DC murder scene (courtesy eurweb.com)

NOTE: this is not satire. “The D.C. Council voted unanimously Tuesday to approve a bill that includes a proposal to pay residents a stipend not to commit crimes,” the AP reports. “It’s based on a program in Richmond, California, that advocates say has contributed to deep reductions in crime there.” How deep is D.C.’s hoplohobic love? This deep . . .

Under the bill, city officials would identify up to 200 people a year who are considered at risk of either committing or becoming victims of violent crime. Those people would be directed to participate in behavioral therapy and other programs. If they fulfill those obligations and stay out of trouble, they would be paid.

The bill doesn’t specify the value of the stipends, but participants in the California program receive up to $9,000 [each] per year . . .

Councilmember Kenyan McDuffie, a Democrat who wrote the legislation, said it was part of a comprehensive approach to reducing violent crime in the city, which experienced a 54 percent increase in homicides last year. Homicides and violent crime are still down significantly since the 2000s, and even more so since the early 1990s when the District was dubbed the nation’s “murder capital.”

About these “deep reductions.” There is no evidence that Richmond’s “pay a criminal” program is responsible for the city’s dropping homicide rate. Which only looks impressive when you consider percentages, rather than actual homicides. Here’s the raw data from 2001 to 2013 (the last known account) from city-data.com:

(courtesy city-data.com)

In January 2014, contracostatimes.com headlined this info under: Richmond reports lowest homicide total in 33 years, credits multi pronged efforts.

The decline in homicides and overall crime — Richmond has not had more than 26 homicides in any year since 2009 — can be attributed to a range of factors, law enforcement and anti-violence officials say, including better police-community relations, improved youth-outreach programs and changing demographics.

Despite the fact that Richmond’s “pay not to kill” program was launched in 2007, the contracostatimes.com article makes no mention of the initiative in its investigation of the city’s dropping homicide rate. Also note: as the program doesn’t work with law enforcement, there’s no way to trace results.

In a highly, rightly skeptical article about Richmond’s program (well worth a read), Mother Jones (yes them) included this aside.

FOR NOW, NO ONE CAN DEFINITIVELY SAY whether Richmond’s program is a model, a fluke, or something in between. “We’re not doing the evaluations we should be doing; we’re not bringing in objective people to look at it,” UC-Berkeley’s Krisberg admits.

In other words, there is no scientific data supporting the assertion that paying criminals not to shoot people stops people shooting people. Besides that, the morality of this effort is non-existent. Who’s to say that rewarding young people who excel in school wouldn’t be a better idea? D.C.’s PC pols, that’s who. [h/t jr wmaq]

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81 COMMENTS

  1. Liberals lay awake at night concocting new and more pointless ways to squander taxpayers’ hard earned money.

    • If the cost of investigating a crime and incarcerating a convict far exceeds the stipend that the city or state pays to prevent the crime in the first place, the decision makes sense on paper.

      Sometimes, good business decisions have unintended consequences, however. The intelligent person will think all these through prior to blindly proceeding with what pencil and paper indicate to be the least costly option.

      *What message does this send to the law-abiding community?
      *Is this program fiscally sustainable? If not, what happens when the money runs dry?
      *What might this money be spent on, that would run counter to the intention of the program?
      *How do you prevent fraud and abuse in this program? Criminals by nature will lie to collect the money.
      *Etc.

      Additionally, how sad and insulting for the inner-city community of Washington D.C. This seems to imply that they lack any type of self control or community standards, and that the only way they won’t commit crime is if they are paid not to do so. It’s almost a little–dare I say–racist?

      • If you pay people to act in a way that flags them as “criminals”, you’ll get more people acting that way. Just as if you bail out banks that make stupid loans, you get more stupid loans. And, if you bail out people that take out stupid loans to buy overpriced houses, you get more stupid home price valuations, and a nation of idiots rationalizing government intervention (zoning, Fed interest rate meddling etc.) to cover up for their own stupidity. Etc., etc.

