Progressives Will Pay The Crime Away

How much of America’s melting pot society or salad bowl culture is held together by money? A middle-class white in Connecticut can use a fat mortgage as protection to relocate his family to the quiet towns and far away from the dysfunctional underclass. The cities can have incredibly high Gini coefficients and wealth inequality because the feds and state government will buy the underclass (that it agitates via schooling and media) off with danegeld social programs and welfare.

Now, there is a new effort being tried by progressives: pay the crime away.

This is not subsidizing the underclass or problem populations to reduce crime by appealing to the Jean Valjean explanation for crime. This is literally paying known criminals upwards of $1000 a month not to commit another gun crime. Here is the opener from the news article over at The Washington Post (emphasis added).

The odds were good that Lonnie Holmes, 21, would be the next person to kill or be killed in this working-class suburb north of San Francisco. Four of his cousins had died in shootings. He was a passenger in a car involved in a drive-by shooting, police said. And he was arrested for carrying a loaded gun. But when Holmes was released from prison last year, officials in this city offered something unusual to try to keep him alive: money. They began paying Holmes as much as $1,000 a month not to commit another gun crime. Cities across the country, beginning with the District of Columbia, are moving to copy Richmond’s controversial approach because early indications show it has helped reduce homicide rates.

But the program requires governments to reject some basic tenets of law enforcement even as it challenges notions of appropriate ways to spend tax dollars.

In Richmond, the city has hired ex-convicts to mentor dozens of its most violent offenders and allows them to take unconventional steps if it means preventing the next homicide.

For example, the mentors have coaxed inebriated teenagers threatening violence into city cars, not for a ride to jail but home to sleep it off — sometimes with loaded firearms still in their waistbands. The mentors have funded trips to South Africa, London and Mexico City for rival gang members in the hope that shared experiences and time away from the city streets would ease tensions and forge new connections.

And when the elaborate efforts at engagement fail, the mentors still pay those who pledge to improve, even when, like Holmes, they are caught with a gun, or worse — suspected of murder.

The city-paid mentors operate at a distance from police. To maintain the trust of the young men they’re guiding, mentors do not inform police of what they know about crimes committed. At least twice, that may have allowed suspected killers in the stipend program to evade responsibility for homicides.

It gets worse, but let’s look at the payouts here to the criminal class. First, there is the direct payout of Richmond, California, handing over money to a known criminal to please, please, pretty please not commit another crime. Second, there is the payouts in the form of hired mentors who are ex-cons to mentor these young men for the length of the fellowship. Third, they take these known criminals out of the country on vacations. These are not summer camp ghetto-to-the-forest vacations to Oregon and Maine, but trips across oceans with other criminals.

The far more sinister element is that crimes are committed, but these mentors do not snitch on the criminals and maintain payments to the crook while in the program. Crime is explained away and overlooked because at least it is not a gun crime or murder. There is no direct consequence to the criminal returning back to his previous habits of criminal behavior, but let’s focus on reducing that homicide rate. That is the focus for Richmond and what they tout as a success.

The problem is that a couple of murders have happened within the program, yet are not reported. Killers walk free and collect money in a program that justifies paying criminals to reduce the murder rate. The murders destroy the reason for the program.

The horror of a program paying criminals to not commit crime yet allowing the same criminals to keep committing crime does not even have a positive per the progressive claims. The veracity of such claims is challenged by others who say that the program was not designed to properly measure if it was effective. That is in fact the perfect progressive program: unverifiable, but squishy results that get touted as positive, while handing money to reliably progressive voters. Richmond’s murder rate did drop but has recently popped back up, but this is not stopping other big cities from reviewing the program as a potential savior.

This is because no one has the will, or even wants to properly address our expanding underclass and the social and cultural problems there.

Richmond’s police chief gets to the social point without realizing it, and of course, never pointing out the core issue (emphasis added).

“Richmond was bold enough to take an untested step and try this model of really direct and intense intervention,” Richmond Police Chief Allwyn Brown said. “And it’s dealing with the violence in the right way: teaching these kids basic life skills and how to not resort to a gun and operate in a civil society.”

Richmond is paying ex-cons to be fathers. Richmond is paying ex-cons to teach these troubled “youths” basic lessons about living in society and operating in America that their mothers and other adult figures in their community were unable to provide. Dealing directly with the failures of that community, as well as the government and social service organs that prosper with that failure would be impossible per our current set-up, but let Richmond and other cities throw money at the problem.

The mentors say how it is rewarding “hard work” and that hard work is defined as “stopping picking up a gun to solve your problems.” The money is no strings attached, so where does it go, and how does it help set these young men up on a path to a safe, productive life? No strings attached means they do not have to get a GED or enter a trade school or be employed. The article discusses one such individual, Mr. Lonnie Holmes, from the article’s introduction.

Holmes rolls down his window upon seeing Vaughn. A cloud of marijuana smoke escapes into the rainy morning.

