There's A Better Way To Fight Crime - Prevent It!

I spent most of my working life in various aspects of law enforcement. But I don't understand the Republican take on crime. They claim to want to eliminate crime, but the policies they pursue only work to create crime.

I'm not a pollyanna. I know that all crime cannot be eliminated. We will always have a need for police and prisons. There are some people who are just bad. But most people aren't bad, and the huge majority of crimes could be prevented. 

Building more prisons and hiring massive amounts of police won't prevent much crime, and sadly, that is the Republican answer. Police and prisons don't prevent crime -- they only deal with it after it happens. While that is important, it's not enough -- and it won't reduce crime substantially.

I firmly believe most crime could be prevented, but instead of spending more money on police and prisons, we need to spend that money to make our economy and society fairer to all citizens. We won't do that by giving more to millionaires and billionaires. We need to spend to money to lift up the disadvantaged in our society -- the people that really need the help.

First we must eliminate poverty. We are the richest nation on Earth, and it is shameful that so many of our citizens live in poverty, including nearly a quarter of our children. 

Republicans like to whine about redistribution of money in our society. They want people to believe that redistribution is a bad thing. What they don't want you to know is that redistribution of wealth happens all the time in our economy. But that redistribution is from the poor, working, and middle classes to the very wealthy. The GOP economic policy (commonly called "trickle down") takes from the 90% to give to the richest 10% (and especially the richest 1%).

This just makes our society more unfair, and it increases poverty. And poverty is the mother of most crime.

We need to spend our money to make sure no child grows up in poverty, and no adult has to raise a family in poverty. We can do this through more generous (and less onerous) government programs. It would also help to raise the minimum wage to a livable wage.

But eliminating poverty won't completely solve the problem of crime. We also need to make sure that every child in the country gets a good education. Without a good education, a person has a very hard time making it in our society.

Finally, once a person gets a good education, we need to make sure they have an opportunity to find a good job. That would give them an adequate income to support their family, and self-respect in knowing they are doing that.

Republicans will try to tell you that we can't afford to eliminate poverty, give every child a good education, and provide opportunity to all our citizens. That's a lie. We have the money in our economy, but sadly, let the ultra-rich hoard too much of it. The money is there -- all we lack is the political will.

We can eliminate most crime, but we won't do it by pampering the rich and punishing everyone else.