The Outstater
Crime Is a Root Cause
MY CITY is addressing public policy in the starkest terms. Youth violence and encampments of derelicts are problems without easy answers. Yet, answers, however imperfect, can be sought, social order can be attempted.
Nobody likes to send a young man to jail or to order a troubled mind for treatment. In every case there are dozens of reasons, beginning with dysfunctional homes and economic hardships, that beg mercy and compassion. Government wields too heavy a hand to assume the natural moral authority of the family or community.
But what happens when we ignore societal breakdown? What happens when we defund the policy, tear down Chesterton’s fence?
Perhaps “ignore” is the wrong word. “Fumble” is a better choice. This week, our mayor tried to answer the concern of a city councilman that the downtown had become unsafe. She released a list of steps she was taking, e.g., the hiring of a “manager of homeless services,” the creation of a mental health commission, an encampment task force, a methodical counting of the homeless and the obligatory request for more funding.
Are we trying to keep ourselves busy chasing the ephemera of social justice so we don’t notice we are failing society itself?
We spend millions rebuilding our downtown, and the homeless defecate in the storefront alcoves and juveniles shoot each other in the parks. Is that to be accepted as modern urban life, as a senator intimated this week? If so, why do we have laws against such things as assault and dereliction anyway?
There are 2.6 trillion reasons. That is the dollar estimate by Vanderbilt researchers of the direct annual costs of crime. That is 3.2 percent of U.S. gross domestic production and more than what is spent on either military or welfare programs — enough, in other words, to break a nation.
The indirect costs, however, are what bother me most. The Vanderbilt researchers say the cost of crime should include not only that to individual victims but to the community at large. For crime drives away prosperity. Every tick increase in the crime rate means fewer investments made, fewer jobs listed, fewer opportunities offered, fewer families formed, fewer homes built, fewer lives fulfilled.
This is all invisible as a policy matter — simply too gradual. Its summation, though, can be viewed. There are aerial photos of St. Louis, Baltimore, Detroit and Gary where crime has been allowed its way. They look like they’ve been hit by atomic bombs (although Hiroshima and Nagasaki recovered).
Investors both flee and avoid crime, especially violent crime and property crime, abandoning the guilty and the innocent alike. And that begins at some otherwise nondescript point in our policy deliberations. I suggest it is when, like our mayor, we first conflate personal compassion with public order.
A study out of the University of Colorado shows that in graphic form (chart above.) Cities with high crime have a statistically significant relationship with higher rates of poverty and lower rates of employment. The author’s policy recommendation:
“Focus on ensuring respect for private property rights, an effective police force, prosecutors willing to enforce the rule of law, and fair courts; this will enhance economic prosperity of your citizens and diminish poverty in your cities and state.”
Our system of justice is not merciless. There is in this country the sanctity of the individual as manifest in the Constitution. And there is Christian charity in the personal decisions made daily by police, prosecutors, judges, juries and neighbors that fully consider human fragility. We must trust them to do this difficult work, not politicized commissions and task forces. — tcl
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