In truth, it's actually a pretty badly written post. The differences between the past and present systems are really quite interesting, though; it was an entirely different world back then.
Those who advocate genocide deserve every protection afforded by law, and none afforded by common human decency.
Robocop and Robocop 2?
PlaynBass
I also spelled out a dozen of reforms in laws coming to address the problem.
No, you spelled out dozens of reforms only one of which will address any problems. The rest will most likely be neutral at best or make things worst.
The imprisonment rate is just a symptom, that's not the problem. Unless you can point to some of the problems then I find it hard to see that there's anything to fix
It's a symptom of a financial incentive for imprisonment, elected prosecutors, puritanical mindset and fetishisation of the police.
I find it hard to see that there's anything to fix.
And there's the problem again. Symptoms are bad, tigh and tell you there is something massive to fix even if you can't tell precisely what. Saying "I can see the symptoms but I don't see the cause so I can't see that there's anything to fix" is about the most inane take on things I think I've ever seen.
It's like if someone came in to hospital bleeding profusely from every orifice. Clearly that's only a symptom so until someone spells out what the disease is, you should send him away.
Again, maybe those people belong there.
Yes, maybe Americans are much more crooked than anyone else.
You know, or not. If you have a deviation sufficiently far from the mean, then the default assumption is that something has cause it, not that the mean is wrong for the other 149 countries.
Unless you can spell out the problem, not the symptom, then it's hard to fix.
Now you're beginning to admit the problem. I didn't say it would be easy to fix. There are most likely many interlinked causes plenty of which I don't recognise. However, the symptom is so bad that clearly something is badly wrong.
I gave about a dozen fixes and you dismissed all but one.
You mean, I gave sound rebuttals, you ignored that and simply claimed I dismissed them.
FFS coal mining isn't going to help the incarceration problem.
1. America has long had a problem with locking up far too many people in both good and bad economic times. It's not a jobs problem.
2. Trump style fetishisation of coal is not going to magically make it cheaper than fracking.
Are you saying all we need to do is fix our drug laws and we'd be done?
No I'm saying you're intellectually dishonest now. You know very well I didn't say that. You know perfectly well that I said that's the only one of your suggestions that stands a chance of helping and that the others are junk, not that it's the only solution.
SJW n. One who posts facts.
It doesn't surprise me AT ALL that the cameras aren't (reported as) changing police behavior at all.
BECAUSE THERE IS NO WORKING METHOD TO HOLD POLICE ACCOUNTABLE FOR THEIR ACTIONS.
Period fucking dot.
People know this. Cops know this. Politicians know this but pretend otherwise.
After numerous cases with full video of police doing things directly against their own rules, laws, and ethics and the cops almost universally getting nothing more than a slap on the wrist ... why would one more video of the same actually matter? Especially when half of them can be disabled, covered, or left off their person when inconvenient?
The cameras simply serve to ignite public outrage further
You can get rich if you own a politician, but you have to be rich to buy one in the first place.
It's like if someone came in to hospital bleeding profusely from every orifice. Clearly that's only a symptom so until someone spells out what the disease is, you should send him away.
With your example the patient has "too much" bleeding, so we stop the bleeding as much as we can while looking for the cause. We don't care much where we stop the bleeding, or which blood cells escape, because blood is blood and people need it to live. With "too much" prisoners we have people, not all identical blood cells. We care very much about which ones we let go. Until we can identify which ones don't belong there it's in our best interests to keep them there.
Yes, maybe Americans are much more crooked than anyone else.
Or maybe Americans take law enforcement more seriously. I remember seeing a documentary where a police detective in the Soviet Union, that was trained in the USA, went to his superiors about a string of murders. He saw similarities in the murders and offered the possibility that they were the cause of a single serial killer, not independent crimes. He wanted permission to collect these cases into one so that they'd have a better chance of finding the murderer. The response was that serial killers were an American problem, there are no serial killers in the Soviet Union, and therefore he was not allowed to treat them as a single case.
Maybe the USA just has a better track record of finding the criminals and punishing them. Perhaps this is because American law enforcement is not required to uphold party doctrine and/or some sort of idea on genetic superiority but instead hold to the idea that people be held to account for their crimes.
Now you're beginning to admit the problem. I didn't say it would be easy to fix. There are most likely many interlinked causes plenty of which I don't recognise. However, the symptom is so bad that clearly something is badly wrong.
The symptom is that the USA imprisons more people than other nations. That's an arbitrary measure. Unless there is some indication of wrongdoing then it's really hard to tell if there is a problem. There's a lot of things that lead to crime. Having people with differing cultures and ideas does lead to problems, we see that in other nations as well. The USA is quite the mix of cultures, there will be friction from that and that can spark criminal behaviors in some. You won't see this in the much more culturally homogeneous nations. Getting more sane immigration laws should help some with that. Poverty can lead to crime, we can address that. If you can give specific cases of people that don't belong in prison then we can look into those. Just saying that there are "too many" does not help.