        Economics, and with it the softer social sciences, has always and everywhere been a pure deductive discipline. Empiricism doesn’t work, never has, never will. Because individual actors will simply change to take advantage of any new environment. Past behavior is flat out guaranteed to flat out mispredict future results, IOW.

        Which is a pretty good reason why the founders didn’t include collecting statistics about crime rates, unemployment, life expectancy and the rest of the nonsense underpinning the progressive canon, as one of government’s enumerated powers. Instead, sticking to maximize freedom, then let the chips fall where they may.

      • “Criminals by nature will lie to collect the money.”

        I wouldn’t be too concerned about criminals, I doubt many will ever see a dime. OTOH, the families of the bureaucrats administering the program may need a lot of incentive to stay on the straight and narrow while attending college, maybe even high school. This is a straight-up corruption fest, a grab bag of bucks up for the highest ranking thieves in government.

      • “If the cost of investigating a crime and incarcerating a convict far exceeds the stipend that the city or state pays to prevent the crime in the first place, the decision makes sense on paper”

        It would probably cost less just to provide a handgun to everyone.

      • It’s more like extortion same as what the mafia does receives payment for an offer of protection Ridiculous!

    • Headline is clickbait, somewhat.

      If I understand this correctly what they do is flag people who are on a bad path and reward them if they take part in behavioral correction. Seems like its something out of minority report, but it should work in principle.
      With computing algorithms being used to target most likely areas where crime might happen, its not far fetched to think they could also predict individuals who are most likely to commit them.

      • The fun thing about predictive algorithms is that they can better pre-position police, emt, and fire. Is it Tuesday afternoon? Calls will likely be coming from sector 3. They work, and they’re more right than wrong.

        The rub is that it won’t be a tank full of precogs, it’ll be the NSA dropping a line to local authorities that you “need watching”. The NSA already monitors and records the entire internet, especially everything in the USA.

        https://nsa.gov1.info/surveillance/

        Yes, there’s a team that does nothing but create search algos, and drill down on predictive algos. As AI and machine learning have really taken off – something akin to Minority Report is not a dream, it’s not far away, it’s not fantasy. In a world of Big Data, with limitless computing power, and no rules that could ever be enforced against them, they’ve publicly said more than once that they are very actively pursuing the goal.

        There’s a future, one, maybe two terrorist strikes in the US away. One where you will be preemptively arrested and made to defend every google search, email, text, voip, fb post, credit card purchase, traffic cam, and why you visited the same Starbucks as a known terrorist on Tuesday afternoons, despite never having met him. You will be held in secret, no bail, no phone call, nobody even knows where you are (all legal right now).

        I’d like to think we’ll fight it. But the sheep have already allowed the renewal of Patriot, and since they let that happen, there’s little hope for a change in direction.

        • ‘all legal right now’

          Funny how we let ‘law’ trump (no relation) the Constitution. For instance, if a federal national reciprocity law were passed I could walk around NYC with impunity. Why can’t I now? Because the Bill of Rights is ignored. This, I believe, is where we went off the rails. The Constitution is supposed to trump law, not the other way around.

        • I work on stuff related to Big Data, and this guy knows what he’s talking about. It’s not magic, but gets pitched as such, and the results can well be as described above unless the people push back.

          A slight correction, though. You don’t need NSA for that. I mean, obviously, the more data is gathered, the more powerful the predictive power of those models is. But you’d be surprised as to how much can be gleaned from data collected even by your local government or police department (e.g. from plate scanners). Or even data that you can find yourself online from public sources.

        • Gov, I want to see everyone who signed off on Patriot tried for treason. All Fedzilla has to do is go to a secret court, and whisper the words ‘potential terrorist’. The entirety of The Bill of Rights goes out the window, and you might as well be in any banana republic. Except our secret jails are much, much more secret.

          int19h, You’re right of course, there are ways to turn google very, very evil. I just use the NSA because people have generally heard of them, and because after 20 years of telling people what they are (at least) capable of, thanks to Snowden, they finally believe.

