Jeremy Todd Mercier
OK let me try another way why I think this is a bad approach and comparison
it smells a lot like broken windows theory
are you familiar with it?
it was all the rage in the 90s. Police department embraced it and made policies assuming it was true
it wasn’t
you don’t hear about it as much anymore except as it failed idea that was embraced a little too quickly
The idea is seductive: if you are hard on small crimes, it prevents the bigger crimes
it assumes the progression from small to big is common, shades of “marijuana gateway drug” idea.
the thinking was: if you don’t stop spitting on the sidewalk, people will start spitting gum on the sidewalk. if you don’t stop spitting gum on the sidewalk, the sidewalks will start to look terrible and people will have less pride in their neighborhood.
if they have less pride in the neighborhood, they might not mow the front lawns as much
then if somebody breaks a window, nobody will notice it’s broken and property values go down, and so criminals will break more windows and steal and nobody will care
with theft and similar disrespect for property, comes gangs and thugs and territory battles and murders
and the people breaking the windows are the same people that were spitting on the sidewalk that you could’ve stopped while they were spitting on the sidewalk instead of waiting for the broken windows, who became murderers.
something like that. The broken window was the crossover point between good neighborhood and bad neighborhood I think
i’m explaining it poorly but gist of which was that spitting on the sidewalk could lead to murder in some weird spectrum idea. very popular for years. clintons big on it and republicans alike. days of dr phil teens ti boot camp era.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Broken_windows_theory