Whenever crime becomes a major issueāas it has in Philadelphia right nowāwe progressives offer up a set of answers to the crime problem. Most of our answers focus on what we call the “root causes” of crime. We talk about the economic distress in neighborhoods that leaves too many people without decent jobs. We talk about the problems in families that leaves too many children without the supervision, and in some case, the love, they need to grow up right. We talk about the inadequate education that leaves too many of our young people without the skills they need to make it in the contemporary economy. We talk about the lack of after school programs, recreation programs, and mentoring programs to help the many young people who are at-risk for turning to crime.
Everyone one of those ideas is right. Without economic growth that includes everyone, without decent schools that serve everyone, without mentoring programs and recreation programs that serve everyone, we are not going to transform the circumstances in our neighborhoods that lead to high crime rates.
But, for two reasons, those programs are not sufficient. And we progressives need to start talking not just about root causes of crime but about how to reduce crime now.
First, even if we had a strong progressive movement that could build the political will to fund all those programs today, they will be a long time in taking effect. However, crime is a problem today. Young people are being senselessly murdered today. And everyone in high crime neighborhoods suffer today from both the pervasive fear that comes with hearing gunshots every night and with the broader distress caused by high crime rates.
Second, that broader distress is a barrier to all the good things that we progressives want.
Poverty certainly causes crime. But crime also causes poverty in many different ways. Crime dramatically raises the costs of doing business. Thus crime makes it harder for people to open new businesses and stores in high crime areas. Racism is one, but not the only explanation for the lack of supermarkets in many poor neighborhoods. Crime is another explanation. The lack of businesses means that people who are already living in difficult economic circumstances have to pay much more for every day goods than people who live in more prosperous neighborhoods. And it also means that there are far fewer jobs available in these same neighborhoods.
Crime undermines the after school, recreation, and mentoring programs we progressives want. Parents are less willing to let their children attend those programs if it means that their kids have to walk dangerous streets later in the day.
Crime gives young people bad role models of success. When the person driving the best car in the neighborhood dropped out of school to deals drugs, how does the straight and narrow life look to impressionable kids?
And that is especially true because crime undermines the hope young people need if they are to imagine themselves in any conventional kind of success later in life? Children who frequently attend funerals for their classmates will begin to find it difficult even to imagine a life beyond their twenties.
We have to address the root cause of crime. But it will be harder to do so unless we can get a handle on our crime rate today.
If there really were nothing we could do today, or in the next few months, to reduce crime, then we might just throw our hands up.
But other cities, such as New York and Boston, have adopted effective crime fighting strategies that have dramatically reduced the crime rate in a relatively short time.
In the next post, I’m going to describe some of those strategies. Then, in the third one in this series, I am going to offer some guessesāI don’t really have more than guesses at the momentāabout why Philadelphia has not adopted those strategies.