Can we end violence?

Commentary by
David Muhammad

For the past 20 years, violent crime has plagued inner cities across the nation. Several temporary efforts have had a significant impact on reducing violence but eventually fizzle. Even the renowned “Boston Miracle” or the Chicago “Cease Fire” models that are being duplicated around the country didn’t hold up. Boston and Chicago have faced a violent crime spike like many other major cities last year.
   Short term initiatives will not relieve the problems of violence over the long term and neither will root-cause solutions produce immediate reductions in violence. Since spikes in violence usually cause political turmoil and politicians are usually only interested in immediate gratification, there has been a 20-year cycle of spikes in violence, public outcry to elected officials and then temporary gap measures are initiated.
    For instance, law-enforcement- based suppression tactics are sometimes good very short term responses to crime emergencies. More police are brought in from surrounding jurisdictions to patrol hot spots, the crime drops momentarily and then the police staffing is back to normal and violence gradually increases back to unacceptable levels. Law enforcement officials themselves even admit that suppression tactics are only short lived lids on crime, not solutions.
    Other reactions are to set curfews for youth, conduct probation and parole sweeps or reach out to clergy to hold a march or rally. These are all feel-good measures that obviously have no lasting effect. Occasionally, there will be a push for new community-based programs. Government will pass urgent spending bills to contract with the flavor-of-the-month organizations to provide community services aimed at reducing crime. These are often meaningful and impactful programs. But they most often lack scale and scope to have an affect on overall violence, or it takes too long to begin to show promise and by then the political winds have shifted or they are deemed ineffective by a fickle public.
    Violence is a symptom of concentrated poverty and protracted neglect and lack of investment in entire neighborhoods. This ghettoization of sections of the inner city have caused destructive environmental factors that produce violent behavior.
    With some minor variations, most communities where violence has been constant for nearly 20 years are plagued by: blight, poverty, high unemployment rates, substandard schools, the proliferation of liquor stores, an open illicit drug market and easy access to guns. Add this to incredibly irresponsible media, which glorify and promote violence in rap, TV, movies and video games and you have a deadly recipe.
    I have spoken and written these words many times. I am usually praised for such presentations and then asked what programs need to be implemented to solve the problems. We need more programs and we need better quality programs. But programs will never stem the tide of violence over the long term. Epidemic levels of violence will remain unless local, state and federal government, private industry, academia and community- and faith-based partnership are willing to seriously address the issues of concentrated poverty, public education and systematic racism. We must not gloss over the fact that black males are the overwhelming victims of this street violence. Whole communities have been allowed to deteriorate. The near uniformity of innercity conditions across the country call into question the issue of intentionality and design.
    In addition to the social-economic factors that produce a tragic physical environment, there are entire segments of youth from these communities who have been turned into a throwaway population. These “disconnected youth” who are either homeless or in the child welfare or juvenile justice system are allowed to languish in misery systems where they are mistreated, poorly served and moved toward institutionalization.
    These extreme factors point out the complexity and the severe difficulty in solving the decades’ old problem of violent crime. There are no quick fixes and no easy answers nor simple solutions. But the issue does necessitate long term planning and action, radical measures, bold and focused leadership and an informed public.

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