Category: Public Order

The Indirect Consequences of Crime

by · Dec 29, 2023 1:28 pm

Efforts to measure the costs of crime generally focus on direct effects. They try to place a monetary value on the loss to victims and tally the cost to governments of dealing with crime. Yet looking only to direct effects and ignoring indirect effects is a major source of error in public policy. The indirect effects of crime are large and important. Brian Patrick Eha has a two-part essay in the City Journal titled The Element of Crime, exploring these issues. Part one is here. His focus is on New York, the place he knows best, but the theme is universal.

To live in New York today is to experience, on a regular basis, visibly and abrasively, the element of crime. By this, I mean more than run-ins with the “criminal element,” that is, serious offenders, though such encounters are more frequent. I mean not only, for instance, the 25 times that someone was pushed onto subway tracks in 2022—four more times than in 2021—but also the countless small infractions, spit in the eye of the body politic, the casual disrespect for law and common decency: the picnic table covered in food waste and Kool-Aid pouches when a trash can is two feet away; the pharmacy with locked cabinets for such valuables as fruit juice and deodorant; the requirement, at the Metropolitan Museum of Art’s recent Van Gogh exhibit, to empty your water bottle before entering the gallery, for fear that some vandal might smuggle in a substance with which to desecrate the art, as has happened at more than a dozen museums over the past year.  I mean, in short, all the demoralizing effects of which pervasive crime is the cause, the impact that lawlessness and an inescapable awareness of it—to say nothing of official resignation or indifference—has on society and the psyche. Continue reading . . .

More Delay on Grants Pass

by · Oct 12, 2023 4:10 pm

See earlier posts here, here and here. This case involves a challenge to a Ninth Circuit decision that severely inhibits cities’ ability to do anything about people camping on its streets and in its parks. The petition to review the case is supported by two dozen amici curiae from across the political spectrum.

Today the Court granted the plaintiffs an extension to December 6 to file their opposition, despite their initial waiver of the right to file at all. That means that the conference of January 5, 2024, is the first realistic date for the Court to consider whether to take up the case.

Cases granted in January can still be heard and decided in the same term, but a few “relistings” of the case may put it off to next term. Continue reading . . .

Major Effort to Overturn 9th Circuit Ruling Allowing Homeless Camps

by · Oct 3, 2023 4:08 pm

The Criminal Justice Legal Foundation has joined the city of Grants Pass, Oregon to seek a Supreme Court review of the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals’ extension of its 2019 ruling in Martin v. City of Boise. That decision announced, in effect, that the homeless had an Eighth Amendment right to camp on public property in any city where the number of homeless exceeded the number of beds in shelters. The ruling covers the nine western states in the Ninth Circuit which includes Alaska, Washington, Montana, Idaho, Oregon, Nevada, California, Arizona and Hawaii. In 2019, the U.S. Supreme Court declined a petition by the City of Boise, supported by a brief by CJLF, to review and overturn that ruling.

Continue reading . . .

Inadequate analysis yields unintended consequences

by · Aug 22, 2023 11:55 am

Syndicated columnist Thomas Elias has this column with the above title on the consequences of California’s sentence-reducing ballot propositions of the previous decade, Proposition 47 of 2014 and Proposition 57 of 2016.

Here’s a reality that needs to soak into the consciousness of California lawmakers, the governor and voters who put them in office: This state needs far better analysis and vetting of new laws if it’s to avoid negative unintended consequences.

And when we get solid analysis and reliable predictions of some consequences, we need to pay heed, not ignore reality.

These facts of life are perhaps best illustrated by the 2014 Proposition 47, which ended felony status for thefts and burglaries involving less than $950 worth of goods and reduced some other felonies, like stealing a gun, to misdemeanors.

One unintended consequence has been closure of some stores, notably Walgreen’s and Whole Foods outlets that suffered constant shoplifting and no penalties for thieves caught red-handed. That’s an inconvenience making life more complex from San Francisco to San Diego.

Continue reading . . .

Gump’s owner blasts “Litany of destructive San Francisco strategies”

by · Aug 16, 2023 10:30 am

Letter from Gump's owner to San Francisco officialsGump’s is a high-end San Francisco store with a history stretching back to the Civil War. Last weekend the store’s owner denounced the city’s present misgovernance in a scathing full-page ad in the San Francisco Chronicle. The letter denounced “a litany of destructive San Francisco strategies, including allowing the homeless to occupy our sidewalks, to openly distribute and use illegal drugs, to harass the public and to defile the city’s streets.”

Continue reading . . .

Can San Francisco Save Itself From the Doom Loop?

by · Aug 13, 2023 10:07 am

The WSJ has this article, with the above title, by Jim Carlton and Katherine Bindley. The article begins:

Local leaders are trying anything they can to keep San Francisco’s struggling downtown core afloat, including paying retired, unarmed police to keep an eye out for trouble.

In many cases, though, “local leaders” are the problem, not the people who are going to find the solution. Continue reading . . .

Hardware Store Loses $700,000 to Thieves

by · Aug 7, 2023 11:11 am

A Fremont, CA hardware store lost $700,000 from shoplifters in 2022, as reported by Jackson Walker of ABC News.  The family-owned Dale Hardware provided security video of shoplifters pushing shopping carts full of stolen items out the door.  The owners report that the consistent theft of hand tools like screwdrivers and wrenches are driving these losses.  The story notes that the reduction of consequences for theft in California after the 2014 passage of Proposition 47, has created an epidemic of looting that has forced the closure of Bay Area stores including Walgreens, Nordstrom and numerous small retailers.  Last year a San Francisco man was arrested for marketing $500,000 worth of items stolen from Bay Area stores on Amazon, eBay and Facebook Marketplace.  Similar problems are occurring in Los Angeles, San Diego, San Jose, Sacramento and cities in the central valley.   While most major retail chains forbid employees from confronting thieves, some smaller stores are fighting back.  Last week CBS News reported that two Stockton, CA 7-Eleven employees took down a masked thief who was brazenly filling a trash can with cigarettes.  One of the employees was beating the thief with a stick until a customer intervened and stopped him.

Accountability for Crime in California?

by · Jun 30, 2023 11:17 am

The Right Message, Wrong Messenger Award for today goes to the owner of several San Francisco retail businesses, who said this:

My biggest gripe right now in San Francisco has been, frankly, we’re not enforcing existing laws … we’re not prosecuting the law breakers. Judges, DAs, the whole panoply — I want to see people held accountable for breaking the law.

Notice that the California Governor is missing from the list. So why is this person the wrong messenger? Continue reading . . .