Was it "zero tolerance" or was it abortion?

TomF

There has been debate whether Ireland should adopt a New York City-style "zero tolerance" method of law enforcement, and a fascinating column, just published, considers whether it is how strictly the law is enforced or how many abortions a society commits which is responsible for a decrease in crime.

I think Ireland may be having its increase in crime, not so much of poor law enforcement, but because the Irish equivalent of abortion of the liable-to-become-criminals class has been emigration, and in former days the people who would have become criminals emigrated to join foreign armies or to populate foreign prisons. Now those people are staying in a richer Ireland and they and their children are inflicting increased crime on Ireland.

Of course it is possible to "data trawl" and come up with data that support almost any thesis, but the column makes interesting reading anyway. The column is by John Tierney in the New York Times and is at

http://www.nytimes.com/2005/04/16/opinion/16tierney.html?hp

Macmorris

TomF wrote:

I think Ireland may be having its increase in crime, not so much of poor law enforcement, but because the Irish equivalent of abortion of the liable-to-become-criminals class has been emigration, and in former days the people who would have become criminals emigrated to join foreign armies or to populate foreign prisons. Now those people are staying in a richer Ireland and they and their children are inflicting increased crime on Ireland.

I think there's alot of truth in that. I read that about a half of the fall in crime in America between the years 1991 and 1997 was caused by abortion. I'm in favour of legalizing abortion for that reason, but it's still possible to have the same eugenic results through adopting a policy of preventing criminal women from getting pregnant in the first place.

The best method of cutting violent crime, in the long term, is to try to reduce the fertility of the criminal underclass as much as possible. There should be longer prison sentences so that criminals won't be having as many children and so won't pass on their defective genes to another generation. Another option is to offer criminals the option of being sterilised, in return for shorter prison sentences.

ArthurDent

Macmorris wrote:

I think there's alot of truth in that. I read that about a half of the fall in crime in America between the years 1991 and 1997 was caused by abortion. I'm in favour of legalizing abortion for that reason, but it's still possible to have the same eugenic results through adopting a policy of preventing criminal women from getting pregnant in the first place.

The best method of cutting violent crime, in the long term, is to try to reduce the fertility of the criminal underclass as much as possible. There should be longer prison sentences so that criminals won't be having as many children and so won't pass on their defective genes to another generation. Another option is to offer criminals the option of being sterilised, in return for shorter prison sentences.

Eugenics, sterilisation, criminal underclass? Any sources you want to quote to back up your statements - I'd hazard a guess the your best bet would be searching through German sources late 1920's through to the 1940's

Don't suppose you'd consider that white collar crime a problem for society at all?

oscarBravo

Macmorris wrote:

The best method of cutting violent crime, in the long term, is to try to reduce the fertility of the criminal underclass as much as possible.

I thought the concept of a criminal underclass went out with Victorian times?

Macmorris wrote:

There should be longer prison sentences so that criminals won't be having as many children and so won't pass on their defective genes to another generation. Another option is to offer criminals the option of being sterilised, in return for shorter prison sentences.

There's a "criminal" gene now? My goodness, that wee DNA strand is versatile.

Karl Hungus

Personally, I don't think Zero Tolerance is enough, but while I would joke about ethnically cleansing the skanger populations, eugenics is just a bit off.

If I was in charge, things would be handled differently, because lets face it that for a lot of people being in prison is a badge of honour. Humiliation is the way to go, and I doubt if young Anto was paraded around the town with a big "Shoplifter" banner, made appologise to the shops he stole from on top of whatever sentance, he'd not be too likely to attempt it again, nor would any friends of his who'd witness the spectical. Of course, that's if his crime was shoplifting, I'm sure there'd be other suitable embarressing punishments to suit the crime, whatever it may be. You'd be damned sure young Anto wouldn't be bragging to his mates about that though.

Thoughts?

Villain

If the criminals thought there was a good chance of them serving time for their crimes they might think twice, but imo the reality is that many of major criminal gangs in this country believe they will never serve time for their crimes. If the Gardai do manage to charge someone there is still a vey good chance that the trial will fail.