          The former NSA tech director Binney (as well as Drake and Wiebe senior directors) stated publicly in multiple interviews that this can (and will) be used against all of use sooner or later. Binney calls it “dictatorship in a box”.

          Sometimes it’s hard to see the future, sadly, this is easy. What’s been true for the last 20 years, and turned up to “eleven” for the last 10ish years, will continue full-speed ahead. Short of disbanding the NSA there is no longer any way to rein them in – cut their funding, they’ll just siphon a penny off billions of transactions. you think they can get caught? Tell them not to collect or assemble data? They do it all anyway, and then pretend that a ‘list’ is not a ‘list’ because it requires a mouse-click to generate. Besides, they’re the NSA, there’s no way to ever get to everything, and it all hides behind the 28ish different flavors of ‘Top Secret’.

          Not to mention the rest of the alphabet soup agencies that can all just disappear you. Don’t get me wrong, there’s not a government on the planet without some “special” people who do extralegal wetwork for them in extreme circumstances with careful consideration. We always did too. The problem is it is now legal, sanctioned, and it’s gonna need something to do, to keep growing. Nobody at Homeland, CIA, FBI, or NSA is ever getting laid off due to budget cuts.

        • 16V, the politician and a the Constitution have a natural rivalry. The Constitution is there to restrain the politician and like a rebellious child the politician is naturally predisposed to push the boundaries of that restraint. I don’t blame the politician, I blame the courts, who’s job it is to enforce the Constitution. Unfortunately the justices on the courts are put in place by the politicians. And the politicians are put in place by the voters. So the ultimate blame falls upon ourselves. For forgetting the Constitution and letting the ruling class run wild, trampling our rights under their hooves. It’s not too late to take our rights back, but if we don’t soon, it will be too late to take those rights back without bloodshed.

      • “and reward them if they take part in behavioral correction. Seems like its something out of minority report, but it should work in principle.”

        Should work? Says what data, what papers?

        If there is some behavioral modification program out there that was successful, surely reams of data would be available.

        This is going to be as ‘successful’ as the thousands of wish-fueled, grad student proposed government programs that have come and gone for decades.

        Further, what’s to stop the targeted individuals from giving the barest of participation, collecting the money, and deciding to gamble by still engaging in crime?

        You may also want to look up the gang programs in LA that paid convicted gang members for ‘intervention.’ Hint: it quickly became a gang sponsoring program.

        • I have the interesting position of being a relatively law abiding citizen who is personally acquainted with a number of criminals. What they are paying these people for is to NOT GET CAUGHT. Sure, they’ll spend a few hours per week in “behavioural therapy” classes; I would too, for 9 grand a year! Problem is that it’s impossible to really monitor an ex-convict. The vast majority of crimes that are committed are never punished. It’s a law-of-averages thing. If you’re seriously a habitual offender, you’ll see it as an opportunity to collect free money at a cost of slight inconvenience, while you are simply a little bit more careful as you continue your criminal career so as to keep a low profile. As a side-benefit, you can tell people how you’re “in the program” as proof of how you’ve “reformed”. If you’re going to re-offend anyway, might as well get some free cash in the meantime. The alternative is to re-offend and NOT get free cash. No brainer. Since no-one is keeping track of whether the program WORKS or not, this could go indefinitely.
          What’s worse is that it’s rewarding criminal behavior, and using the taxpayer money given by the victims of the criminals! What a great message to send to young, at risk kids; if they’re already corrupted enough to be at risk of murder and robbery, I don’t think that giving them the idea that “well, even if I DO get caught, I can at least get free money for it! Win-win situation!” is sound policy.

  2. I’ve never killed anybody in my life, nor do I ever, ever intend to heaven willing (short of defending my own life under threat of losing it if need be, of course).

