The DSA’s second item is “Abolition of the Carceral State” (“carceral” refers to prison and jail time). The DSA wants to “defund the police” — where have you heard that before? — and “free all incarcerated people.” Harris
supported the “defund” movement and eliminating bail for some crimes until those positions became political liabilities. Now she tries to hide her soft-on-crime policies by stressing her background as a prosecutor.
"Defund the police" is too broad a term - almost slanderous - implying the person's position is a wholesale abandonment of law and order! It's just so TRUMP-ist to accuse her of that. Forget the facts. Forget being honest. Forget gathering '2 or 3 witnesses'. It's true - because my right-wing echo chamber said so - so I'm just going to smear it all over the virtual world I live in!
Harris's position is vastly more nuanced than that - and I'm actually kind of surprised that a Prosecutor gets various social policies like this! I have a bit of a Social Sciences background - and the nuance she shows on this makes sense! She seems to be talking about the excessive militarization of police - because as the streets get harder (so the mentality goes) - the Police need to get harder. Until you have APC's and robot-cops with machine guns ready to 'Police' those ethnic neighbourhoods. (As if they have not suffered enough with previous decades of racist policies, financial prejudice against them in having the worst schools on the wrong side of the line, and 1950's 'emergency highways' built through their neighbourhoods - dislocating neighbourhoods that were just starting to function as cohesive and supportive communities!)
So what was Harris REALLY saying in answer to all of this?
“This whole movement is about rightly saying, we need to take a look at these budgets and figure out whether it reflects the right priorities,” Harris said on a
New York-based radio program “Ebro in the Morning” on June 9, 2020, adding that US cities were “militarizing police” but “defunding public schools.”
Harris said in the June radio interview the movement “rightly” called out the amount of money spent on police departments instead of community services such as education, housing, and healthcare, emphasizing that more police did not equate to more public safety...
...
Mitch Landrieu, national co-chair for the Biden-Harris campaign and former mayor of New Orleans, on Friday walked back Harris’ 2020 statements, saying Harris meant that she supports being “tough and smart on crime.”
“Her position has always been that you can both be tough and smart on crime, and it requires funding police, but it also requires funding rehabilitation and things that might criminal justice system safer. You can do both,” Landrieu told CNN’s Pamela Brown on “The Situation Room with Wolf Blitzer.”
“Our actions indicate that she wants to fund the police, but she wants to do the other things as well,” Landrieu said.
If you're SMART about these things - instead of buying APC's to drive through scary neighbourhoods - and having those police officers so stressed and hyped up by a military locker-room mentality that they're prepared to open fire on anything that moves! - how about spending SOME of that 'militarised' budget on drug programs that will benefit the WHOLE community - making it vastly less dangerous to live in? This is just one area of social spending that could help reduce neighbourhood crime AND de-escalate the militarization of police.
END THE WAR ON DRUGS!
The “War on Drugs” has failed.
IT CREATES CARTELS: The War on Drugs ignores the basic economics of supply and demand! By making drugs criminal (rather than a mental health policy) the illegal drugs become scarce, which drives up the price! That creates an IRRESISTABLE incentive to developing countries to grow drugs and create enormous cartels that rival some multinational corporations for sheer infrastructure!
IT INCREASES CRIME AND MURDER RATES something like 25% to 75% more! So do we militarize the police - or create harm minimising drug treatment programs instead and cut the source of this poison at the root rather than letting it spread throughout the whole society?
VASTLY INCREASES INCARCERATION: The USA has 5% of the world’s population, but 25% of the world’s inmates. Is America really 5 times more immoral than the REST OF THE WORLD - are just suffering the results of a well-meaning but ultimately failed drugs policy established decades ago - before the full effects had been analysed? Bottom line for jail costs - you’re paying for 5 TIMES MORE prisons than you should need due to the war on drugs!
RACIST OUTCOMES: While white kids are more likely to be wealthier and abuse drugs, black kids are more likely to get arrested for drug offences.
THE ANSWER? A mental health model. While not ‘legalising’ hard drugs for normalised commercial sale - we can
decriminalise their use. The harm minimisation model provides “Maintenance centres” with clean versions of the drugs, safe sleeping places, reduces street crime from its most potent source, and offers counselling which gets them into employment!
DEFUND THE POLICE only to the extent that the War on Drugs has massively inflated police costs. How much does having 5 times MORE jails cost AMerica? - and pour that money into the Harm Minimisation model and my guess is with 5 times less jails - you’ll have vastly more money to pour into local educations programs for disadvantaged neighbourhoods! Then the police that do patrol those neighbourhoods might be able to focus on dealing with other real crime, rather than punishing people with a mental health issue.
en.wikipedia.org