Let's take another example of a complaint of being "too many". People complain that there are "too many" white Christian heterosexual males in... well everything. Unless someone can explain the problem more precisely, and not simply using the solution of just replacing them with black lesbian Muslims, is not helping. The USA has the idea of judging people by the content of their character rather than the color of their skin. If there's too many white Christian males in Congress and too many black lesbian Muslims in prison then maybe it's because those people in prison made poor choices and those in Congress made better choices.
How many people belong in prison, as a proportion of the population, is arbitrary. The people that belong are those that broke the law. If you can point to a law that is problematic, and you gave an example, then we can look at that, and we are. If you see a problem in the system, then we can discuss that too. Claiming that private prisons is a cause is quite laughable when in a nation where people have the rights to vote, raise their concerns with the government, trial by jury, and so many other rights protected in law. The private prisons cannot simply bypass the process of law to get more pr
I am armed because I am free. I am free because I am armed.
. Until we can identify which ones don't belong there it's in our best interests to keep them there.
Land of the free: guilty until proven innocent. .Or maybe Americans take law enforcement more seriously. I remember seeing a documentary where a police detective in the Soviet Union
Land of the free: Better than Soviet Russia.
Well don't, you've managed to clear the bar of not being the worst country. Now try comparing yourselves to a modern western European democracy.
The symptom is that the USA imprisons more people than other nations. That's an arbitrary measure.
Land of the free: more people in prison than China but we're free (tm).
There's a lot of things that lead to crime. Having people with differing cultures and ideas does lead to problems, we see that in other nations as well. The USA is quite the mix of cultures, there will be friction from that and that can spark criminal behaviors in some. You won't see this in the much more culturally homogeneous nations.
There are sound points there except:
Getting more sane immigration laws should help some with that.
Not really, no. Unless you have a citation that most of those in prison are immigrant, then it's BS. Perhaps you want to get rid of the Mexicans? Trouble is, when you lot annexed a bunch of Mexico, it came complete with Mexicans. Home for them now is right in the U S of A.
Let's take another example of a complaint of being "too many".
7-10x that of most of Western Europe.
Let's take another example of a complaint of being "too many".
That has absolutely nothing to do with this except to indicate that you have issues.
How many people belong in prison, as a proportion of the population, is arbitrary.
No it really isn't. You are literally claiming that if 100% of the population is in prison then it's arbitrary so it doesn't matter. That's facile.
Why are there "too many" people in American prisons? Because other nations don't imprison as many? Well, maybe America is doing things right and everyone else is wrong. Not very likely, but it is possible.
Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence. Currently America is extraordinary in this regard. Where's the evidence?
SJW n. One who posts facts.
You just keep repeating that the USA has "too many" prisoners but give nothing to indicate that they should not be there. I did a quick search on what these people were convicted of doing and here's some rough percentages.
About 50% of the people in prison were convicted of a violent crime, that's rape/sexual assault, murder/manslaughter, robbery, and felony assault. I'd think most people would agree people belong in prison for some time for committing these crimes. The best means that I'd think to reduce their total number is to reduce their time in prison, but then maybe that'd be a bad idea. Maybe Americans are more violent than most European nations. I pointed out that violence tends to happen when incompatible cultures collide, which is more likely in the USA with it's variety of people compared to the more homogeneous Europe.
I estimate 15% are in prison for some drug crime. Making all currently illegal drugs legal would reduce the people in prison by 15% then. Perhaps legalizing drugs would do away with some gang warfare and reduce the violent crime count. Again, the USA is reviewing it's drug laws. I expect marijuana to be as legal as alcohol in 5 to 10 years. Perhaps some more sane laws on opiates in that time too.
I estimate 15% are in prison for some non-drug and non-violent crime. This would be things like DUI/DWI, theft, weapons possession, disorderly conduct, etc. Again, some of this might be related to drug laws as people steal to buy drugs or something.
About 20% are people in local jails awaiting trial. This might be related to poverty as they could not afford bail. Perhaps drugs and weapons violations again. Legalize drugs and reduce weapons crimes might cut this back.
The roughly 10% left (I know it adds up to more than 100% now, I'm estimating) is about 1/3rd immigration violations, 1/3rd youthful offenders, and 1/3rd other or unknown.
Perhaps Americans are just more violent. Best I can see we could cut our prison population in half with shorter sentences, drug and weapons law reform, and perhaps a few other reforms.
You mock the need for weapon possession law reform as the USA has lax laws on weapon possession. Well, Illinois, New York, and California have some very restrictive laws while Florida and Texas do not. I pick on those five states because they comprise half of the USA population. Fix the weapon laws in those three states, and some federal laws, and a lot of people could go free.
Seems to me the problem is that Americans are just more violent. Unless you have ideas on what to do about that then I'm finding it hard to see a way to reduce the USA prison population to a proportion equivalent to that of European nations.
I am armed because I am free. I am free because I am armed.