    Where’s my stipend money, Gubmint?

    • Absolutely. It is just WRONG for government to give away the money they steal from honest citizens to reward criminals! If criminals saw that honest citizens were getting free money that they were not, wouldn’t that be an incentive to become law abiding citizens?

      • Because that would be DISCRIMINATION! I can just see the angry mobs now…law-abiding citizens being rewarded just because they are WHITE! How come the inner city isn’t being rewarded, just because they’re BLACK!? I can see the NAACP all over that in a heartbeat. Much politically safer to reward criminals to not get caught so much, because no-one cares if law-abiding citizens get offended by anything; what are they gonna do, riot?
        I thought it was interesting that in that chart, the only significant drops were in various sorts of thefts. Everything else can be easily, and likely, explained in terms of cyclical fluctuations and other factors that are not immediately obvious. The truth about numbers like that is that no-one KNOWS what causes the changes, they can only assume, and people tend to assume what they want to believe. There could have been an extraordinarily violent gang leader in charge for several years, explaining the rise in murder rate. Then he was locked up or killed, so the numbers drop again, and since it happened around the same time, it’s taken as proof that the program is successful. It could have been something as simple ad a particularly violent and convincing gangsta rap album that was popular through those years. “There are lies, there are damn lies, and there are statistics.”

  4. And that is called paying the Dane-geld;
    But we’ve proved it again and again,
    That if once you have paid him the Dane-geld
    You never get rid of the Dane.

    • It is the mind of all men to first give away that which has been stolen, if they have it in their keeping.

      Often is there regret for saying too much, and seldom regret for saying too little.

      Wisdom of the Vikings

  6. How misguided can a group of people become? Instead of paying people a dole to not be criminals, start charging them a tax from the time of their very first offense. If a young man commits a crime as a juvenile, charge his parents, with each offense the cost goes higher and higher. Garnish their wages, take their car, start hitting people in the wallet and we might see some real scientific evidence of how fast people can change when it becomes costly not to do so.

    • I think I see the disconnect here: “garnish their wages”? “Tax their parents”? “Hit them in the pocketbook”? We’re talking about inner city people here. They don’t HAVE a damn pocketbook! You can’t squeeze blood from a stone, and if there’s one thing that will incline a person to give up on any chance of living life as a normal, law-abiding citizen, it’s slapping a huge debt over his head before he ever even has any money. Most people can hardly afford the fines they charge now. If they can, they or their family pay it off; if not, they just ignore it and it goes to collections, ruining their credit, and any chances of living a law abiding life later on. Even if the guy is prone to work, you think taking a quarter of a man on minimum wage’s pay is the way to encourage him to keep slugging away every day scrubbing toilets, when he could make a few hundreds just by robbing the store down the street? Think.
      I think corporal punishment and public humiliation is the answer, insofar as there IS one. Problem is that cities come with crime, and we’re busily turning the whole country into one big city. Even where it’s still rural, the urban sludge is polluting us. Drugs are rampant here now, burglaries, there has been 3 armed robberies in the last week, where a single robbery would be shocking, statewide news ten years ago. And living in a small state, we at least have the benefit of having a pretty small look of suspects, relatively speaking. If the law wasn’t so easy on them, maybe we’d get something done about it. As it is, it’s a shame that in a state where anyone can walk around armed whoever they feel like it, people aren’t doing more to protect themselves. They seem to expect the police to do it all, even when it’s been proven time and time again that the best they can do is to catch the perpetrator after the fact, if that. And it seems to be almost impossible to actually put a criminal in jail in this state; the state seems to do everything in its power to keep people out of jail. Maybe it makes the statistics look good; after all, our government is very “progressive” (and obviously doing a wonderful job!).

  7. So now with welfare, food stamps and other goober-mint handouts, why work at all.
    See the old saying “Crime doesn’t pay.” is really “Crime does pay.” fits right in with the libturb thinking of our so called leaders. Just one more way to keep the thugs in line an ready for when they are needed to cause trouble.