I don't have any stats at hand but I believe the number of unsolved gang related murders is extremely high. IMO the Justice system is not working when it comes to gang related crimes. The Minister has talked tough but failed to act.

Macmorris

oscarBravo wrote:

There's a "criminal" gene now? My goodness, that wee DNA strand is versatile.

Take a look at this:

http://abc.net.au/news/scitech/2002/08/item20020802225123_1.htm

mycroft

irish1 wrote:

If the criminals thought there was a good chance of them serving time for their crimes they might think twice, but imo the reality is that many of major criminal gangs in this country believe they will never serve time for their crimes. If the Gardai do manage to charge someone there is still a vey good chance that the trial will fail.

I don't have any stats at hand but I believe the number of unsolved gang related murders is extremely high. IMO the Justice system is not working when it comes to gang related crimes. The Minister has talked tough but failed to act.

What would you have him do?

You've been b*tching about jackboot fascist Mc Dowell, and the special criminal court and how unjustice it is.

How exactly would you suggest Mc Dowell fight criminal gangs?

TomF don't have access to the NY times, but frankly I'm staggered but this logic, even coming from you.

MacMorris are you actually suggesting we abort anyone with this gene? Really?

Victor

Hand up who hasn't broken the law?

Macmorris wrote:

I think there's alot of truth in that. I read that about a half of the fall in crime in America between the years 1991 and 1997 was caused by abortion.

Nothing to do with spiraling prison populations and a booming economy?

I'm in favour of legalizing abortion for that reason

Kill teh baby to save meh BMW!!!1!one :rolleyes:

a policy of preventing criminal women from getting pregnant in the first place.

"Criminal women", are they women with a gene that may be conducive to a certain behavior or people actually convicted?

Remember its genetics andenvironment. Obviously you weren't paying attention in Eugenics 101.

cdebru

just a tought lads to tomf and macmorris you do realise that there is the possibility that you could be carrying that gene yourselves
and if you got your wish it might be yourselves that they sterilise or abort your children

Victor

Or they might need to kill themselves, just in case.

Theres no risk of **any** prosecution now that suicide has been decriminalised.

TomF

Sorry it has been difficult to look at the article for some, and I am posting it here. I don't want anyone to get the idea that I think committing abortion is ever a good thing, because I certainly agree it is an unmitigated evil.

New York Times
April 16, 2005
OP-ED COLUMNIST
The Miracle That Wasn't
By JOHN TIERNEY

It is an inspirational urban lesson from the 1990's: take back the streets from squeegee men and drug dealers, and violent crime will plummet. But on Thursday evening, the tipping-point theory was looking pretty wobbly itself.

The occasion was a debate in Manhattan before an audience thrilled to be present for a historic occasion: the first showdown between two social-science wonks with books that were ranked second and third on Amazon.com (outsold only by "Harry Potter"). It pitted Malcolm Gladwell, author of "Blink" and "The Tipping Point," against Steven D. Levitt, an economist at the University of Chicago with the new second-place book, "Freakonomics."

Professor Levitt considers the New York crime story to be an urban legend. Yes, he acknowledges, there are tipping points when people suddenly start acting differently, but why did crime drop in so many other cities that weren't using New York's policing techniques? His new book, written with Stephen J. Dubner, concludes that one big reason was simply the longer prison sentences that kept criminals off the streets of New York and other cities.

The prison terms don't explain why crime fell sooner and more sharply in New York than elsewhere, but Professor Levitt accounts for that, too. One reason he cites is that the crack epidemic eased earlier in New York than in other cities. Another, more important, reason is that New York added lots of cops in the early 90's.

But the single most important cause, he says, was an event two decades earlier: the legalization of abortion in New York State in 1970, three years before it was legalized nationally by the Supreme Court.

The result, he maintains, was a huge reduction in the number of children who would have been at greater than average risk of becoming criminals during the 1990's. Growing up as an unwanted child is itself a risk factor, he says, and the women who had abortions were disproportionately likely to be unmarried teenagers with low incomes and poor education - factors that also increase the risk.

