Just decriminalize everything. Crime will disappear because nothing will be a crime anymore. Case closed
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The question with decriminalization, policing, and enforcement of rules is what do you do when you’re terrorized by rule breaking and anti-social behaviour where you live? It’s all nice and theoretical until it happens to you and no one wants to do anything about it and the law is unable or unwilling to help or enable anyone to enforce rules. Your neighbour is running a flop house and you can’t sleep, are threatened daily, your landlord is powerless to enforce, you’re threatened physically daily, police don’t care and tell you “if you don’t like it move”, police are uninterested in or can’t prosecute drug or prostitution and assault is unproven.
That’s not theoretical, it’s a real example that happened to me as property owner. It took 90 days to get that tenant out (who along with her accomplice was wanted for armed assault and robbery and skipped bail considered armed and dangerous). The only way to get rid of her was non-payment of rent. Imagine if you couldn’t evict for non-payment of rent...
The police were insultingly uninterested in the affair but still you’ve got to appreciate the sheriffs presence for the eviction and a police officer did follow up asking me about the evicted tenant 3-4 months later...
The real victims in that story by the way are the other tenants of the property who had to put up with that crap. Consider for s moment there are whole groups of people and neighbourhoods that have to live that everyday.