Use the hammer only when there’s actually a nail.

I love how this cartoon points out how absurd it is to use the hammer of law and law enforcement as if every social issue is a nail.

People talk about how police used to be slave patrols, but that kind of obscures how they weren’t a ruling class at the time— they needed a job, and that job was gruesome and horrible, which is why the actual ruling class hired them to handle it.

And the ruling class still does that. Because it’s easier to pay someone to go toss a homeless camp than to do anything about homelessness.

And the killer is that it’s not really cheaper to do that, especially when across the country, police budgets are going up (no, they’re not actually being defunded).

I heard recently that it costs around $5,000 to arrest someone for vagrancy. Then presumably it costs even more to prosecute them, keep them in jail during this process (because they’re sure not going to be able to make bail), and OMG imagine if they also get a resisting arrest charge and maybe even accused of assaulting the cop who arrested them. Then you could have a new prisoner costing maybe $50,000 a year in taxpayer dollars.

Or maybe that doesn’t happen, but the homeless person goes back on the street and obviously is still homeless, so they get arrested again and again, and if they have a medical issue they go to the ER and the hospital eats the cost of that treatment. Wash, rinse, repeat.

HOW is that a good system— for ANYONE? How is that a good use of anyone’s resources?

Why is it so hard to grasp that the primary driver of crime is desperation in one form or another, and that desperation exists partly (or in some cases wholly) because of the criminalization of behaviors that don’t hurt anyone, and because of the way the system throws the book at people who harm someone only slightly, as if they’re now marked as evil and should be locked in a box forevermore?

Why is it so hard to consider eliminating that desperation by doing something more compassionate than pointing a gun at it? Because I hate to tell you, the gun method isn’t doing the job. In many if not most cases, it’s actually making things worse.

That, by the way, is what people (often— not always) mean by “defund the police.” Save a chunk of money, not to mention America’s soul, by choosing compassion over violence.