It's a theory that doesn't sit well with either liberals or conservatives, and Professor Levitt hastens to add that the reduction in crime is not an argument for encouraging abortion - he personally has mixed feelings on whether abortion should be legal. But he says the correlations are clear: crime declined earlier in the states that had legalized abortion before Roe v. Wade, and it declined more in places with high abortion rates, like New York.

Some criminologists have quarreled with his statistics, but the theory was looking robust at the end of the debate in Manhattan. Mr. Gladwell, while raising what he called a few minor quibbles, seemed mostly persuaded by the numbers.

"My first inclination," he joked at the beginning of his rebuttal, "is to say that everything you just heard from Steven Levitt, even though it contradicts things I have written, is true."

That's my inclination, too, as a less successful exponent of the same theory. (In 1995 I explained the crime decline with my version of the tipping point, the Squeegee Watershed, which became neither a buzzword nor a best seller.) In retrospect, the New York crime story looks like a classic bit of conventional wisdom, as the term was originally defined by John Kenneth Galbraith: an idea that becomes commonly accepted because it is "what the community as a whole or particular audiences find acceptable."

Unlike the abortion theory, which was raised in the 1990's and angrily dismissed, the tipping-point idea jibed reassuringly with everyone's beliefs and needs. Urbanites and politicians welcomed a new reason to crack down on street nuisances. Journalists wanted a saga with heroes. Criminologists and the police loved to see their new strategies having dramatic results.

I still think the police made some difference, and not merely because there were more of them on the streets. The new computerized crime-tracking strategies put new pressure on them.

One veteran cop told me that traditionally only a quarter of the officers had done their jobs, and that the heroic achievement of Commissioner William Bratton and Mayor Rudolph Giuliani had been to get that figure up to 50 percent.

But it now looks as if the good guys did not take back the streets all on their own, and the moral of the story is less about safe streets than safe beliefs. Professor Levitt's abortion theory is not appealing. But the ideas that make us comfortable are the ones to beware.

Villain

mycroft wrote:

What would you have him do?

Well for a start I'd bring in new legislation that would clamp down on the pocession of illegaly held weapons, e.g. 4 years sentence if found in poccession of an illegal firearm. Then double that for any re-offence.

mycroft wrote:

You've been b*tching about jackboot fascist Mc Dowell, and the special criminal court and how unjustice it is.

How exactly would you suggest Mc Dowell fight criminal gangs?

Can you link to a post where I have said how unjustice the special criminal court??

I Bit*h about McDowell because while he spends so much time trying to bash Sinn Fein they are a large number of criminal gangs going around shooting people. Murder is becomming all too common in this state and the Minister for Justice doesn't seem to be doing anything. Like Harney should be sorting out the Health system, the PD's have bitten off more than they can chew IMO.

Macmorris

mycroft wrote:

MacMorris are you actually suggesting we abort anyone with this gene? Really?

I haven't suggested that we should abort anyone. Abortion is an individual decision that shouldn't be forced on anyone. I just think that if women from the social underclass were given the chance to abort their unwanted pregnancies then it probably would lead to a decrease in the levels of crime, as has happened in America.

And I haven't said anything about screening for a particular gene. I only linked to that article about the criminal gene in response to oscarBravo's query. Criminals should only be punished with sterilisation after they have commited a crime and only with their consent and in return for shorter prison sentences. There's nothing wrong with a negative eugenics programme as long as it's not coercive. I remember reading about some organisation in America that is offering drug-addict women money to be sterilised. We need the same kind of set-up in this country.

Gurgle

Macmorris wrote:

I just think that if women from the social underclass were given the chance to abort their unwanted pregnancies then it probably would lead to a decrease in the levels of crime, as has happened in America.

Lets sterilize all the damn foreigners in Ireland too, and the Unionists up the north.

Wow, its about time someone came up with such a brilliant 'breed them out' strategy to regain control of the country for the people that deserve it.

Lets build places where all the undesirables can live together...with communal showers... gas central heating.

Hey, better again, lets get all those women from the social underclass, sterilise them, and use them for sex and to clean up after us.

Welcome to the 11th century guys!

Sleepy

irish1 wrote:

I Bit*h about McDowell because while he spends so much time trying to bash Sinn Fein they are a large number of criminal gangs going around shooting people.

