In truth, nobody wants to live in an area in which crime is rampant, and of which citizens are afraid to be about their business, because the streets are not safe. Yet, that is the way that things are in certain enclaves of society, of which the go-to response to the problem is either one of ignoring such, because those living within those conditions have no voice, or by responding with an overly rambunctious police enforcement of law and order. What seems to be missing in the equation, though, is that those who are ill-educated, live within zones of poverty, and lack the opportunity to have a reasonable chance to better their situation are not the same people who are typically going to represent, at their best, productive and good citizens.
Look, the bottom line is that because our police forces in many cities have become militarized, it is relatively easy for law enforcement to come into communities with overwhelming force to do whatever that it is that they have been instructed to do, but the end result, after it is all said and done, is that whatever the proximate problem is that has caused the need for law enforcement to respond with authority, is typically never resolved by simply arresting and incarcerating individuals willy-nilly. That is to say, the discontent that certain communities exhibit often has prevailing reasons for that discontent, thereby indicating that a better and a more mature response to this pressing issue is to come up with programs that will help alleviate or deal constructively with the troubles that a particular community is suffering from.
Injustice can be defined in many ways, but one of those definitions is the fact that fairness, empathy, and a lack of interest in understanding what factors are causing the problems and issues are pretty much being pushed aside, so that the law can simply wreak havoc upon the people, with the basic attitude of “out of sight, out of mind.” Indeed, while this might seem to work on a particular day, it doesn’t work for the long term, because the root of the problem has not been constructively looked at, or dealt with in a way and manner that a long-term solution would ever come to the fore.
The United States incarcerates an incredible number of people, seemingly indicating that this Western nation somehow produces an outsized amount of criminals, in this the richest nation in the world. It would be one thing if all those so being incarcerated thereby meant the problem was taken care of, and hence all those now living in those communities were happy and satisfied with their lot, but this is not the case, whatsoever. This thereby indicates that enforcing more law and order won’t resolve what needs to be resolved, and the reason that this is true is that the underlying problem has not been successfully addressed, and until this happens, this nation will continue to represent injustice and discontent for a significant amount of its citizens, who know that what is so occurring to them is unfair and it isn’t right.