In effect, Seattle is decriminalizing the use of hard drugs • Hacker News Board

Re: In effect, Seattle is decriminalizing the use of hard drugs

#241

Post by chrisdhoover » Fri, Aug 23, 2019, 6:49 PM UTC

pnw_hazor wrote: post #195

downandout wrote: post #146

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Eventually a junkie will commit a serious crime against one of the tech luminaries that live in and around Seattle. I’m guessing that the lax enforcement environment will be gone within about a day of that incident. Seattle is playing with fire here. I wouldn’t set foot in a city where hard drug use is tolerated, and seemingly celebrated, by many of the people that live there. Junkies will do whatever is necessary to…

I dunno, may be you are right -- that the "right" person hasn't been assaulted, raped or killed yet. Certainly, the high profile stabbing in front of Nordstroms didn't do much. Nor, did much change when the homeless guy was stopped from throwing a women on her way to work off an I-5 overpass. Or the lady who was raped by the homeless guy at the U-district car dealership after dropping her car off for an oil change on…

I am still heartbroken that Mia Zapata was brutally murdered.

Re: In effect, Seattle is decriminalizing the use of hard drugs

#242

Post by SomeOtherThrow » Fri, Aug 23, 2019, 6:49 PM UTC

npo9 wrote: post #209

ianai wrote: post #188

Earlier quoted context omitted.

“some would prefer to see the police cart drug users off to jail to get them out of the way” (article) It seems like creating housing projects for these people would be cheaper and more beneficial to society than increasing the prison population. I’d like to see something like dorms with shared restrooms, cafeterias, and such facilities. It’d create work and demand locally while keeping the streets clean.

I am anti housing projects. To me, creating a housing projects is like sweeping the problem under the rug. It concentrates poverty and crime into the area in/around the projects.

A) ghettoization in the form you describe is a zoning problem. Mixed-rate zoning is a thing, even in major cities in the US, and there's no reason social housing needs to be geographically isolated from market rate housing. As you point out, that's really unhealthy. I submit that the US has just implemented public housing extremely poorly, especially on the federal level, and Section 8 vouchers are going to be a much larger bill to pay to the American taxpayer than simply building public housing to begin with.

B) From a healthcare perspective, both housing and rehabilitation are necessary for the person to be able to function stably. I would argue that this type of housing as well as drug decriminalization is necessary to treat the underlying poverty (and resulting crime).

EDIT: wording.

Re: In effect, Seattle is decriminalizing the use of hard drugs

#243

Post by thomasmeeks » Fri, Aug 23, 2019, 6:50 PM UTC

npo9 wrote: post #209

ianai wrote: post #188

Earlier quoted context omitted.

“some would prefer to see the police cart drug users off to jail to get them out of the way” (article) It seems like creating housing projects for these people would be cheaper and more beneficial to society than increasing the prison population. I’d like to see something like dorms with shared restrooms, cafeterias, and such facilities. It’d create work and demand locally while keeping the streets clean.

I am anti housing projects. To me, creating a housing projects is like sweeping the problem under the rug. It concentrates poverty and crime into the area in/around the projects.

Seattle spreads the housing projects around the city. In fact they just opened one in the South Lake Union area last year (just behind the Neptune apartments). They replaced a parking lot with something like 10-15 sheds for housing. They are in the 100-150 sq ft range, have electricity and a shared bathroom(s). I'm a touch fuzzy on the particulars because they also erect a very tall privacy fence around the whole thing, which feels like a good idea if for no other reason than a touch of privacy for its residents.

Re: In effect, Seattle is decriminalizing the use of hard drugs

#244

Post by deepakhj » Fri, Aug 23, 2019, 6:50 PM UTC

npo9 wrote: post #209

ianai wrote: post #188

Earlier quoted context omitted.

“some would prefer to see the police cart drug users off to jail to get them out of the way” (article) It seems like creating housing projects for these people would be cheaper and more beneficial to society than increasing the prison population. I’d like to see something like dorms with shared restrooms, cafeterias, and such facilities. It’d create work and demand locally while keeping the streets clean.

I am anti housing projects. To me, creating a housing projects is like sweeping the problem under the rug. It concentrates poverty and crime into the area in/around the projects.

I don’t think anyone wants the projects of the 50-70s. See the navigation centers in sf. It works.

Re: In effect, Seattle is decriminalizing the use of hard drugs

#245

Post by rdtwo » Fri, Aug 23, 2019, 6:50 PM UTC

dymk wrote: post #90

coliveira wrote: post #71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[flagged]

This is not a partisan issue, it's a miscommunication. There's a large chunk of people who think that "Let's take repeat violent offenders off the streets" translates to "Let's take away offered social programs and criminalize being poor", which is not a fruitful dialog.

Amy time you ask to lock up dangerous individuals the response is always that you hate the homeless, you lack empathy and that criminal justice doesn’t work. It’s worse than the gun debate

Re: In effect, Seattle is decriminalizing the use of hard drugs

#246

Post by adt2bt » Fri, Aug 23, 2019, 6:50 PM UTC

jyrkesh wrote: post #225

xenocyon wrote: post #173

Earlier quoted context omitted.