ROFL, irish1, you're finally seeing the light!

ArthurDent

Macmorris wrote:

I think there's alot of truth in that. I read that about a half of the fall in crime in America between the years 1991 and 1997 was caused by abortion. I'm in favour of legalizing abortion for that reason, but it's still possible to have the same eugenic results through adopting a policy of preventing criminal women from getting pregnant in the first place.

The best method of cutting violent crime, in the long term, is to try to reduce the fertility of the criminal underclass as much as possible. There should be longer prison sentences so that criminals won't be having as many children and so won't pass on their defective genes to another generation. Another option is to offer criminals the option of being sterilised, in return for shorter prison sentences.

You may not have advocated abortions being performed,but are quite comfortable with sterilization and eugenics .......

BTW any chance you would approve of sterilization of tax dodgers and other white collar criminals - or is it just those nasty "criminal underclass" ?

cdebru

Sleepy wrote:

ROFL, irish1, you're finally seeing the light!

perhaps you have convinced him after all this time sleepy

mycroft

irish1 wrote:

Well for a start I'd bring in new legislation that would clamp down on the pocession of illegaly held weapons, e.g. 4 years sentence if found in poccession of an illegal firearm. Then double that for any re-offence.

And because you support SF and not their private army theres no hypocracy at work here.

Can you link to a post where I have said how unjustice the special criminal court??

My mistake cdebru is the nay sayer on the SCC. But Sinn Fein aren't fond of it

from sinnfein.ie

Criminal Justice
Our criminal justice legislation is in need of radical reform. The continued use of the non-jury Special Criminal Court and the emergency legislation are ongoing concerns. It is unacceptable that citizens can be denied the right to a trial by jury without the prosecution having to so much as give a reason, much less establish prima facia grounds for the transfer.

So do you support Sinn Fein's policy on the SCC or oppose it.

I Bit*h about McDowell because while he spends so much time trying to bash Sinn Fein they are a large number of criminal gangs going around shooting people. Murder is becomming all too common in this state and the Minister for Justice doesn't seem to be doing anything. Like Harney should be sorting out the Health system, the PD's have bitten off more than they can chew IMO.

And the fact that many of these criminal gangs have either been armed by the IRA or include former republicans is just damn unfortunate.

TomF wrote:

take back the streets from squeegee men

Rar that meance to society is gone we can walk save on the streets once again.

monument

Is there an Irish version of Godwin’s Law?

sceptre

monument wrote:

Is there an Irish version of Godwin’s Law?

Yes - I reckon it's the one I coined about the probability of a politics board thread turning into a SF or ri-ra thread tending towards one as the thread gets longer.

Wacky and all as I think this thread has the capacity to be, no more shinning or antishinning on this one please.

The Corinthian

What is suggested is essentially a eugenics policy directed at a socio-economic group that has a high propensity for anti-social behaviour. Regardless of one’s position on genetic influences with this, most concur that it is largely an environmental rather than genetic problem, but it’s there, it can be pinned down to a subset of the population and it’s not going away.

Changing this environment is one route to take. Unfortunately all attempts to date to do so have failed or met with very limited success. As an alternative, limiting the growth of a high risk demographic, with the use of eugenics, is another option that can be used in tandem with more traditional policies designed to improve the social environment.

Of course, by eugenics this does not mean that you need sterilize people or force them to abort if they have beyond their quota - in modern liberal democracies, such a policy would find it very difficult to gain acceptance. Far more politically viable is making it less attractive to have children (e.g. decreasing benefits for subsequent children) or more attractive not to have them (e.g. better housing for childless couples) and would be all you need to achieve a small but significant decrease population growth in that demographic, which in turn would ultimately lead to a long term decrease in crime as the population of that high risk demographic falls.

At least, that’s the theory.

mycroft

The Corinthian wrote:

Of course, by eugenics this does not mean that you need sterilize people or force them to abort if they have beyond their quota - in modern liberal democracies, such a policy would find it very difficult to gain acceptance. Far more politically viable is making it less attractive to have children (e.g. decreasing benefits for subsequent children) or more attractive not to have them (e.g. better housing for childless couples) and would be all you need to achieve a small but significant decrease population growth in that demographic, which in turn would ultimately lead to a long term decrease in crime as the population of that high risk demographic falls.