    If you think the establishment politicians are on OUR side, think again. Our once great country is swirling down the crapper. Our forefathers had it right when making our right to arms the 2nd thing on the agenda. I am afraid it will soon come down to that, where our weapons will be needed to flush the turds out and begin a new chapter of Liberty for us all.

    “Trump 2016”

  9. OK, so, hear me out… I’m not saying I agree with this premise on its face. However, it is being scientic, as far as behavior is concerned.

    The two external forces which governor behavior are reinforcement and punishment (ex: you get paid to work, so you go to work – reinforcement –and you go to jail when you rob someone, so you don’t rob someone – punishment.)

    Therefore, if an organism’s behavior is not governed by punishment, or it doesn’t consider the punishment present a punisher, then you have to change the punishment, or bring in a reinforcer.

    There have been studies done in prisons where inmates were paid or rewarded for good behavior and it actually worked. If paying someone to not commit criminal acts is reinforcing enough to said person then it can alter or governor their behavior.

    Behavior is lawful, folks.

    • If you want to have YOUR tax money pay for the thug life, go ahead.
      But I do not wish to have the hard earned money I pay for taxes used for the thug life.
      And if I have to help pay anything to thugs and lowlifes, I would rather they sit in a cell all day, all night until they die.

      • Listen, dude, I cannot unsee science… When science is slapping me in the face, I’m going to see it for what it is.

        Do I think we should pay kids to not be in a gangs or be hoodlums, no. But, I can see the reinforcement that is trying to be made present here, and how it relates to the a study in criminal behavior, which I saw once, yes.

        • The theories of personality and psychology to which you refer are sound, but your economics and group psychology are not. This program is just as likely to be played as any other government give-away, and to become an open-ended and run-away give-away. Also, why will happen to the bought-and-paid-for good citizenship if the money dries up?

        • Then why don’t we take Indonesia’s approach?

          They don’t incarcerate many people and crime is low. Why? Because their punishments are severe (actual punishment). Spray painting cars? Whipped. Smuggling drugs? Death.

          Not quite sure I support death for drug crimes, but like training a dog, I think getting whipped would serve as more of a deterrent than jail time. Pain is effective.

        • Adub, Yet I can still go to Indonesia and procure drugs if I had the inclination. As well as Saudi Arabia, Qatar, and a host of places they kill you for bringing in the happy powder.

          About half of all murders are committed by the ~8% of our population that is a black male, 14-44. Most are black-on-black, and almost all are about drugs, or drug territories. Prohibition has never, ever, ever worked.

    • Again, there is no data supporting the “pay not to shoot” program. Again, it’s an amoral idea that rewards lawlessness.

      • I’m not saying I agree with it, I’m saying reinforcement and punishment are real things.

        If you want to alter behavior you have to bring in a reinforcer or change the present punishment.

        My vote would be to alter punishment, because I agree that paying bad people to not do bad things is absurd, but like it or not, a reinforcer can alter behavior.

        • If you can identify a coming criminal with enough certainty that it makes sense to hand them $9000 of my money, why not simply shoot him. Costs less, and for sure ends the threat. The answer, of course, is that you cannot identify a person that well until he *IS* a criminal, at which time you force him to engage in these behavior modifications while he’s in prison.

    • All true.

      However, as anyone who has trained a dog can attest, you need to be VERY careful to not unintentionally reward the behavior you don’t want.

      In this particular case, I think the problem is you are rewarding behavior that is bad .. but not too bad. So people are given an incentive to keep acting worse and worse until you pay them not to. Several problems there. One, you’ve established the bad behavior habit. Two, you’re asking them to completely reverse the behavior when the reward stops, and habits can be hard to break.

      Instead, what about rewarding only behaviors we want? Get good grades, get a free iPad / game console / whatever. Show up every day at school for a month? Here’s $30 (or whatever). First-time job holder? Hold it for 6 months and get an extra 25% on your salary.

