Market Square

[ijmorlan]

Indeed. It's too bad, these are tough socio-economic issues to deal with, and appear especially magnified in Kitchener. There is no one-size-fits-all either. If you make the shelters/facilities in one part of town exclusively, that comes with its issues...if you spread it into neighborhoods/school zones, there's a plethora of other issues.

Has any city tackled this successfully?

This is difficult, and can’t be solved by arguing between between harsh and being lenient.

There are some people I legitimately don’t want living near me (people who threaten or harass people, or steal stuff) and there are people who are fine (people of every race, background, and economic situation).

I think our problem is that we don’t have much ability to provide good accountability with the justice system and police response to minor crimes (or major ones for that matter). We no longer do harsh punishment for minor crime (transportation to Van Diemen’s land is right out); but we don’t have a system that really takes responsibility for minor re-offenders.

I think we need a system that provides a cross between a mental hospital, group home, prison, and halfway house, and which would provide many of the same services as all of these. The idea is to house people in a controlled environment where their privileges can be adjusted according to behaviour, while providing them with whatever treatment they need. Continue stealing bicycles (or shoplifting, or whatever), and one will end up spending all of ones time inside the facility. Behave appropriately, and one will get more and more freedom and eventually the option to move out. All occupants who are able would have the opportunity to work. The facility would have to be run in a way that provides a safe environment for both its occupants and the public living nearby. The approach taken to outside appointments (e.g. to see a doctor) would also be part of the privilege adjustment: some people would be trusted to go to the doctor and come back by themselves, while others would travel in a prison van. Other in-between possibilities also exist.

What this means in detail I don’t know enough about the people involved to really say. I think of the recent case where a shoplifter was given a very light sentence (time served plus one day in jail, if I recall, when the judge could have given multiple years), and then was picked up for another offence within a week. Clearly, they need to be kept in a controlled environment; but I don’t believe in just dumping people in jail.

I think people who want to be lenient don’t appreciate that things we take for granted, such as convenient retail stores where anybody can just walk in, pick up what they need, and pay money to an unarmed cashier on their way out of the store, can only exist if shoplifting is rare. On the other hand, people who want to be harsh don’t appreciate how fantastically expensive (in many ways, not just money) it is to maintain a large prison system.

I’m aware that what I’m proposing would be very expensive. But it seems to me that what we’re doing right now is pretty expensive too.