Moral High Ground when combined with Incorrect

There are many in the world that believe choosing the path of highest moral stance is valid by default; that actions aligning with the purest form of (for example) pacifism, justice, tolerance and honesty are never wrong. That a life lived committing no sin is a good one.

I say this is entirely wrong, and while anyone can lead whatever life they want, in the public sphere when an example of reaching for higher moral ground has resulted in harm or waste then someone should pay in way that subtracts, weakens and shortens their tenure in this world.

My words are all abstract so far, so here is an example.

There are many who believe in leniency for criminals, sometimes believing that society or "the system" are to blame, or believe if we jail one innocent person our society is guilty of some higher crime.

I believe when the courts decide to allow someone on the street after police have arrested them, and prosecutors have made a case for their guilt, and that subject then commits a significant violent crime; then the jurisdiction associated with that court should be sued and forced to pay a figure high enough to have an effect on that community's ability to function. For reference I give this story of a man who has murdered and hurt people since he was a teen, yet the courts erred towards leniency in all the cases against him. The legal society of this man's community chose to avoid the stigma of putting a teenage boy in prison for life. Now several people are dead. We as a society tend to move on, assigning the monster label to this killer but holding in high regard the system that treated a teen as a child rather than as a killer. I say the monster is the system that knew of his violent tendencies, but chose to be kind. That kindness needs to be punished in a way the weakens the entire entity practicing the kindness.

• Wash. to pay $3 million settlement for killings by ex-con

Cheaper Web 2.0 Crimefighting

Greg Whisenant, CEO of CrimeReports.com, said that given the state of the economy, those in public safety need to take advantage of every opportunity available to help citizens become more informed.

"Budgets are getting cut and we need to find new and innovative ways to use tools to our advantage to engage the public," said Whisenant, whose site aids law enforcement agencies in communicating crime data to the public.

-Police departments keeping public informed on Twitter -CNN

After looking at CrimeReports.com, and SPD's own SPDblotter, I'm thinking this is only 40% of the solution. These examples get official police documentation of crime quickly to the public, applaudable but too narrow if not augmented.

The remaining 59% of the solution ( 59 + 40 = 99, there is no 100% solution to social constructs ) is with citizen reporting. And I don't just mean human citizens, I mean an endless army of citizen created surveillance cameras. This grid of cameras then needs to be available for monitoring by anyone with web access, with a trickle up construct in which people who can take action against the crime are triggered.

We are in a global depression, everything we've been used to in the last 50 years in terms of "services" may evaporate. We will likely see more and more unsolved murders and home invasions if citizens assume police departments have the resources to solve crime. Citizens need to make crime more easily solved, more cheaply solved.

Anti-crime technology: Device knows when it is stolen

Sun Microsystems is promoting a world in which devices are networked. Add to that RFID, and we have a world of objects managed digitally.

Here is an idea I would love see implemented: objects know when they are stolen, and do the right thing ( such as contact owner and proper authorities ) to get back to their proper owner. Bruce Sterling has described a world of these types of things, and calls them Spimes.

For all who would opt out of this, fine. In a depression era economy, I also offer as an idea for police departments: Provide little or no assistance for those who make law enforcement and investigations expensive. By "make law enforcement expensive" I mean people and their objects are not on the grid, not watched, not trackable, and anonymous.

Resilient Community: Online Crime Watch and Alerts

Seattle 911 Police Blog has an interesting example of community information sharing here: PDFs: Other crime alerts sent this month to UW students.

In that example the UW is sending crime incident alerts to students. Here are my examples of extending that communication style:

1. Police precincts offer an email alert system to local residents, with info duplicated on a website.
2. A cooperative second tier is created for citizens to share information, sometimes augmenting the police alerts and other times referring to incidents or suspicious conduct unknown to police.
3. Seattle has neighborhood association offices, one in each neighborhood. It would be nice to keep the physical/real offices open, and augment with an online version. The physical office could even serve the online version by providing a place to sign up as a member of the online community, as a way to keep random people outside the true community from participating in the forum.
4. These community information systems need a true residents only layer of activity, and a wall-less layer where information is available to the whole world, both the specific incident information and the community's communication style. This keeps trolls out of my neighborhood discussion space, but makes the whole operation open source for the world.

I just wrote an entry on civic wrangling, and John Robb just wrote about community security here. The UW email alert example and my extensions are a more concrete, incremental treading through the topic space.

This part of the blog entry goes to another level related to the crime watch/resilient community topic. I can anticipate one hurdle to open sourcing a community's problems, big property owners might see this as negative PR and potential for lowering their property values. This would be the opposition point between absentee investors versus people truly in the community. For the investor, the problem space is all abstract, with marketing spin the main means of improving the property. For those truly living in the residence, the problem space is not abstract, with personal safety, transportation, access to grocery supplies, and a million other pragmatisms making or breaking the situation.

A resilient community will not PR itself out of problems.

Christian Science Monitor -Neighbors on Patrol