At least part of the cause of the visible squalor we see in Seattle is that the tough-on-crime crowd has consistently opposed safe injection, harm reduction, trash pickup, housing-first, and other evidence-based policies in favor of expensive, inhumane, and pointless measures like sweeps and incarceration. Any measure the city government takes that is not overtly cruel gets slammed as coddling the homeless or "attrac…

I had a conversation with someone the other day who made many of the same arguments as you. I agreed with some of it--namely that around safe injection, harm reduction, methadone (et al) clinics, etc.--but I had a hard time stomaching the idea that "housing first" was a good idea, in that if you take a drug addict and put them in a home, they're still a drug addict who can't contribute meaningfully to society. Would…

On the flip side, I have a hard time imagining how a homeless drug addict will be able to kick drugs while on the street and then somehow find a house and then become a 'meaningful' member of society without support. They basically have two problems: no house and a drug addiction. Fixing the 'no house' problem without tying it to drug addiction is a step towards normalcy.

Re: In effect, Seattle is decriminalizing the use of hard drugs

#247

Post by stochastastic » Fri, Aug 23, 2019, 6:51 PM UTC

ndarwincorn wrote: post #162

coryrc wrote: post #105

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's a big problem for those of us still here that would prefer enforcement; our fellow-minded voters have (probably rightly) chosen defect and left the city, rather than stay to vote for change. Suburb living also has twice the greenhouse gas impact as well.

Those of us still here that prefer empathy would rather you follow your 'fellow-minded' folks and just leave. Seattle's had this tension between the left and the liberals for a century. Traditionally you lived on the outskirts. You're welcome to go back if the city offends your sensibilities.

Does there need to be a line drawn here? I don’t think there is a contradiction between empathy and enforcement. For example, I would really like an end to the bike and package theft and I think it is reasonable to enforce laws against it. Do you disagree?

Re: In effect, Seattle is decriminalizing the use of hard drugs

#248

Post by linksnapzz » Fri, Aug 23, 2019, 6:52 PM UTC

crawfordcomeaux wrote: post #57

koolba wrote: post #12

> “You’ve got a guy shooting heroin on the street, and the cop is supposed to say, ‘You O.K.?’” grumbled one law enforcement officer in Seattle. (In fact, an officer would typically confiscate the heroin, admonish the user and move on.) Some residents worry that when the city ignores its own laws on the books and tolerates people openly abusing narcotics, it takes a step toward incivility that will eventually result…

Your perspective promotes traumatizing systems. You are therefore a danger to yourself and society. If you are locked up as a result of this, will the reeducation take? ----------------- Thought experiment aside, you don't know what other people need and forcing your ideas onto them is how we get into these messes in the first place. Authoritarianism isn't a healing modality.

Neither is allowing schizophrenics, petty criminals and drug addicts to harm themselves and others, on the assumption that there's no such thing as normative civil behaviour. So that they might be "healed" by being left to their own devices, someone else needs to be harmed.

That someone is usually the poor naive bougie who thought that by paying property taxes and having a job, he could expect to be able to retain possession of his bike && not have to step over piles of human excrement on the way to the shop down the corner.

Singapore seems to avoid having these problems, as does Shanghai. So, while authoritarianism isn't about healing, that really isn't a primary function of state. Keeping order, maintaining a monopoly on violence, and maybe providing against certain preventable evils is really more why we have governments.

Re: In effect, Seattle is decriminalizing the use of hard drugs

#249

Post by ALittleLight » Fri, Aug 23, 2019, 6:52 PM UTC

ndarwincorn wrote: post #162

coryrc wrote: post #105

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's a big problem for those of us still here that would prefer enforcement; our fellow-minded voters have (probably rightly) chosen defect and left the city, rather than stay to vote for change. Suburb living also has twice the greenhouse gas impact as well.

Those of us still here that prefer empathy would rather you follow your 'fellow-minded' folks and just leave. Seattle's had this tension between the left and the liberals for a century. Traditionally you lived on the outskirts. You're welcome to go back if the city offends your sensibilities.

Is it empathy that leaves the mentally unwell and drug addicted to rot in the street, harass and endanger passersby, and commit petty crimes with impunity?

Re: In effect, Seattle is decriminalizing the use of hard drugs

#250

Post by TheHypnotist » Fri, Aug 23, 2019, 6:52 PM UTC

just_lurkin wrote: post #17

The reporters designation of "figured out" seems to stem more from the fact that the solution fits his own view than any actual real evidence. There is mention of the difficulties such lax policies has brought to the city, but they are waved away as being "growing pains" toward a new utopia. I can't say, living here, that I feel that the problem is solved. I view the needles outside my apartment as evidence to the co…

When I was out there last fall, we stayed in Belltown and walked all over. I'm wondering, where was all this squalor you speak of? I came out with a very different impression of the city than you describe. Obviously you would know better, so I'm just wondering, did I get lucky?