Recurring Urges
As noted here many, many times, progressives often have a wildly inaccurate conception of the criminal demographic and of the psychology and motives in play, as expressed by the criminals themselves. A conception so inaccurate, one might call it perverse.
On the subject of prison and its occupants, Inquisitive Bird shares some corrective statistics while poking at one or two common myths:
The median number of prior arrests was nine. More than three quarters have at least 5 prior arrests. Having 30+ prior arrests was more common than having no arrest other than the arrest that led to the prison sentence (i.e., 1 prior arrest)…
As striking as these figures are, they still understate prisoners’ criminal histories. This is because of the dark figure of crime—the amount of unreported, undetected, or undiscovered crime. A highly replicated finding is that criminals self-report having committed many offences for each police contact. That is, they readily admit to having “gotten away with” many offences.
One study of 411 males found that the self-reported number of offences was over 30 times greater than convictions. For sexual offending, studies have estimated the dark figure to be anywhere from 6.5 to 20 times the official figure. In a recent study of American delinquent youths, the self-reported number of delinquent offences was 25 for every police contact.
However large the dark figure of crime exactly is, it is undoubtedly practically significant. Prisoners’ criminal histories are therefore substantially more extensive than their criminal records would suggest.
There’s much more to be had in the linked piece, along with some eyebrow-raising charts.
Unsurprisingly, a similar pattern is found here in the UK:
And then there’s Sweden:
Another notable fact: approximately half of violent crime convictions were committed by people who already had 3 or more violent crime convictions. In other words, if after being convicted of 3 violent crimes people were prevented from further offending, half of violent crime convictions would have been avoided.
In short, before ending up in prison, the vast majority of the perpetrators, the supposedly downtrodden and marginalised, have at least five prior arrests, with almost half having 10 or more, and one in seven, 20 or more:
At which point, the phrase that comes to mind is the nature of the beast. Conceivably, other phrases may occur to readers.
Those with a taste for grim humour are steered towards this rather vivid indication of how a crime rate can improve when just three burglars – with over 200 convictions between them – flee the police in a stolen car before colliding with something solid and ceasing to be.
An illustration, one of many, of how a very large fraction of crime could be prevented by dealing decisively with a surprisingly small number of persistent offenders.
And as commenter Geoff quipped, following this:
Well, indeed.
For those of you with X accounts, Inquisitive Bird can be followed here.
Update, via the comments:
MarkL quotes this,
And adds,
The mismatch of progressive assumptions with the perpetrators’ own stated motives, the way their minds work, is quite something. The idea that carjacking, for instance, is done for reasons of survival, to meet basic needs, and only done in desperation or under duress, because of some supposedly oppressive and racist social system, is darkly funny. Perverse to the point of absurdity.
As illustrated, vividly, in the study linked above – say, by the female carjacker named PoPo, who terrorised a random woman, stole her car, her purse and her wedding ring, then “bought some drink and… weed and… got my hair did.” Because, you know, hair.
Or her fellow carjacker, Little Ty, who, contrary to progressive assumptions, had no need of money – “We don’t need money, we have money” – via means one might guess at – but who simply finds pleasure in violating others. Or the ferals named Loco and Corleone, who boasted that financial security wouldn’t stop them from indulging in carjacking because they just like doing it. Because it’s exciting.
Pretty much by default, the mental process – such as it is – is see it, want it, take it. The fear and degradation of the victim is just icing on the cake. A point expanded on by a carjacker named Tall: “It’s a rush thing… when you’re pulling someone out the car… Just a rush come over me… I mean, I feel good.” And likewise, Big Mix, who found his victims’ terror a “kick,” and indeed “hilarious.” And the aforementioned PoPo, who boasted, “It’s funny just to see them shaking and pissing all over theyself.”
And yet progressives will conjure elaborate explanations, outright fantasies, that bear no relation at all to the motives stated by the criminals themselves. The reality of their nature.
