Keepers of the Peace: Violent Disruption, Not Crime

The starting point: the California commutation

"That death row change in California is such a tricky thing, and it is one of those appeals to emotion."

"It's more about idea of the death penalty. There is no moral answer. Morality was thrown out by the people given the death sentence. I get the idea of not wanting to kill an innocent. We are not talking about that, no where does it actually say thou shall not kill. It says thou shall not murder"

"Well we would die if we did not kill"

"So then where can the immorality be. The public has identified a member that can not or will not play along, so the idea is just keep them as a burden for life."

"We all die, how and when are the variables. And we in putting them in prison for life have already decided their path to death, and now we are going to be sure they live as long as possible. That is not sensible"

"It's one of those hard choices leadership has to make"

Background, as Nova checked in the chat (not Jack's words): Gov. Newsom announced Nov 5, 2026 he is commuting all 548 people on California's death row to life without parole — 529 men and 19 women. California has not executed anyone since 2006. About one-third applies immediately; the rest is reviewed by the California Supreme Court first, because state law requires court review for anyone with multiple felony convictions. This is not a release: the commuted sentences are life in prison without parole.

The pattern, not the incident

"It's the same as dumping people back on the streets. How many repeat offenders do have running around."

Jack then corrected that himself, in the same conversation:

"No that commutation is not about repeat offenders, but it shows the same emotional appeal for the same group of people, those seriously victimizing society. We have become to soft to protect ourselves even from the small % of our population that commits the majority of our crimes"

"Well it's a recognition of pattern. Anyone could find themselves on the wrong side of an incident a few times over a normal life time. I mean I've never been charged with more than traffic violations, and I've admitted to doing things that were illegal when I did them not once or twice but over extended spans of time. So the small % identify themselves usually pretty quickly. Your not going to eliminate anything but we are not even really mitigating. Now theft is essentially allowed as long as it's small enough"

Background, as Nova checked in the chat: the concentration finding is the Philadelphia Birth Cohort (about 6% of the cohort accounting for about 52% of arrests), a 2025 editorial putting the chronic core at roughly 5–10% of offenders, and the Pelotas cohort (5% chronic offenders, 57% of crimes). On theft: California Prop 47 (2014) made theft under $950 a misdemeanor; Prop 36 (Nov 2024) allows a felony charge after two or more prior theft convictions. Arizona draws the line at $1,000.

The core distinction: violent disruption, not crime

"It's not even crime itself we need to watch for so much. It's violent disruption, and it doesn't have to mean lock then away, or kill them. There is a big difference in someone who quietly embezzled from his work, and people who use violent methods to achieve the same ends"

"That view makes the police line of not actually law enforcement, though that's what they have become in a very broken way. But keepers of the peace"

"Not much economic or social growth happen in war zones"

Background, as Nova checked in the chat: Peel's 1829 Metropolitan Police was framed around prevention of crime, peace-keeping, and preservation of "public tranquillity"; Lord Scarman revived that priority in his 1981 Brixton report. Peel's test: "The test of police efficiency is the absence of crime and disorder, not the visible evidence of police action in dealing with it."

The extreme example

"And we keep dumping the same people that just victimized a place, right back in it. Look at the extreme example of the Irena Zaruska or something close to that, she was stabbed on a train just sitting in her seat. The man that stabbed her had shown himself to have major issues that he would never manage on his own. Yet he was on his own"

The name, as Nova verified in the chat, is Iryna Zarutska, 23, stabbed Aug 22, 2025 on the Lynx Blue Line in Charlotte. The man charged, Decarlos Brown Jr., had 14 prior arrests in Mecklenburg County, a schizophrenia diagnosis, a mother who said she sought involuntary commitment and was denied, and a January 2025 911-misuse charge after calls about a "man-made material" controlling his body, released without bond. He was later found incompetent to proceed to trial.

"And that event might not have been predictable, but that would be more events was obvious"

Helping as net positive — and what the studies leave out

"Yes and we either have decided even knowing that helping the people that actually need it ends up a net positive for society even minus the resources we have to use in their care or assistance"

"And that study did it calculate or even mention 2nd and 3rd order effects. All those events and many that go unreported impacted others from that point forward"

"So even the basement shows our approach is backwards, yet we kick and scream about fixing it. That these are questions is even pretty silly"

Background, as Nova checked in the chat: the ASU / Morrison Institute figure was about $52,000 a year for stable supportive housing versus about $73,000 a year homeless — about $21,000 saved, on health care, criminal justice, and housing costs only. No victim costs, no trauma to families, no witnesses, no community fear, no unreported events were counted in that figure. Broader estimates cited in the chat put a single murder at about $9 million to society and crime at about $2.6 trillion a year in the US — those are estimates, not Jack's figures, and the draft does not present them as his.

Open tensions, left for Jack, not resolved here

1. Mitigation without locking away or killing: Jack says it does not have to mean lock them away or kill them. Nova suggested in the chat — separation, monitoring, deterrence, intervention — but those were Nova's words, not Jack's. What mitigation is, in his framework, is an open slot.
2. Who decides: the public "has identified a member that can not or will not play along." Who does the identifying, and by what test, without repeating the error and bias problem the other side raises (wrongful conviction, who gets sentenced)? That question was raised in the chat and is recorded here as a question, not as Jack's answer.
3. The "basement" point: even the direct-cost saving alone says pay for help rather than pay for disruption. The draft does not add a policy mechanism for how that help is delivered or who runs it.