Why it’s hard to buy deodorant in Manhattan

Break-ins and violence aren't petty theft. Break-ins are a form a violence, as well. Prison is a reasonable thing to use to isolate violent people. It would be ideal if rehabilitation was what was happening during that isolation, of course.

> it imprisons you in a rehab program and doesn't give criminal records from the drug-use portion of your charges

This doesn't happen in the US. In the US, if you're imprisoned, your life will be worse afterwards, not better. You will be poorer, you won't be able to get most jobs, and you won't be able to rent most apartments. You'll also be released on parole, and will have a constantly disrupted schedule that further limits you.

I'd love to also see prison reform in the US, but it's a separate topic. Even with prison reform, it's better if people don't go to prison to begin with. In the best case, if you go to prison, you're going to lose your job, and you're very likely going to lose your home.

> Please consider the actual victims here.

For petty theft, the victim is the business, which in the vast majority of cases is a large corporation, who has leakage built into their numbers.

Stop conflating petty theft with violent crime.

> Once citizens are safe on the streets

They are. Cities in the US are the safest they've ever been. These reports about massive crime waves are simply lies supported by idiotic statistics. Yes, crime is some categories is up 100-200%, but that's because the actual crime numbers are so low now that minor changes in the numbers looks like huge percentage shifts.

If the stock market dropped 90%, then went up 200%, would you be celebrating the 200%?

> Recognize more crime and punish more criminals to make things better for everyone

The point isn't to punish more crime, it's to punish the right crimes to move the needle. Poor people having their wages stolen makes them poorer. Poverty is strongly associated with crime (especially violent crime).

Same reason to encourage unions, increase minimum wage, have better social programs, provide free childcare, provide free education, provide public health insurance. When people have their needs covered, they're less likely to commit crimes for money.

The goalposts were fine where they were, that prison can be and in these cases is a better alternative to leaving people on the street.

> a lot of the resources that they may have been using to keep themselves alive

They are dying in an open air drug encampment. Any resources they had were sold for drugs in the first few days.

> Temporary shelter may be gone.

They're probably under a tarp, but maybe they had a place at one of the indoor drug encampments. None of these are the slightest help, and to go back to any previous shelter is death.

> Connections to people who can help them may be gone.

Any people you knew while living in a drug encampment are toxic or worthless at best. Any "help" you were getting at the time is the type that kept you there.

> If someone dies on the street as a result of imprisonment, they're counted as a street death, but they're really a prison death.

Your analysis ignores the people who get better as a result of a criminal-sanction enforced dry-out and that a significant number (25% maybe) of street users who don't make it into prison (it's a good thing in this context) will die on the street each year.

Yes, minimum security is better than maximum and non-criminal rehab better again, but you said it won't be built so it's good for you to know that even Riker's Island is better than leaving junkies on the street - for the junkie!

If any are ever caught they get treated as individual shoplifters. Magically the crime statistics never show gang shoplifting.

> You're comically giving the communist answer, that a business is a collection of people, and that hurting it hurts them all.

The communist answer is that it isn't theft because of how you categorize those you inflict it on.

> Shoplifting is bad for society as a whole, but (usually) doesn't directly hurt individuals.

Of course not, you said the word 'directly'. All crimes against public companies are guilt free by definition comrade.

> Because that's normal. The decrease in crime over the past 50 years hasn't been continuous. It's been a more natural ebb and flow. I don't see a year or two of very slightly higher crime as a trend up.

You're missing the difference between reading history and experiencing the events in real time. Yes, we can probably count on things getting better in generational time, but now as things are getting worse we should look at our policies and try to figure it out rather than just waiting decades for things to clear up on their own.

> All of these cities have lower crime rates than republican lead cities. All of them have drastically lower violent crime rates.

Only if you ignore the crime of open drug use, and that it kills thousands per year. The only thing you can trust from these cities is that they're dishonest about their stats. If police don't answer a call did a crime really happen?

> What do you actually propose to make it easier for mothers to work less? Apparently higher wages aren't appropriate, and free school to help them get higher paying jobs isn't appropriate.

Higher wages are because of promotions are good, higher wages for the same job simply by government mandate doesn't provide higher purchasing power after inflation. And free school leads to the nonsense we have now with subsidized loans where a critical-studies degree costs $250k.

> Essentially every other country on earth proves this to be wrong. The US has the highest medical costs, and plenty of other countries have a life expectancy that keeps rising, while ours is falling.

Of course the costs are higher in the USA because it's the only country where you pay the actual cost. In every other country it's hidden in taxes to some degree, usually a lot, if it's available at all.

> The US economy has been stronger than most countries for effectively my entire life, and that hasn't eliminated poverty or crime.

It kinda has though. Our poorest are richer than the median in many countries. In cash dollars and in purchasing power. There are structural problems keeping many people in poverty and not purely distribution problems.

Crime on the other hand is more of a social thing than a poverty thing.

> Other countries have enacted good social programs and have virtually eliminated crime.

You know what's a good social program? Building a place to put druggies before thousands of them die on the street in the middle of a city.