  10. I, uh, well… actually it makes economic sense…

    Unfortunately, they’re missing a vital part of this program that would prevent it from being abused. If the list of 200 is full and you commit a violent crime- you’re executed. If you’re on the list of 200 and you commit a crime that affects another person- you’re executed.

    Carrot and stick strategies work, but if you don’t have a viable stick, everyone is going to game the system to get the carrot.

    • No negotiation required. Politicians take bribes to do favors for their constituents, so they believe the rest of the world’s criminals work the exact same way. Therefore, bribing the street criminals to not commit crimes is perfectly logical, from a wall street criminal point of view.

      • Ah! Professional courtesy. Like the joke about the shark who wouldn’t eat the lawyer. Makes perfect sense.

  12. I guess I’ll have to commit a crime so I can get on the payout list .
    I need some more info so I can do some calculations and reevaluate my retirement portfolio .

  14. I couldn’t care less if there was absolute irrefutable proof that programs like this work. There is absolutely no way taxpayer dollars should be used in this fashion. Anyone who suggests such a thing should be drummed out of public service because they are no steward of our money.

  15. You could pay for your crack habit with your stipend money and not have to resort to robbing and stealing. Pretty much sends the wrong signal to those who exhibit self-control. It’s basically paying ransom. Take the money and don’t hurt us. What happens when they want more?

    • If a crack head wants more, they can be elected to the DC City Council, or even mayor! See, it’s all about giving people opportunities.

  16. And this is why DC needs to be reduced to the original size, encompassing only the Capitol, WH, SCOTUS, mall and monuments. No permanent residents. DC has continued to prove itself incapable of self rule.

  18. I’m starting to think the smart way to effect a revolution would be to abandon my self-respect and just start soaking up all the “free” government money I can lay hands on. Fake a disability, milk welfare, get paid not to murder, whatever. I almost feel stupid NOT doing it at this point. Except that I have to look at myself in the mirror every morning.

  19. And we wonder why Washington, DC is such a cesspool. And that’s before the politicians get there….

  21. I don’t care about the moral issues, all I care about is if it’s cheaper than hiring more cops and more prison guards, with their bulletproof unions and lifetime pensions, who’s idea of ‘make work’ when they run out of things to do is a lot worse than paying criminals a pittance not to commit crime.

    • So, if we take morals off the table, how about we just shoot anyone who looks like they are committing a crime and be done with it? That would be a very effective and economical way to take a bite out of crime.

  22. This is a tactic used by “forces of order” against insurgencies going back to the Romans. Pay off the trouble makes to decrease their need to cause trouble. Why gangs are not considered terrorists/insurgents is beyond me as they fit all the definitions of them.

  23. OR…DC pols could push to end the catastrophically ineffective War on Drug Users and watch gang related activity evaporate just…like…THAT.

    • So drug dealers would get legitimate jobs if ALL drugs were legalized and easily available?
      Think about how that is supposed to work.

  24. They’ll just take the money and continue to commit crimes. Until they’re arrested again, at which point the payments will presumably stop.

  25. “Under the bill, city officials would identify up to 200 people a year who are considered at risk of either committing or becoming victims of violent crime. Those people would be ground into Soylent Green and fed to the homeless.”

    ^fixed it

  27. So the government is going to pay a bunch of lowlives $9,000 per year to do nothing? What a gyp! Civil service employees don’t do anything and get paid a lot more money, plus medical.

  28. I’ve got a far better solution. Legalize and tax ALL drugs. Then let evolution take it course.

  29. In the Progressive mindset, there is no problem that can’t be fixed by spending more of other people’s money.

    • Republican mindset, send them all to jails that are owned by their friends, then the government pays their buddies.

      Rehabilitation is the only path for minor criminals. They need to be reintegrated back into society.