It must be that progressive empathy we hear so much about.
This blog is kept afloat by the tip jar buttons below.
Actually lost for words…
For the law-abiding, it’s often difficult to comprehend just how degenerate the degenerate can be.
That link. F**king hell. Lefties forget that burglars do other crimes as well. They’re not ‘just’ robbing houses.
Absolutely. Criminal and anti-social behaviour is rarely confined tidily to one sphere. In the case above, for those yet to follow the link, the trio also amused themselves by stealing cars, endangering other motorists in ways that widen the eyes, and assaulting and mugging the elderly and bedridden cancer patients.
Upon the trio’s fiery and self-inflicted demise, their friends and relatives dared to issue gushing tributes, while claiming that these monstrous and incorrigible predators were “too good for this stupid shitty world.” Which rather speaks to the quality of those friends and relatives, their moral orientation.
See also lefties and car theft, supposedly “a victimless crime.”
The obliviousness is quite something. One might think it were practised.
‘Victimless crime’ is one of the more dishonest phrases in circulation, intended to make nothing of the value of time lost.
If the cost of time & resource lost to the crime and the cost of time & resource expended to apprehend & convict the criminal were taken into account how severe would the penalties for the criminal be?
Because I think that bears repeating.
As Smallish Bees put it in response to Nora’s glib moral morony:
Hence the punishment, of course – of which dear Nora does not approve. Because, and I quote, “the victims get new cars though.”
PING
Enjoy the rest of your Sunday, barkeep.
Bless you, sir. May you have spare bulbs.
[ Orders new socks. ]
Living the life, I am.
Also fridge deodorisers and bin liners.
I don’t want any of you underestimating the glamorousness of my afternoon.
Is there a soundtrack?
The twittering of birds and the occasional donk of an acorn landing on someone’s car.
Donk.
Probably not a good idea to park under an oak tree in Autumn.
Still better than being parked under a hailstorm in Summer.
BTW, isn’t today the Autumnal Equinox?
Tomorrow, I believe.
OT but this is a great palate cleanser. Blessed Sunday.
“Redneck GPS.” And doggo got his reward.
It’s a fundamental miscategorization to treat crimes as if they’re accidents that insurance claims can be submitted for, and it’s another fundamental miscategoriation to treat interracial crimes as if they’re individual crimes. You might as well deny that objects tend to fall and fire tends to burn. In the world we have to deal with, there are humans who see other humans as prey, sometimes because they’re “wrong ‘uns”, and sometimes because ethnic conflict lowers the threshold such that mere foot soldiers can do things to members of enemy groups that only psychopaths would do to their own people.
Those aspects of reality are built into your mind. You’re made to fret about the possibilities of a “mere robbery” turning into what the media calls “a robbery gone wrong”, or being targeted “randomly” because you got too close to the borders of an area where another race asserts its domination. You understand intuitively that without aggressive consequences, there are going to be more of those “random” incidents, and they’re going to be more insolent and more sadistic. In times and places when those worries predominate, people retreat into their shells, projects don’t get started, trust is lowered, you don’t have nice things – the insurance claims are the tip of the iceberg, the bigger cost of crime being an opportunity cost we have no idea about (what would a low-crime alternative timeline for Detroit even have been like?). And when the authorities, the authorities whose only legitimate claim to authority is that they’re supposed to identify and address such dangers on your behalf, are telling you that such dangers don’t exist, that talking about the reality on your own street makes you stupid and evil, that’s when things really get demoralizing.
But we’re the parochial ones.
Kitties.
Must be that progressive empathy we hear so much about.
Yes indeed.
About that concept of shame . . .
Fifty years later and he’s still a meathead.
Mead and sanctity.
Besides the name he didn’t inherit much from his father.
Unexpected.
Travel, they said. It’s educational.
No lie detected.
Why, yes I am saying that.
Observation of note.
It’s a mere 5 hours and change long, but here’s Charlie Kirk’s funeral service.