At least, that’s the theory.

So essentially puinish people from disadvantaged neighbours. My girlfriend comes from a deprived social background. She works for a charity, her brother has a good job, and her other brother is in college. Her parents started young, her dad worked hard and her mum stayed at home. Are we to assume you'd have wanted to prevent this successful social unit to exist because of their post code?

If anything this is just going to ghettotize certain areas deemed socially "worrysome" as young families and couples who want children, move out of an area that is penalised in this manner. Making it difficult to stablise employment centers, as factories can't plan to build where the workforce will be because of a greater tendancy for families or young couples to uproot.

It will lead to rapidly flucationation and increased speculation in the property market as investors rush to purchase in a potential new boom spot, or vulture like decamp on a new ghetto in the hope the population will dwindle, and within a few decades families will return when it is now no longer seen as a problem area, and young couples seek a bargin.

The Corinthian

mycroft wrote:

So essentially puinish people from disadvantaged neighbours.

If you want to look at it that way, why not? After all, we punish those from advantaged backgrounds all the time, we force them to pay higher taxes, and we exclude them from those grants and payments we make to the disadvantaged.

We do this for the greater good of Society. Like it or not that’s how it works.

My girlfriend comes from a deprived social background. She works for a charity, her brother has a good job, and her other brother is in college. Her parents started young, her dad worked hard and her mum stayed at home. Are we to assume you'd have wanted to prevent this successful social unit to exist because of their post code?

Where exactly did I say this? Did I mention where someone lives even once? On the other hand the only two things I suggested were relating to social welfare benefits, neither of which would appear to apply to the example family you cited.

If anything this is just going to ghettotize certain areas deemed socially "worrysome" as young families and couples who want children, move out of an area that is penalised in this manner. Making it difficult to stablise employment centers, as factories can't plan to build where the workforce will be because of a greater tendancy for families or young couples to uproot.

Where are you getting this?

It will lead to rapidly flucationation and increased speculation in the property market as investors rush to purchase in a potential new boom spot, or vulture like decamp on a new ghetto in the hope the population will dwindle, and within a few decades families will return when it is now no longer seen as a problem area, and young couples seek a bargin.

And not doubt anarchy would soon follow; cats and dogs would roam the streets and the dead would rise from the grave. It would be the end of the World as we know it.

Relax. Wipe the foam from your mouth.

bonkey

mycroft wrote:

Are we to assume you'd have wanted to prevent this successful social unit to exist because of their post code?

Which bit of Corinthian's post did you take to be support of the theory rather than a clarification/explanation of the fact that the underlying theory is not necessarily entrenched in genetics as many seem to be arguing (on both sides)?

Maybe I'm reading it wrong, but I can't see anything in the post which suggests support for or codemnation of the concept....just a clarification of what he believes the theory to be (a clarification I would agree with, might I add).

Not that TC can't stick up for himself....but I'm just wondering if it was a lack of condemnation which you took to be as support.

jc

The Corinthian

bonkey wrote:

but I'm just wondering if it was a lack of condemnation which you took to be as support.

God bless the PC thought police

Eoghan-psych

TomF wrote:

Of course it is possible to "data trawl" and come up with data that support almost any thesis, but the column makes interesting reading anyway. The column is by John Tierney in the New York Times and is at

Absolutely. If you replace "abortion" with "price of cheese" you see pretty much the same relationship.

A much bigger problem than any "criminal underclass" is the mindset which *defines* such a class. The willingness to lump people into groups like that and basically write them off as a threat to society is itself a much larger threat. It's called a self fulfilling prophecy - if someone is led to believe that they *should* be behaving in a certain way, then sooner or later they *will*. This works both ways - good and bad.

Macmorris

The Corinthian wrote:

Far more politically viable is making it less attractive to have children (e.g. decreasing benefits for subsequent children) or more attractive not to have them (e.g. better housing for childless couples) and would be all you need to achieve a small but significant decrease population growth in that demographic, which in turn would ultimately lead to a long term decrease in crime as the population of that high risk demographic falls.

