How Can we Curtail Senseless Acts of Violence in our Region (Pittsburgh: rent, crime rates)

[Hopes]

The mafia became less publicly violent. They were shooting in the streets with tommy guns in the 20s and 30s. For over half a century now, their killing is quietly done between them and their non-random victims.

[I_Like_Spam]

Originally Posted by Geeo

As others have commented, the long term solution is education and keeping kids in school. Shorter term, I have no idea how to stop it, since the cycle has already started with these young people who see no opportunity in their lives.

Throwing everyone in prison doesn't seem to help, most of them are back in prison within three years. And prisons are very costly. In the late 60s, PA had nine prisons and today it has more than 20. Each cost about $200 million to build and cost about $50 - $60 million per year to run.

Prisons are costly, but how does the cost line up with the cost of all of the grief caused by the convicts on the general public if they weren't incarcerated.

Social programs are fine, but they have to be effective. If they merely shift the crime to others in the community, that isn't really effectiveness- although its good for those who benefit.

[Aqua Teen Carl]

The reality is that we are all living in a violent country. Sure, violent crime has gone down in the past 20 years but in that same time frame we locked more of our people up than any country than any other country on Earth. That's not what I call progress. Many people want to scapegoat it for various reasons such as the availability of firearms to citizens. However, most people ignore the fact that our neighbors to the north may actually own more guns per capita than we do but have far less violent crime.

This is not going to change, especially in our lives. Americans will remain violent due to countless reasons and many fingers will be pointed in various directions. But the fact of the matter is that we as a people have always been this way and this culture won't be going away any time soon.

[eschaton]

I highly suggest anyone interested in the subject read Stephen Pinker's The Better Angels of Our Nature. The subject of the book is basically how, contrary to popular perception, the long-term trend in just about every human culture has been a decline in overall violence.

Although Pinker is Canadian, he has lived in the U.S. for decades, and a large portion of the book deals with the American experience in particular. He shows how American society in the 19th century was far, far more violent than it is today, judging by the number of recorded murders. Indeed, in the two cities he can find early 19th century murder statistics from (Philadelphia and New York) the black murder rate was not different from the white one. But a gap developed in the Victorian era, and in the 20th century it continued, with white murder rates falling rapidly, but black ones rising.

What he attributes this to is basically the "pacification" process in the U.S. worked imperfectly. In most societies, rates of violence fell because people stopped having the expectation they needed to settle their beefs with personal violence (think blood feuds, vendettas, duels, etc). They became comfortable with the law and the police as the arbitrators of justice, rather than taking it into their own hands.

Black Americans, for obvious reasons, didn't have a natural level of trust in the law to be neutral, or the police to be helpful if they put in a call. This meant that the old "code of honor" system remained in place in the black community, although it's more frequently called "the law of the streets" or "rough justice." The vast majority of elevated black-on-black violence can be attributed to areas like this (or people caught in the crossfire when it's attempted). Actual rates of predatory violence, once class is accounted for, are not substantially different, because that sort of violence tends to be something only psychopaths do, who can be born anywhere. Most gangbangers (or wannabees) in contrast are just normal kids who happened to be socialized within a culture where if you get disrespected, you need to respond with physical violence. This shouldn't be alien to us - gangs operate pretty similarly to how knights did in in the Middle Ages. In a lot of ways inner-city youth act more toward the historic norm of humanity than most Americans do.

As to how to break the cycle, I think the only way to do it is to disrupt and/or change youth culture tremendously. You could scatter the kids into stable schools so there's only a handful everywhere, and the culture of the streets dies out. Or you could work hard to build up more of a level of trust in authority. All teens and youth distrust authority to some degree, but there's headway with getting some immigrant communities (like Somalis) to build a better relationship with law enforcement in some cities, so I don't think it's impossible.

[Hopes]

Originally Posted by I_Like_Spam

As to how to break the cycle, I think the only way to do it is to disrupt and/or change youth culture tremendously. You could scatter the kids into stable schools so there's only a handful everywhere, and the culture of the streets dies out. Or you could work hard to build up more of a level of trust in authority. All teens and youth distrust authority to some degree, but there's headway with getting some immigrant communities (like Somalis) to build a better relationship with law enforcement in some cities, so I don't think it's impossible.

How much influence do you think that will have over their home environment? Many of these kids are not first generation in their family. There are elders who are pushing and encouraging them because they are the money makers supporting their parents, grandparents, etc.

[MathmanMathman]

Gun distribution.

[MathmanMathman]

Originally Posted by Hopes

Witnesses need to start speaking up!

Possibly true as there is that ridiculous code of "Don't snitch".

[eschaton]

Originally Posted by Hopes

How much influence do you think that will have over their home environment? Many of these kids are not first generation in their family. There are elders who are pushing and encouraging them because they are the money makers supporting their parents, grandparents, etc.

I'm not sure why you quoted me but I_Like_Spam's name was on the quote, but anyway...

I honestly don't think family itself is as strong of a factor here as youth culture itself. After all, a lot of people in poor rural areas grow up with horrible home environments, and even if they do end up engaging in petty crime, fairly rarely become violent criminals. And in the end, that's what we're talking about here that's really damaging. Not the dope slinging (which is the only real source of income the gangs have - pimps fly solo and do it all online now), but the fights over turf and disrespect.

Regardless, my understanding is the vast majority of former gangbangers who reach say age 35 alive and intact do regret what they did as a kid, and basically aren't a threat to anyone any longer. It's only the last 10%-20% - the real sociopaths - who cause issues later into adulthood. The kind of kids who were already torturing animals and the like when they were eight, and could just as easily have been born anywhere. The rest were just kids faking being hard to impress their friends, often with quite tragic endings.

[gg]

If you want to stop the violence, you need to keep the kids busy in sports. They need a recreation center fully funded and many coaches and or just adults watching them play fairly. Keep them busy as little kids all the way through high school and beyond. There always need to be an outlet and if they are busy with sports, they won't have time for killing each other. It really is that simple, but it costs money and lots of it. I just heard about of a rec center starting in McKeesport. They have funded over 40 kids I believe. That isn't that many, but it is a start. The fundraising was headed up by someone in my town and that is how I know about it. It takes a ton of effort and most likely outside help because it takes funding and those areas don't have it.

[wpipkins2]

Originally Posted by MathmanMathman

Possibly true as there is that ridiculous code of "Don't snitch".

The snitching thing is a code between criminals who are into criminal activities. The do not snitch code has nothing to do with everyday people living in violent neighborhoods. Witnesses do not come forward do to the "do not snitch code", they do not come forward for fear of retaliation. The fear of retaliation is real and has been proven over the years. There have been many instances of witness intimidation and witnesses murdered in order to prevent them from testifying in court. The media has the facts about snitching twisted.