Why Focus More on Public Safety and Order? Kids Need More of It.
Key Points
- Community violence is one of the factors examined in a new book called “Doing Right by Kids,” which examines how we can improve relationships, institutions, and community environments to expand upward mobility among kids.
- The book features a chapter from GCO’s director of criminal justice initatives, Josh Crawford, explaining how community violence affects kids and their futures. See an excerpt below.
- “Doing Right by Kids” is a thoughtful, accessible guide to improving opportunities in the communities where children’s lives are formed. Get a copy of the book here.
Public safety and community violence are more critical now than they have ever been. With increasing societal tensions and the lingering effects of the pandemic, Americans—including Georgians—want to feel secure in their neighborhoods. The path to achieving this sense of security is clear: fund the police, hold violent offenders accountable, and ensure a fair and just system that doesn’t allow fear and lawlessness to prevail.
At the Georgia Center for Opportunity, we believe that addressing public safety and community violence is essential for creating thriving communities. This belief is echoed in a new book, “Doing Right by Kids: Leveraging Social Capital and Innovation to Increase Opportunity,” which features a pivotal chapter by our very own Josh Crawford, GCO’s director of criminal justice initiatives.
In his chapter, Josh explores the significant impact of public safety and community violence on children and provides insightful solutions for rebuilding social capital and fostering safe environments.
Below is an excerpt from Josh’s chapter, “Kids and Community Violence: Costs, Consequences, and Solutions.” You can also read the full chapter here.
When it comes to improving opportunities for kids, we need better ideas. Now they’re here.
When it comes to improving opportunities for kids, we need better ideas. Now they’re here.
Get your copy of “Doing Right by Kids” today.
“Doing Right by Kids” Excerpt: Why Focus More on Public Safety and Public Order?
Walk into any suburban coffee shop in a low-crime neighborhood and look around. You’ll quickly notice the tables are populated by tens of thousands of dollars’ worth of laptops and smartphones, and designer purses sit on the floor. These items often go unguarded when patrons pick up their coffees or go to the bathroom. It’s the normal course of business in these establishments. No one fears these items will be stolen. There is an unconscious presupposition of public safety. This is what happens when the public order is upheld.
When this presumption of safety falls apart, however, people change their behavior. Following the expansion of remote work during the coronavirus pandemic, workers in New York City cited violence and crime as the primary reasons for not wanting to return to the office. Research on crime avoidance also finds that households will pay a premium to avoid violence. One 2011 study of families in the San Francisco Bay Area in California found that the average household was willing to pay $472 per year to avoid a 10 percent increase in violent crime.
The United States has had varying degrees of success in public safety over the years. In the modern context, violent crime peaked in the United States in 1991 with 758.1 instances per 100,000 people, an increase of more than 470 percent from 1960. Homicide, the most destructive and permanent of the violent offenses, peaked in 1980 at a rate of 10.2 per 100,000 residents and in 1991 with a rate of 9.8 per 100,000 residents; in 1960 the murder rate had been almost half that at 5.1 per 100,000 residents.
After 1991, as a result of a number of changes in policing, sentencing, and a wide array of other hotly debated factors, homicide and violent crime declined significantly in cities across the country (Figures 1 and 2). This decline continued until 2014, when the homicide rate reached 4.4 per 100,000 and the violent-crime rate was 379.4 per 100,000. While this was a huge improvement from the highs of 1991, the violent-crime rate in 2014 was still more than double the rate in 1960. It has trended in the wrong direction in recent years, with a jump in homicides in 2020.
Figure 1. US Homicide Rate per 100,000, 1960-2022
Figure 2. US Violent-Crime Rate per 100,000, 1960-2022
While the long-run decline in crime is important, it is ultimately too reassuring because no one lives in “the nation.” Aggregated data erase important variations from state to state, city to city, and neighborhood to neighborhood. People live in communities, not the whole nation.
Despite these declines in violent crime often being disproportionately experienced in disadvantaged neighborhoods, violence continues to concentrate at the sub-city level. One study of gun violence in Boston, for example, found that these crimes were concentrated in less than five percent of one-block street segments and intersections. The “law of crime concentration” generally states that in large cities, about 50 percent of crime occurs in about five percent of street segments. Crime is even more concentrated in smaller cities, where, on average, between two and four percent of street segments are responsible for 50 percent of violence. These micro-communities lack the minimum levels of safety and order that are precursors for human flourishing, and the effects of their violence propagate beyond these few hot zones.
Philosopher and political theorist James Burnham observed:
Human beings must have at least a minimum security in life and property, must be able to move through the streets and between the cities, must accept certain common rules in their mutual intercourse, or civilization does not exist. If this necessary order is subverted, the civilization is destroyed, whether the subversion takes place from the best or worst of motives, whether or not it is in some supposedly moral sense justified, whether it is carried out by saints or devils. At some point the guardians of a civilization must be prepared to draw the line.
For far too many children, this kind of order has been inconsistent at best and nonexistent at worst. For children in these neighborhoods, violence is pervasive and affects them both directly and indirectly. Those directly affected are the youth that join criminal street gangs and become perpetrators, as well as those who are either victimized themselves or kin to victims. Those indirectly affected are those who neither become perpetrators nor victims but who contend with the persistent fear, stress, and isolation that comes with growing up in a community with high rates of violence.
Bridging the gap for America’s kids
Overall, “Doing Right By Kids” explores the truth that, while material hardship among American children is at an all-time low, upward mobility is still difficult for children in poor households and neighborhoods. Despite reduced hardship, children born to disadvantaged parents are still likely to grow up disadvantaged due to counterproductive policies within our safety net.
The belief that increased financial support alone will advance poor children is inadequate. While progressive strategies have fallen short, conservative skepticism towards government intervention has also neglected the needs of these children.
Truly supporting America’s kids requires focusing on the building blocks of healthy and fulfilling lives—from neighborhood environments to family life to educational opportunities. “Doing Right By Kids” offers innovative proposals to rebuild social capital by strengthening relationships and institutions for children and adolescents, advocating for experimental approaches to identify effective, scalable policies.
For policymakers, community leaders, parents, and concerned citizens, “Doing Right by Kids” is a thoughtful, accessible guide to learning more about what kids really need from us and our society in order to thrive.
Go here to get a copy and to share the book with neighbors and colleagues.