But society first needs to be in a degraded state for most criminals to exist, as most only meet their basic needs through criminal means, such as food, shelter, health and education.
"Most" in the absolute terms, not in the relative (e.g. percentual) way you may be interpreting my comment. And anyway there is always going to be criminals, but its not remotely the same thing when your national average thief steals one thing per year vs one thing per day.
Society has been persistently degraded since time immemorial, because of the presence of organized crime. The only thing that's changed since Prohibition is the genetic makeup of the gangstas who are in charge.
#BlackLivesMatter came about because the police have been--somewhat unwillingly--waging open warfare against gangbangers for decades in the inner city. The gangbangers all have guns and the cops have heavy weaponry that sometimes protects them and oftentimes blows away a few low-ranked gangbangers who might've just completed initiation, or weren't even affiliated but just hanging out at a party.
So what #BLM and #DefundthePolice people are saying is, enough is enough with this open warfare, you're killing children and innocent people, the cops are too powerful.
But gangs offer societal structure: they offer belonging, they offer community, they offer encouragement and brotherhood. They offer economic opportunity. They offer lifelong careerism. That flavor of opportunity can't be had in a public school or a legitimate job.
So gangs aren't going away; gangs are part of the fabric of society because they're providing tangible benefits for many members and non-members alike.
But how will they disarm themselves? How will they offer truces to the cops and reconcile, swords into plowshares? If gangs don't go away then they need to be pacified or the open gang warfare will continue to get cops involved, and the gangs will continue to shoplift and fence and operate all sorts of low-level criminal enterprise with impunity. So what to fix?
