These are all liberal/progressive policies enacted across the West Coast - Seattle, Portland, San Francisco, Los Angelas.
Progressives believe in restorative justice not prison or punishment. They believe that justice is actually righting the wrong that caused people to behave this way in the first place. "The infinite perfectability of man". That's a core progressive belief. Thus they "catch and release" for non-violent (and sometimes violent) crimes. Reduce property crimes to misdemeanors, and generally tell law abiding citizens - "just put up with quality of life issues".
Suffice to say the experiment has failed entirely.
Lawlessness begets more lawlessness. Giving people a place to shoot drugs (without treatment options) just helps addict get their fix. Not prosecuting property crimes just encourages ever more bold property crimes.
And the funny part is, it's not poverty driving much of this. It's organized crime - easy pickings, low hanging fruit. It's not the single mom trying to feed her newborn milk that is stealing catalytic converters.
I keep saying this, but history repeats itself. Major urban cities saw mass out migrations in the 60-70s for this exact reason. Crime, lawlessness, rioting, general degradation of QOL. The "Death Wish" movie series about a vigilante taking on a lawless city wasn't popular because people enjoyed the genre. I could easily see it happening again, especially with WFH. Then the "law and order" types will get elected and we'll start the whole thing over again.
Progressives believe in restorative justice not prison or punishment. They believe that justice is actually righting the wrong that caused people to behave this way in the first place. "The infinite perfectability of man". That's a core progressive belief. Thus they "catch and release" for non-violent (and sometimes violent) crimes. Reduce property crimes to misdemeanors, and generally tell law abiding citizens - "just put up with quality of life issues".
Suffice to say the experiment has failed entirely.
Lawlessness begets more lawlessness. Giving people a place to shoot drugs (without treatment options) just helps addict get their fix. Not prosecuting property crimes just encourages ever more bold property crimes.
And the funny part is, it's not poverty driving much of this. It's organized crime - easy pickings, low hanging fruit. It's not the single mom trying to feed her newborn milk that is stealing catalytic converters.
I keep saying this, but history repeats itself. Major urban cities saw mass out migrations in the 60-70s for this exact reason. Crime, lawlessness, rioting, general degradation of QOL. The "Death Wish" movie series about a vigilante taking on a lawless city wasn't popular because people enjoyed the genre. I could easily see it happening again, especially with WFH. Then the "law and order" types will get elected and we'll start the whole thing over again.