At least, that’s the theory.

That's based on the assumption that the criminal class possess two traits which we know they don't possess - responsibility and prudence. I find it hard to believe that criminals would be deterred from having children by the absence of welfare payments. Very few of them plan their pregnancies in advance and so it's unlikely that knowledge of future support will have much of an impact on their reproductive habits.

The system you outlined isn't really eugenics, it's social darwinism. The result of a 'survival of the fittest' type system is to increase competition at the social level which ultimately leads to an increase in crime. It would be far better if we kept the welfare state but if we had a genuine eugenics system which minimised the reproduction of the unproductive. That's the kind of system they had in Sweden up until a few decades ago.

The best solution is to jail as many of them as possible, give them long prison sentences and give them the option of voluntary sterilisation in return for shortening those sentences.

The Corinthian

Macmorris wrote:

That's based on the assumption that the criminal class possess two traits which we know they don't possess - responsibility and prudence.

First of all it doesn’t make any such assumption. Basic socio-economic stimuli require little responsibility and prudence to have a reaction. Look at the Lotto.

Second of all you are assuming that such a policy would be directed at the criminal underclass - it’s not; it’s directed and a demographic in society where anti-social behaviour is more prevalent, not at criminals per say. After all, the point of discouraging population growth in this demographic is not because the parents are criminals, but because the children are more likely to be.

The system you outlined isn't really eugenics, it's social darwinism.

Strictly speaking this is not correct. Social Darwinism does not seek interfere in the development of Society. That’s why it was so popular with the laissez faire capitalists of the nineteenth century - it left the market, and not the government, to decide. Eugenics, on the other hand, does.

The best solution is to jail as many of them as possible, give them long prison sentences and give them the option of voluntary sterilisation in return for shortening those sentences.

I suppose that’s another way of addressing the issue, although it does smack of closing the gate after the horse has bolted a tad.

mycroft

The Corinthian wrote:

If you want to look at it that way, why not? After all, we punish those from advantaged backgrounds all the time, we force them to pay higher taxes, and we exclude them from those grants and payments we make to the disadvantaged.

We do this for the greater good of Society. Like it or not that’s how it works.

Yes punishment. :rolleyes:

Each pays to what he can afford.

Where exactly did I say this? Did I mention where someone lives even once? On the other hand the only two things I suggested were relating to social welfare benefits, neither of which would appear to apply to the example family you cited.

They recieved social welfare benefits, a childrens allowance. My own parents did. You're punishing them for wanting to have a family.

environmental rather than genetic problem, but it’s there, it can be pinned down to a subset of the population and it’s not going away.

Changing this environment is one route to take.

These refer to where someone lives. How else do you plan to decide whom is going to be "punished" (to coin a phrase) to recieve a handicapped social welfare allowance. We could for example examine them on a case by case basis but that'll mean a massive increase in social workers. And the rich are being puinished enough, don't you think, so we can't start raising their taxes.

Where are you getting this?

You refered to an environment, I assumed this splendid piece of social engineering you propose would work on a community by community basis, how then do you propose it to work?

And not doubt anarchy would soon follow; cats and dogs would roam the streets and the dead would rise from the grave. It would be the end of the World as we know it.

Relax. Wipe the foam from your mouth.

You tend to argue your POV in a vacuum. I'm just pointing out some of the complications your marvelous piece of social engineering might encounter.

it’s not; it’s directed and a demographic in society where anti-social behaviour is more prevalent

Whats the demographic? How is it defined, measured etc....

mycroft

bonkey wrote:

Not that TC can't stick up for himself....but I'm just wondering if it was a lack of condemnation which you took to be as support.

jc

Posters past record, has, to put it mildly suggested he has a callous cyncial attiude to mass societal problems, combined with a williness to argue his points in a vacuum.

Forgive me both if I'm being presumptious.

I'm sure corinthian will either come up with a clever bit of socio economic demographics outlining his plan, or inform me he is either speculating upon a hypothesis.

If it's the later well it's only fair to point out on very simple hole in his theory, and suggest he or whomever he's quoting clarify how this would work, or it was just an idle daydream.

Its an interesting theory. I'd just like to see some meat on the bones.