      • Wrong. Pretty much all states actually hate paying for extensive prison systems as they are quite expensive with no economic return. The jails are so packed in this country because we have a shit ton of parents who refuse to raise their kids.

  30. The rewards available in this country to individuals who get their act together, stay off drugs, stay out of trouble with the law, and actually produce something with their lives, are already essentially infinite.

    Nobody who would blow off potential infinite rewards in exchange for straightening up and flying right is suddenly going to be moved to do so for a measly nine grand.

    All that these thugs are going to do is take the money and possibly be more discreet in the ongoing conduct of their criminal careers, so as not to shut off this revenue stream. More likely is that they’ll take the money, get caught committing their crimes, and then get booted from this boondoggle.

  31. Chain gangs. That’s MY solution to “high-risk” perps. Working for their keep>THIS is my one and ONLY SARC tag…

  32. Nobody commits crimes expecting to be caught. Criminals have poor future-orientation and cause-and-effect capacities, as a rule.

    If you give a criminal a stipend to not commit crimes, he’ll gladly accept it, and just keep on committing crimes under the assumption that he can avoid being caught (because he intends to avoid being caught).

    The very best criminals will collect the stipend and avoid getting caught. The lousy criminals will get caught and forfeit their stipend (One hopes. I can imagine endless appeals and “second chances.” “Hey, I was just about to turn my life around. I fell in with a bad crowd. It just happened. It won’t happen again. Gimme another chance!”). The number of criminals who will cease committing crimes on behalf of the stipend will probably be extremely low. And all their friends who are successful at gaming the system will make fun of them if they don’t try to game the system themselves.

  33. This program which was called the Boston Miracle reduced gun deaths by 40% nationally.
    It targets the .05% of inner city youths doing the shooting. The carrot is the pay. The stick is extreme penalties if anyone gets shot. They have mentors and their behavior is monitored. If you write it off what’s the difference between that and any paid internship?
    While Obama was on TV mentioning Chicago deaths and crying the founders had just left the White House. These ministers were asking for money to expand the program. Guess what the White House said?
    NO!
    It is disengenuous for Hillary Obama Mothers etc. to include inner city gun deaths in their figures yet do nothing about them.
    No fly list? Magazine size? Universal Background checks?

  35. This example is why the right is always talking about morality and the lack of it in society. Both Richmond and the District of Columbia hand out lots of welfare making sure children are raised without fathers and now pay these teenagers money to not rob, kill and steal.
    And both cities basically outlaw guns for self defense using local regulations. But Marijuana intoxication is legal so some people will always be happy.

  38. The guys of Freakonomics fame have proven through several experiments from paying to good grades to paying for good behavior that it simply does not work long term. You see a short term benefit and then it peaks and almost completely goes away because the money is not enough or the value goes away due to other factors.

    Paying for good behavior will simply not work.

  39. We shouldn’t pay you to not do crimes.
    This does prove that these kids are killing for business and respect. This shows that they want to be part of a thriving economy.
    This shows they would choose it over their present life.
    9k a year is a little more than half of the cost of incarceration. The cost of city services when someone is killed can’t be discounted.
    If your child had to use a wheelchair should you he be denied it? “I didn’t need a wheelchair I did fine.”
    This is a temporary fix to get them behaving differently. Sort of like AA everyday without is a another day you see yourself clean.

    These kids didn’t have your experience. You had support around you or you would be a criminal. You had family and the larger community seeing you as a positive member.
    Thank goodness your kids had a different experience.

    I’m not spewing some liberal BS. I was a foster parent for California Youth Authority teen offenders. My friends worked with the Crips & Bloods. This is far more than a keyboard opinion. See if it works. If it doesn’t long term we can revisit it. The program is a 2+ years old. If you have a tweak or revision or substitute program bring it up here.

  40. Holy #@$%!&****** Are You #$@%&*$# kidding me? You have to pay people to stop them from committing crimes? Isn’t not going back to jail reward enough? What the hell is going on here?

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