"Tough on crime" policies don't actually lead to less crime. If they did, the US would be among the safest countries on the planet.

Seattle, which is "soft on crime", is a relatively safe city with lower rates of violent crime per capita than Phoenix, Des Moines, Denver, Corpus Christi, and more. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_United_States_cities_b...

But getting back to my original question, I seriously doubt "tough on crime" policies in Redmond were implemented to help the homeless. More likely, they were implemented to keep poor people away.

My theory is that most people complaining about homelessness in cities like Seattle don't actually care about the homeless people. What they care about is that they have to see homelessness. So long as homelessness isn't visible then it's not a problem and whether that's done through charity or relocation or incarceration is irrelevant.

But I hope I'm wrong! I'd like to believe people aren't that cruel, so if Redmond has a solution that is compassionate and helpful I would genuinely love to know what they're doing.

These statistics are fundamentally untrustworthy. Nobody reports crimes if they know that the police and the DA don't care.

Murder and nonnegligent manslaughter is a pretty reliable metric, since police get called and they actually have to show up when there's a dead body.

Seattle ranks 77th when you sort by that column!