Crime always creates chaos, and chaos always tears at the social fabric

Some say we should have fewer police officers, and others say prisons are unnecessary, too.

What is the prognosis of such thinking? I’d wager the cat is chasing its tail and high on catnip!

Crime waves seem to be happening in many parts of the country. Consequences for some bad behaviors are increasingly absent. Many people of all economic persuasions are shocked by the pictures and stories.

Permit me to ask you just one simple question: If a person commits a crime and there is no penalty or consequence, what behavior might you expect from that person in the future?

Take your time, then apply your answer to that spurious thought of no police or prison.

Or perhaps you might want a simpler question: How would you handle a child in your own household who sometimes exhibits bad behavior and there is no corrective action?

Perhaps a school teacher can provide the best answer.

If a person is not taught to be good, what might one expect from such a person? Are you listening, activists?

And what of the homeless? It's an unfortunate fact that some deal with mental illness and addictive behaviors. It's also an unfortunate fact that more than a few of these folks might once have lived in a prison cell.

I fully suspect that crime and its victims in the inner cities will not improve with a no police and prison agenda; other jurisdictions will suffer as well.

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The poor will suffer greatly at the hands of roaming gangs, delinquents and violent Robin Hoods, who only take but never give.

This untested philosophy and new approach of no police and prisons will soon enough become putrid and buried in the sand like some rotting fish on the shore. The idea’s stench, however, will permeate throughout society until then.

I have seen crime up close from the inside of a prison, and the root problem really is not the criminal, it is often created by a society from whence they come, where prosperity is terribly in decline, and they become delinquent and addictive.

Why don’t a few of the activists choose to tackle those problems of parenting and society instead of law enforcement?

Perhaps most fail to examine these issues closely.

We would have no drug problems if there were no drug abusers.

The criminal’s behavior is often developed from birth down life’s highway through a lack of parenting, supervision, and/or societal influences.

I’m thinking the no jail approach will soon become a farce of epic proportions as those arrested and released will make more headlines than a newspaper has ink to print.

Can you ever imagine a Chicago, a San Francisco, or a New York City today attempting to solve the problems of crime, abuse of drugs and homelessness, let alone the harm caused by criminals, if there were no police or prisons?

Prisons are expensive propositions for sure. Incarcerating an individual for a year can cost a lot of money, from $44,000 or so in Maryland, to $167,000 in Riker’s Island, New York.

But what of the price of crime to one’s family and those costs associated with victims of society? What happens if the magnitude of crime increases and destroys families and businesses?

Maybe then those marauding criminals will be left to feast on each other. A worthy sentence.

And what if that treatment promised for those early released drug abusers from prisons is ineffective too? Do some of these individuals then take up residence in a cardboard box?

Crime is a serious matter for all social classes, from the very poor on the South Side of Chicago, to the homes of Robert DeNiro in those wealthy enclaves of New York City, to a college frat house in Moscow, Idaho.

I suspect drug abuse and mental illness lives in those dwellings that are growing in major cities across the land, to include even smaller communities like Hagerstown.

But what if the prisons of the future could represent better places for real treatment, isolation for the wicked, better protection for communities, and something superior to our current model?

Our society will soon realize the folly of no police and prisons. Crime always creates chaos and chaos always tears at the social fabric.

While some are suggesting the elimination of police and prisons, maybe it is humanity that is broken, and a land with no laws and no rules will never put Humpty Dumpty back to together again.

Soon someone will say, “Maybe it’s time to build a few prisons. It seems that those ideas of no consequence, no police and no prisons were no good.”

Cats with catnip never seem to get it right.

Pete Waters is a Sharpsburg resident who writes for The Herald-Mail.

This article originally appeared on The Herald-Mail: Proposals of no police, no prisons foolish at best, deadly at worst