As for why people espouse them, I grew up in the stereotypical working class family of four. Two parents who weren't always happily married, one sister, and me in an 890 square foot 3 bed, two bath on a tiny lot. It was the largely Black and Hispanic part of a mostly white town with factories and tourist attractions. My dad never graduated college, and my sister did before my mom enrolled.

Let me tell you, the police never did a thing for me but harass me. I was sexually assaulted as a young boy, but of course nobody at the police department would take a child's word over a teenager's. I was stopped in front of my home one night by six cruisers, one officer with a shotgun out, because an off-duty officer saw me swerve within a lane to miss a couple of potholes half an hour earlier. My sister's book of checks were stolen out of our mailbox, and the police found out who did it. My sister was away at university and had her account frozen. She had to beg and borrow money until it all got fixed. But the police refused to release the identity of the thief for a civil suit because "the bank is the only victim". My car was damaged on the high school lot, but the police wouldn't even take a report because the school district should handle it. The school district refused to release the information for the other damaged car because "that would be a violation of a student's privacy". In another town in another state I had a motorcycle stolen. I raised hell with the police and DA's office. It was finally recovered, but they decided not to arrest or prosecute the thief because he returned it. He returned it with about $1200 worth of damage to a $900 street legal, licensed bike. When I went to the DA's office in person to complain, two ADAs had a conversation in front of the waiting room about "that guy with the motorcycle" who "probably let his dealer borrow it and was slow to get it back".

I had plenty of friends coerced into residential rehab for minor drug usage because it was a criminal offense. So rather than going on with their lives or getting some outpatient counseling, they lost their jobs and often their homes. I have a friend who lost a lucrative job with a huge multinational company because he had a breakdown related to his bipolar disorder while at work. He ended up couch surfing a while between jobs until he found another one.

So, yeah, call me elitist. I think money could be better spent actually helping people who need it than sneering at them and threatening them when they're already the victims.