So far, the attention — and money — seems to be working for Holmes. Although the $1,500 he has received since getting out of prison last fall has not led to a miraculous transformation, it enabled him to make a down payment on his black 2015 Nissan Versa — something meaningful for a young man who for many years was homeless.

He now spends hours each day in the car, driving around with friends, often smoking pot but not “hunting” — Vaughn’s term for seeking conflict with rivals.

Holmes is worried about how he’ll afford the $500 monthly car payments and insurance once the program ends. He has applied to get a job as an Uber driver….

“The money is a big part,” Holmes says. “I can’t count the number of times it has kept me from . . . doing what I’ve got to do. It stopped me from going to hit that liquor [store] or this, you feel me, it’s a relief to not have to go do this and endanger my life for a little income, you feel me?”

Holmes hits up Vaughn for $5 for a quart of oil. Vaughn tries to use it as a teachable moment and reaches into his pocket. “You’ve got to protect your investment — you need an oil change,” Vaughn explains.

Everyone wants a criminal as their cab driver. The Nissan Versa has an MSRP of $12,000. Holmes has $500 monthly car payment for a Nissan Versa. When did “doing what I got to do” to get money switch to mean commit armed robbery? Employment, education, and training are not even considered. The man speaks of not endangering his life in the same sentence as he mentions committing armed robbery.

In days of yore, banditry meant hanging from the end of a rope or exile at best. American cities have switched to actively paying these men, no questions asked.

This is not the only program that pays criminals and helps to cover their crimes. Seattle has the LEAD program, which is a pre-booking program for low-level drug users and prostitution offenders. Check the private foundations funding it: the Ford Foundation and George Soros’ Open Society were seed grant providers. This is waiving the white flag on the war on crime, but without the corresponding legalization and regulation. We have the entire infrastructure of arrest, but if you qualify and are one of the select few deemed okay for this program, you get support and a free apartment.

Like the above no strings attached program in Richmond, this program has no termination date, no employment requirements, but plenty of social services and a warm bed. Bravo, it has reduced crime 34-58% for the 203 people inserted into the program. Think of the small sample size. This is the justification for waiving the white flag and expanding the program elsewhere. Forgotten is that 58% of participants are still arrested again, and that this is after the first crime being “deferred”. Even conservatives like Marc Levin are jumping on the bandwagon.

I reached out to law enforcement in other states, and surprisingly they supported keeping a low-level user type out of prison. The point where they changed their tone was the continued benefits and help even after a participant committed another crime or was caught with heroin again. Their take was that if there are no consequences, the program cannot grow because it will be abused. Providing shelter now also removes a financial need that can go right back to heroin if the program is not forcing them to stop using. But this is not slowing down the good national press and interest in LEAD elsewhere.

The problem with LEAD is that it had failures and hiccups that get glossed over because the entire system has turned towards a movement to be nicer on crime and reduce the incarceration numbers. LEAD had reduced its referrals into the program and was struggling, as still half of its funding was from those wonderful private foundations. Note that Open Society also encourages open borders, which contributes to the American heroin problem. This is a small scale program that others want to scale-up, but few are focusing on the strain that it causes. Maybe all the foreclosed homes that are still in bank inventory can be turned into recovering addict housing? No matter the success, the problem remains that the user base continues to grow, since we will not address core problems that lead to heroin use.

If the LEAD program sounds familiar, with users using and being taken care of or even being sequestered away with no requirement to work, it sounds similar to “The Wire’s” Hamsterdam episode, where a few blocks of Baltimore are turned into de facto zones of legalization. Check the La Wik entry that notes crime dropped city-wide and health and social services had greater outreach. LEAD is small scale and seems to work like a very lenient halfway home for addicts. If LEAD is scaled up, hello Hamsterdam.

This will only get worse if the anti-mass incarceration advocates win. The ideas springing forth will only get worse whether Clinton wins or we just and watch as demographics give the left eternal victory in this system. Either route is going to make a second Warren Supreme Court. American cities may see a repeat of the ’64 through ’94 crime and city decay period. There will be differences. We will have the surveillance, the heavily armed cops, and the hyper-vigilant society, but that is only a response.

Note that record numbers of gun purchases and background checks is not a sign of renewed gun rights pride as much as it is citizens fearful of an unresponsive police force and a government that will not effectively deal with problem populations, forcing citizens to take back their duties of defense.

We will have technology and big data to maybe even predict crime in a non-racist, progressive-approved manner.

America will not have the strong, large core of white voters who supported law and order-types like the Nixons and Reagans who stuffed the courts with tough on crime judges and switched sentencing laws to be far tougher.

America will also have to face financial reality, so what about those cops mentioned earlier? Cops need pensions, too, maybe even for them to not be corrupt themselves and work with mafias.

How is the left going to fund the program in Richmond paying crooks or the LEAD program coddling heroin users? Solutions could be social and cultural to fix our broken society and the destroyed homes of its citizens. There is no better solution than a society that attacks the root causes of chaos, but the left feeds and needs it.

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