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sundin13 on 19 June 2020
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KiigelHeart said:
sundin13 said:

I think this is a problem with our justice system. There is so little trust in both the police and the justice system as a whole. Like, it doesn't shock me that someone would try to run away from a cop. They are afraid, not just for their immediate situation, but for the fact that being put into the justice system can fuck your whole life. I don't think an arrest of someone who was sleeping in their car with a 0.1% BAC is a situation that requires putting someone in handcuffs and arresting them. This may be a personal philosophy thing, but I think if the individual was encountered by a social worker they would be able to actually provide the individual with positive resources to prevent similar actions in the future instead of just saying "We 'bout to ruin your life". In my opinion, the public would have been more safe in the absence of an armed response here.

And again, I just want to emphasize that I have no issue with individual cops as a whole. I believe that there are fundamental issues with the system which make abuses both inevitable and common. If we try to address this at an individual level, we will fail. That is why the changes that are being asked for seem so large. They are asking for broad, systemic changes which may seem a little scary at first, for the people who feel safe under what is essentially a military force patrolling our streets.

Well, justice system of Finland is pretty much an opposite of US but some people still try to run away or attack the police heh. Some individuals are simply violent assholes, alchohol makes some people aggressive and a person with psychotic disorder can be unpredictable and extremely dangerous.

I'm not that familiar with your justice system so I'd like to know how and why is it going to fuck your life? 

I also understand your philosophy, but my experiences have made me too cynical for it. We have social workers available and offer help to people who have issues with alchohol. It just usually doesn't work unfortunately. 

And I think laws should be enforced and people need to be held accountable for their actions. Driving with 0.1% BAC is irresponsible and dangerous. It's your own fault if you drink and take the wheel. I'd get fired for doing it, and our limit is 0.05% BAC. 

Anyway, reforming the police and making changes to justice system seem like reasonable ideas. It's just that many are asking for abolishing the police, driven by this acab-bullshit agenda. Isn't Minneapolis planning on doing it already? I'm not sure because media is all over the place. It's a freaking scary idea and I find it hard to believe this is what majority of people who live in crime-infested areas want. 

So, a quick response to your question about why the justice system is such an issue when people get involved in it:

Our system leans far too heavily on punishment and not enough on rehabilitation. This in combination with the rights that are stripped away from you once you've been convicted and the difficulty finding a job, combine to create high recidivism rates and make it a very difficult journey to be reintroduced into society. This creates a bit of criminality trap where individuals spend their lives in and out of jail, because the system doesn't provide them the resources to get out of that trap and instead builds up bigger and bigger walls for the individual to actually get out. In addition to this, many times when an individual is released from prison, they are given a bill for the time they spent in prison. This leads to an individual having to pay about 60% of their income after they are released to paying off these fees, which again, just builds that wall higher up.

As far as the "abolish the police" idea, I think there are two important things to realize about this. One is that this is a fairly niche idea that isn't as popular as some would have you believe. Two is that this is a reflection of the lived experiences of many people. I think when we hear someone say "Abolish the police" we should not just scoff and shake them off, but acknowledge that what they are saying is "In my lived experiences, the police have not been working for me and have not made me feel safer". In my opinion, that speaks volumes of the reform that needs to be done.

Also, no Minneapolis is not abolishing their police. Essentially what they are doing is saying "Our system is too broken to reform, so we are going to start new". They are breaking apart the current system so they can build a new one in its place with additional reforms in place. The idea of this is to use evidence to improve public safety by shifting away from a punitive, militant approach when it is not required.