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Actions and reactions as far as crimes go is fine with me, no need to intimidate people though surely? Just warn and then issue a suitable punishment (fines, jail, whatever) as decided by the masses? From the rioting point of view: get enough police on the case and don't budge... detain those who dare to push their luck, excessive force would have been mindless and would've upped the aggression (at that time or at future riots, etc).

As far as respect for the police goes... In my opinion respect doesn't come from experience or humiliation (the opposite rings true for me), respect comes from having care. Perhaps you went down a different path because you cared about what your parents thought, or some other external insight from the careless/no regard for social "norms" mentality?

Essentially instilling social "norms"/laws through aggression/intimidation is never going to work in my opinion, you have to work out why some individuals decided to cut lose from lawful society and go from there.

fines and jail are not a deterrent any more. Not for people with no money or community.

OF course, you could say if we rebuild the community, and socially mobilise people, then they will somehow revert to a less criminal way of life, but in my opinion, it is only the people themselves who can make that happen, and in their hopeless current state of mind, they would never let it happen.

I suppose you can look at the military process, of breaking a person down, through humiliation and intimidation, then re-establishing their values, building them back up, as a microcosm of what the penal system was originally supposed to do. However, now that the game has changed, both in in the streets and the system, it has lost it's power.

haha, "penal".