One of my friends from high school has considered becoming a cop because criminology is easy. He was always a little chuddy but more because he wasn't that bright and came from a poor background. He was usually well intentioned.

  • Funkydick [none/use name]
    ·
    3 years ago

    That's one of the reasons the entire corrections industry is as it is. It appeals to people who aren't that smart. If they were smart, they'd go into another profession. How'd you like to spend your life hanging around inside a prison with that crowd?

    If smart people would just start going into corrections en masse things would get a lot better very quickly.

      • Funkydick [none/use name]
        ·
        3 years ago

        They literally won't let you be a police officer if you're too smart. They say patrolling for hours on end is dull and intelligent people need constant stimulation.

        I think it's just because they don't want any smart people in there who will figure out what they're up to.

        • Melon [she/her,they/them]
          ·
          3 years ago

          It's a widespread but not universal policy for police departments to bar people who are perceived as intelligent. Police departments are notoriously bad at following through on hiring practices, too.

      • SolidaritySplodarity [they/them]
        ·
        3 years ago

        There's value in not reinforcing the idea that it's about intrinsic, unchangeable qualities, and in particular about inherent intelligence.

        But in typical vernacular this is how people are going to talk about it even if they just mean someone's getting Ds and Fs. And people do get pushed down different paths based on how well they do in certain courses.

    • TrudeauCastroson [he/him]
      ·
      edit-2
      3 years ago

      I could not disagree more, just because cops are dumb doesn't means smart cops would be better.

      Then they'd just be better at hiding drugs on people smh. Also do you not think that the entire system isn't set up to protect itself?

      I've seen your take more than once in the wild, but there's many places where the police still suck even though you need to be more qualified than :amerikkka:. It's almost like the institution inherently sucks because it must be reactionary to protect the interests of the ruling class.

      Corrections also can't really get better because incarceration is bad because of how society views criminal behaviour as mostly a moral failing instead of a systemic failure.

      • Funkydick [none/use name]
        ·
        3 years ago

        I’ve seen your take more than once in the wild

        They literally have intelligence tests, and if you score too high they won't let you enter the police academy. They consider it a waste of resources to train you because you'll just quit out of boredom.

        • TrudeauCastroson [he/him]
          ·
          edit-2
          3 years ago

          I think there's an unconscious implication in your comment that low IQ people can't be nice or develop class consciousness, and I think a dumb person who means well can become a cop and quit because they don't want to beat up homeless people.

          I also think you're falling hard into good cop fallacy, where if more good people became cops the institution suddenly wouldn't suck, which discounts the history of the police, what they do, how they protect capital, and the defund movement.

          I have heard that IQ test thing before but it's largely irrelevant tbh, they have other non-IQ tests to weed out people who don't have terminal cases of cop-mentality. And not all places with bad cops even do the high IQ based filtering

          • Funkydick [none/use name]
            ·
            edit-2
            3 years ago

            I think there’s an unconscious implication in your comment that low IQ people can’t be nice

            Where'd you even get that? That thought is in your brain, not mine. I said they won't let people whose IQ is too high into the police academy.

            I think low IQ people are some of the nicest in the world. They don't become CEOs or start wars. You know who starts wars? High IQ people.

            • TrudeauCastroson [he/him]
              ·
              edit-2
              3 years ago

              Well to me it seems like you implied high IQ cops would fix the issue.

              They stop higher IQ people because they think they'll get bored, not because they think they'll fix the system.

              If you aren't making the point I read into it then I just don't understand why you brought up the IQ tests. To me it's not relevant unless you're making that point. And I see libs bring it up a lot like if we pay more then smart people become cops then problem solved.

    • GalaxyBrain [they/them]
      ·
      3 years ago

      My grandpa on my mom's side was a 'prison guard' but for literally the lowest security rural 'prison' ever. It was basically a work around to government fund shelter for the few homeless people in the super rural area he was in. There was only a few and they'd do farm work and bum around for summer and be shit out of luck come winter so they'd bust a window or whatever and hunker it out in the jail. It was basically kept open cause it was easier than finding less than ten homeless people over a wide rural area to get them into one central shelter. Shit has changed hard and it's been closed for a while and now the homeless out there just die in the winter. It was a crappy awful workaround for shitty funding and infrastructure that forced the poor to do a small prison stay to not freeze and capitalism is bad. Trains are good.