San Antonio City Councilman: We Won’t Need Prisons If We Embrace Socialism

Socialism is more properly defined as the people controlling all industry. In practice, though, it’s the government running everything and handing everything to the people based on their needs, taking from others according to what they have.

So, when a politician says that we should give people housing, healthcare, and transportation in exchange for absolutely nothing, then they’re essentially talking about socialism, even if it’s a socialist framework existing within an otherwise free market system.

We have a certain degree of that as it stands, with public housing, Section 8 rent payments, and Medicaid, but it doesn’t go as far as many on the left would like.

And for one San Antonio city councilman, if we take those next steps, we wouldn’t need prisons.

San Antonio city councilman says we won’t need prisons if we give people healthcare, transportation, and housing

Very common worldview amongst Texas city councilpersons pic.twitter.com/5lIVOWFaxu

— ATX data (@data_atx) April 20, 2026

Now, listen to the video for yourself. You’ll see he wasn’t misrepresented. He actually says we wouldn’t need prisons.

Which, I’m sure, is why literally every other country on the planet, including those with the exact same kind of socialist framework to any degree, have prisons.

The councilman, Jalen McKee-Rodriguez, thinks that we’re faced with only two options. One is to lock people up for every little thing, and the other is to just hand out taxpayer money on literally everything, and suddenly, the crime will vanish. It shows a startling lack of understanding about the world.

First, I happen to think we have too many laws on the books. Too many things exist that would allow the police to lock us up, turn us into felons for life, and lead to massive problems if everyone were actually caught. Most of us would find ourselves in prison for things we didn’t even know were crimes.

You can advocate for fewer inane laws while still recognizing that some people are just going to be criminals.

Plus, this idea that people just need treatment, housing, food, transportation, and healthcare to suddenly be good members of society ignores some basic aspects of humanity. Namely, people aren’t always motivated by having their basic needs met by the government in some way. They want more. They want power. They want to see people afraid of them. They want more than the minimum and will do anything, literally anything, to get more, other than get a real job.

How are you going to actually punish rapists, child molesters, murderers, drug dealers, and the like with “treatment?”

There’s no cure for pedophilia that doesn’t involve a bullet or a wood chipper. There are drugs you can use to push down these people’s urges, but it’s not enough in and of itself to actually cure them, and if they stop taking their meds, well…

Rape isn’t about sex, but power. How are you going to treat the lust for that power over another? Sure, there are therapies, but they’re not 100 percent effective.

Nothing about this proposal is anything but leftist claptrap being presented as actual fact.

I get thinking we’ve locked up too many people, and wanting to minimize that. I think we can find solutions that don’t ignore the harsh reality that some people are always going to think the rules don’t apply to them and will step out of bounds in order to benefit their own selfish desires.

We don’t need to be absolute idiots like McKee-Rodriguez.

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