(2008-07-09) Robb Foreclosure Violence

John Robb on the possible effect of Fore Closure increases on the Crime Rate, esp in Suburb and Edge City areas.

A commenter points to a recent Atlantic Monthly article suggesting that the already-increasing Crime Rate in mid-size cities is coming from dispersing the people who were living in Public Housing, pushing marginal neighborhoods past a Tipping Point. New York City, where the rate of violent crime has plummeted, appears to have pushed many of its poor out to New Jersey, where violent crime has increased in nearby cities and suburbs... Researchers have started to look more critically at the Gautreaux results. The sample was tiny, and the circumstances were ideal (Social Science). The families who moved to the suburbs were screened heavily and the vast majority of families who participated in the program didn't end up moving, suggesting that those who did were particularly motivated... The victims, she notes, are seldom white. "There are decent African American neighborhoods - neighborhoods of choice - that are going down," she said. Once you destroy a Complex System (the pre-Projects city), it's hard to get back any Emergence that was there.

There's a recent article about gang violence in Chicago. Half of Chicago's murders in 2006 were linked to gangs... Chicago's muddled response frustrates David Kennedy of the John Jay College of Criminal Justice in New York. He notes that in the 1990s Boston Ma brought together federal, state and local agencies, community groups, religious leaders and others (including himself) to fight violence. A main feature of the scheme was to locate gang members and tell them that help and services were available, but that violence would be met with severe penalties. If someone was killed, not only would prosecutors pursue the killer, but police would nail other gang members for smaller crimes. This would create an economic disincentive to kill - shooting a rival would badly disrupt gang business. The programme was launched in 1996. Youth murders plummeted. Long-term studies show a two-thirds drop.