And in anthropological news.
Don’t know whether to be depressed or burst out laughing. They just don’t have a clue.
The mismatch of progressive assumptions with the perpetrators’ own stated motives, the way their minds work, is quite something. The idea that carjacking, for instance, is done for reasons of survival, to meet basic needs, and only done in desperation or under duress, because of some supposedly oppressive and racist social system, is darkly funny. Perverse to the point of absurdity.
As illustrated in the study linked above by the female carjacker named PoPo, who terrorised a random woman, stole her car, her purse and her wedding ring, then “bought some drink and… weed and… got my hair did.”
Because, you know, hair.
Or her fellow carjacker, Little Ty, who, contrary to progressive assumptions, had no need of money – “We don’t need money, we have money” – via means one might guess at – but who simply finds pleasure in violating others. Or the ferals named Loco and Corleone, who boasted that financial security wouldn’t stop them from indulging in carjacking because they just like doing it. Because it’s exciting.
Pretty much by default, the mental process – such as it is – is see it, want it, take it. The fear and degradation of the victim is just icing on the cake. A point expanded on by a carjacker named Tall: “It’s a rush thing… when you’re pulling someone out the car… Just a rush come over me… I mean, I feel good.” And likewise, Big Mix, who found his victims’ terror a “kick,” and indeed “hilarious.” And the aforementioned PoPo, who boasted, “It’s funny just to see them shaking and pissing all over theyself.”
And yet progressives will conjure elaborate explanations, outright fantasies, that bear no relation at all to the motives stated by the criminals themselves. The reality of their nature.
Again, it must be that progressive empathy we hear so much about.
[ Post updated, significantly. ]
If further elaboration is required, during the interviews linked above, PoPo describes gratuitously beating one of her many victims, a victim not resisting, adding simply, “I had to hit her… I like to be bad… It’s just in me.” A pattern repeated many times by her colleagues, up to and including shooting fleeing victims in the back, despite having successfully stolen their belongings.
But by all means gush with sympathy for these vile beasts.
It’s magic incantations and public signals that they themselves don’t want to be assaulted.
Well, you’d think that a good way to minimise the risk of being a victim of violent crime is to vote for a party more likely to incarcerate those so inclined. Which rather presupposes a realistic understanding of the perpetrators. Not some self-flattering fantasy.
Yet progressives have loudly recoiled from almost any realistic depiction on that front. The widespread hostility among progressives to TV shows like Cops or Live PD comes to mind. Presumably on grounds that such footage makes their own fantasies and affectations much harder to sustain.
Is it them again, Yogi?
We should return the favour. It’s the least we can do.
It never ceases to amaze that people distort their appearances in ways great and small and say “this is my authentic self.”
That’s messed up. They’re running from their authentic selves, who may be in terrible pain from abuse. Or their pain is calcified into a twisted soul.
We do ourselves no favors by pretending along with them that these fanciful identities constitute something more real than reality. It’s not good for the wounded individuals (whether they can or cannot be saved), and it’s not good for society at large.
People have been cowed into “not judging,” especially in the therapeutic industry. “Don’t imply that XYZ is normal or healthy.”
Well, we need to reel that back in. We need to say, “Sorry, but that degree of deviance is contrary to the truth. That’s just not healthy.”
Postmodernism’s denial of TRVTH is a pretext for seizing power, both cultural and political.
It needs to stop. It stops now.
I’ll just leave this here for no reason whatsoever.
Or they could just be utterly uninteresting people trying to make themselves objects of fascination and wonder by adopting outré garb, makeup, tattoos, &c. and spouting gibberish à la mode.
A firing squad would also be exciting.
Some people just can’t be fixed. Only permanent removal makes sense.
Public hanging. You can re-use the rope.
An unintentionally revealing Reddit post.
That, too.
Furthermore, some people who were never abused do seem to get seduced into such deviance by peers, little step by little step.