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[pietillidie]

[pietillidie]

As if they don't have enough problems:

[stui magpie]

This was an interesting read.

[David]

It's a real problem. Particularly the expansion of the prison system, as discussed in the article. Very disappointing as this is usually one thing state Labor parties are good at (i.e. taking a sensible approach to criminal justice), but sadly it's further evidence of just how subservient Andrews is to his party's right-wing factions.

[Pies4shaw]

[pietillidie]

I would increase the police headcount massively here as a matter of good social policy, but I guess it all depends on how police resources are being used. Are they being used for nefarious purposes in Australia? Are the sprawling suburbs really well enough policed? ('Policing' just doesn't have a negative connotation in my mind, but I might be naive as I've never lived in a police state and I'm not a targeted minority).

[pietillidie]

If you have a few free Bloomberg reads to draw on, this piece on vaccine poverty is worthwhile:

https://www.bloomberg.com/graphics/2021-pfizer-secret-to-whats-in-the-covid-vaccine

[stui magpie]

My personal impression is that, in Victoria at least, the increased Police numbers aren't being used for nefarious purposes and I also don't have a problem with extra cops around.

However, if you read the article, there's a large increase in people imprisoned particularly women and Indigenous people which suggests a failure in social services and intervention programs to me.

Increased bail restrictions mean more people in remand for longer, potential unintended consequence. The Police are Law Enforcement, not Social Workers, their job is to enforce the law and detain and arrest as required. Methinks the balance might be a tad skewed at the moment.

[David]

[pietillidie]

[pietillidie]

[David]

I can understand your frustration with a knee-jerk anti-police stance and agree that such an approach is myopic, but I feel like a bit of structuralist thinking wouldn't hurt here either.

The relationship between police and the public isn't necessarily an antagonistic or hostile one, but police do ultimately exist in one way or another, for better or for worse, to enforce state power. So what is the difference if a protest is surrounded by 500 police in riot gear as opposed to 100, or a disadvantaged outer suburb has a 5x police presence? The state's arm is strengthened, both symbolically (visually) and actually, and more state power is exerted. It is also, of course, in the police force's direct interest for the power balance to be tilted more in their favour in these exchanges, whether that be through numbers, weaponry, armour, stronger detainment powers or whatever else, because it increases their own safety and enables them to do their job more efficiently. We've seen that dynamic play out quite directly in the anti-lockdown protests of the past year and a half, just as an example.

As for greater police presence in disadvantaged areas, that's a scenario that people from minority groups – and certainly not just in America – have been telling the rest of us about for years, if we care to listen: if you're, say, a young African-Australian, police become a much bigger factor in your daily life, to the extent where you might get targeted and checked for weaponry on a semi-regular basis. We can certainly work to stamp out racial profiling, but that only gets at part of the problem: it's not just the fact of being reminded that you are a member of a minority group that is viewed prejudicially, but also an act of dominance that makes you feel disempowered, and redistributing that practice among people of different ethnicities isn't going to fix the latter problem. (Consider also the common sight – one I'm sure we're all very familiar with – of homeless people sitting outside shops in the city being ganged up on by roving bands of police and asked to move on; can you think of a dynamic that more obviously calls for a structuralist reading?)

I understand that your view here is that under-policing is as big a problem as over-policing (if not much more so). For argument's sake, let's agree that that's so but that both phenomena are possible – and, therefore, that neither under-policing nor over-policing are good and that a proportionate approach (whatever that might be) is desirable. Absent short-term political motivations, we might even assume that state governments are equipped to make that decision. But instead we have a situation in which Victoria has something like 1.3 the number of police per capita as New South Wales. What's the need for this? Is it a needs-based response to policing shortfalls, or is it instead a political response to a climate in which tabloids and talkback radio have run aggressive campaigns for much of the last decade about rampant crime (not actually backed up by statistics) and African-Australian gangs, and in which governments thus have a lot of political capital to gain by expanding policing?

I guess all that I'm trying to say is that we should at least try to meet halfway here: we don't need to take on some pantomime "all cops are bastards" view to acknowledge the existence of power and how it is wielded on a day-to-day basis, and how it corrupts – not just in the sense of capital-c corruption, which of course does happen and always will happen within police forces, but also in small ways in small interactions, from that little bit of unnecessary force to the cop who enjoys the power imbalance just a little bit too much and makes you feel just a little bit worse than they needed to. This is what the Stanford prison experiment teaches us; it's just a reality of what happens when ordinary human beings have too much power over others, and I don't think any amount of training will eradicate it. So while we can agree that police are necessary and that much of what they do is good, I think it's still reasonable to conclude that they need to be used sparingly and proportionately, and their powers ought to be rigorously kept in check – and that a failure to do so is a problem.

[pietillidie]

The delicate balance of meeting soaring demand while alternative energy capacity builds, and averting further thug dependency:

[pietillidie]

[pietillidie]

While I'm raging against the world, let me at least unload some of it on you!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qilUtf7sR9c

Reality eventually catches up with hot air. If only they'd had the kahunas and discipline to filter that hot air through masks while they were at it.