I realise the headline description is an oversimplification to the point of being wrong. But policies routinely are boiled down to catchphrases and then judged on the catchphrase (e.g. “death panels” was highly effective against socialised medicine, and “medicare for all” seems pretty effective in favor of it).
With that in mind, any whiff of “paying people not to shoot anyone” is going to be a PR windfall for opponents of this program.
But if it could be sold just as “paying people not to get shot”, that might be a hit with some conservatives. They like Freakonomics-sounding kooky ideas, and they love anything that sounds like cruelty and/or victim-blaming.
(I mean, the reality would be the same, it’d just be marketed differently)
Seems rather unfair to pay them to not get shot, as that’s not something people typically have control over, especially in the United States. Not getting shot is its own reward, but if you do take a bullet because of circumstances beyond your control, losing out on $300 seems like adding insult to injury.
Well, for the average person I’d say that is true. But if you are involved in illicit activities with things like gangs, then continuing to be involved with those things is going to up your risk of being involved with violence. Though one could still be at home and be targeted for your past involvement.
Sure, or you could just be shopping for groceries or going to a movie, because USA! I get the reasoning, just seems like there are plenty of ways to get shot without being involved in anything shady.
The fellowship is slated to launch as a small pilot program in October. There will be only 10 participants at first, which would ramp up to 30 by the end of the year, and if successful, would eventually ramp up to as many as 200-300 participants. SFPD would decide whom to offer enrollment to based on ongoing analysis of crime statistics data.
This is exactly the foundation of religious conservatism. So called Pro Life types reject programs that are fiscally responsible and actually work like the Colorado free birth control program in favor of cruel legislation that only affects impoverished pregnant women. The need to kick others while they are down is strong.
Yeah, the only way I can see it working is if it’s more than “just don’t be involved in gun violence”.
Because if you’re making stacks by dealing, the $300/mo isn’t going to mean much.
If it’s “hey, we’re going to help with the bills while you job search, and attend gang diversion social support”, then $300 may not be very much considering how expensive SF can be.
Which is why narratives like this confuse me. Gangs are most definitely Capitalist-oriented. They’re like Multi-Level Marketing scams that continuously funnel monetary gains to the top members, and if you don’t want to sell their Mary Kay anymore, you get killed.
No it really isn’t. Just meeting the entrance requirements for such a program would be costlier than the money you would make to enter it. Establishing a pattern of low level arrests would create more court costs than you would earn. On the flip side, the straight medical costs of a shooting plus hospitalization is close to the annual cost of the 30 participants for the year. One year of prevented incarceration would offset almost another 20 participants. As for the idea that there will be an explosion of people when the program ends, yes and no. No, in the sense that if the program operates as planned you will have introduced a bunch of previously high risk people to alternative ways of making a living, as well as broken social patterns of transmission. Yes in the sense that absent other changes in our massive disinvestment in urban areas and destructive social policies, you will eventually revert to the mean.
Pretty well until they are killed by public backlash. They aren’t silver bullets, but usually cause meaningful sustained drops in violent crime for the duration of the program.
They aren’t. Our cultural image of drug dealing is one of opulence and luxury, but that is a vanishingly small percentage of dealers. It is somewhat akin to thinking that the guy playing pickup hoops at the corner lot is making NBA money. The exact numbers are dated, but there have been looks at the economics of low level dealing and they are rough. http://pricetheory.uchicago.edu/levitt/Papers/LevittVenkateshAnEconomicAnalysis2000.pdf The types of high violence street dealing that these programs seek to address isn’t very lucrative, just the best option available to some.
Every drug dealer I’ve ever known (not a small number) is just some dude trying to pay rent without having to deal with all the bullshit “legitimate work” puts you through, like invasive drug testing, having to attend pointless workplace training, having to follow orders that don’t make sense, having to lie to people all the time to please them, having no freedom with your time.
Time is so precious and they want to pay you $8 an hour to waste it. That’s not profitable.
Granted I’m from a solidly middle class west coast background, and I never needed to go to street level dealers for my weed.
As the SFist article noted, this is not a new idea. A similar program has been going on in neighboring Richmond, California since 2007 (!), is considered a success, and is widely supported by the community. A lot has been written about it, but this piece is a good overview:
