Category: Social Factors

Culture, Crime, and Statistics

by · May 10, 2025 8:59 am

Barry Latzer, Emeritus Professor of Criminology at John Jay College of Criminal Justice, has this letter on culture and crime statistics in the Wall Street Journal.

If economic gains are associated with rising crime and economic downturns with declining crime, the prevailing theories of crime causation need rethinking. Indeed it seems the relationship between crime and economic conditions is unpredictable, and cultural values play a central role in the extent of violent behavior by various social groups.

Professor Latzer is too modest. The prevailing theories have already been rethought. By him. Continue reading . . .

Kids, Gangs, and Prevention

by · Mar 21, 2025 1:46 pm

We would all like to help dissuade kids from joining gangs, but how exactly do we do that? Joshua Crawford has this article in City Journal.

Governments have launched a wide array of prevention and intervention efforts to steer kids away from gang life. These programs try to dissuade youth from joining gangs or encourage them to leave. But the initiatives have had mixed results, and the ones that do work well often have limited access to at-risk kids.

To address the root problem, policymakers must understand why kids join gangs. Specifically, they need to recognize that the biggest driver of gang membership is violent crime. Consequently, the best way to stop teenagers from joining gangs is to provide them with safer neighborhoods. Continue reading . . .

Pound Cake at 20 Years

by · May 17, 2024 11:03 am

Twenty years ago today, at an NAACP event commemorating the golden anniversary of Brown v. Board of Education, Bill Cosby gave a speech that has come to be known as the Pound Cake Speech. Cosby was a towering figure at the time, a major star in the entertainment industry. He triggered an earthquake by delivering a message that a great many people did not want to hear.

Looking at the incarcerated, these are not political criminals. These are people going around stealing Coca Cola. People getting shot in the back of the head over a piece of pound cake! Then we all run out and are outraged: “The cops shouldn’t have shot him.” What the hell was he doing with the pound cake in his hand? I wanted a piece of pound cake just as bad as anybody else. And I looked at it and I had no money. And something called parenting said if you get caught with it you’re going to embarrass your mother.” Not, “You’re going to get your butt kicked.” No. “You’re going to embarrass your mother.” “You’re going to embarrass your family.”

Cosby turned out to be a horribly inappropriate messenger, but his message was spot on then and remains true today. His downfall was fully justified, but a tragic side-effect was that no one with the stature that he had then has picked up the baton. Continue reading . . .

The power of communities in crime prevention: Insights from Baltimore

by · Apr 12, 2024 11:08 am

Crime tends to be concentrated in specific areas within cities, with about 50% of crime occurring on just 5% of streets. One police strategy that can help combat this is known as “hot-spot policing,” which has been shown to reduce violent crime in multiple studies.  Another factor that can help reduce crime in an area is when citizens exercise “informal social control.” Informal social control refers to the ability of community members to regulate behavior and maintain order through cohesive relationships, mutual trust, and willingness to intervene.  It involves residents taking actions to prevent and address crime and disorder in their neighborhoods.

One common assumption is that the chatoic and disordered nature of high-crime hot spots renders residents incapable of playing a significant role in crime prevention. However, a new study conducted in Baltimore seems to reveal otherwise.

Continue reading . . .

Chicago Votes for Crime

by · Apr 5, 2023 8:44 am

Bad news from the Windy City. Joe Barrett reports for the WSJ:

Brandon Johnson, a Cook County Board commissioner with strong backing from the Chicago Teachers Union, pulled off an upset victory over former schools chief Paul Vallas to become mayor of the country’s third-largest city after a contentious race focused on public safety.

The Associated Press called the race with 99% of precincts reporting. Mr. Johnson was ahead 51.4% to 48.6%, a margin of nearly 16,000 votes. Continue reading . . .

Culture, Root Causes, and Discussion Taboos

by · Sep 30, 2022 9:53 am

In a basketball tournament for teenage girls last November, one player punched an opponent, knocking her to the floor and giving her a concussion. What did the offending girl’s mother think of this blatant assault and battery? She was the one who instructed her daughter to do it. Latria Shonty Hunt was charged with contributing to the delinquency of a minor but let off with an apology and restitution. See this story by Vikki Vargas and Heather Navarro for NBC LA.

People have long debated the “root causes” of crime, and the discussion usually focuses on income. Poverty is the root cause of crime. Government programs are the solution to poverty. So let’s just spend more on government anti-poverty programs and crime will go down. That was how the Great Society was sold to America in the 1960s, and it was a cataclysmic failure. But that does not stop people from urging us to repeat the history.

Victor Hugo notwithstanding, we have enough of a social safety net in place that no one is going to jail for stealing loaves of bread to feed starving children. We need to look elsewhere for root causes. A powerful but under-discussed root cause of crime is culture. Too many young people are subject to influences from those around them that cause them to choose the path of crime rather than the path of law-abidingness. In the case of Ms. Hunt’s daughter, the very person who should have been teaching her to obey the law, respect the rights of others, and generally be a good person was teaching her just the opposite. Even kids with good parents are subject to bad influences from peers and popular culture.

So why don’t we hear more about culture as a root cause of crime? Continue reading . . .

A Martin Luther King Day Reminder on Genuine Humanity

by · Jan 17, 2022 2:44 pm

First a question:  If Martin Luther King were alive today, would he be more likely to agree with the anthem that black lives matter, or with the view that all lives matter?

I don’t think it’s a close question.  The whole point of the civil rights movement was equality.  And in the days of Dr. King, no one thought “equality” meant “equality of outcomes”  —  which is what the gossamer word “equity” is trying to put over on us today (albeit typically in the disguise of intentionally opaque academic gibberish).  “Equality” meant equal standing before the law, and an equal chance at success and living a peaceful life.

Is that what black people are getting now, in the era of progressive prosecutors and criminal justice reform?

Continue reading . . .

How environmental stress increases violent crime: Study

by · Dec 21, 2021 1:59 pm

Understanding the social contexts of violent crime remains controversial among researchers and policymakers alike. A recent article published in Crime and Delinquency (2021) discusses common social contexts in four cities (Houston, TX, Baltimore, MD, Jackson, MS, Wilmington, DE). The researchers applied two approaches: the first compared each city’s health outcomes with national county-level data, and the second examined correlates for crime within the four cities.

Results found several social factors that correlated with crime, including single-parent homes, insufficient food resources, poor sleep quality, residential segregation, and more. Interestingly though, all four cities had lower suicide rates than the national average. At the community-level, researchers found that factors such as unemployment, median household income, and population density all correlated with crime as well. While communities with higher violent crime rates did tend to have higher proportions of Black residents, race per se did not appear correlated with violent crime. Rather, class-related issues seemed to override any individual impact of race on crime.

Continue reading . . .

Desistance from crime: Implications for research, policy, and practice

by · Dec 20, 2021 2:12 pm

As research on crime over the life course evolves, a concept being used more and more is the idea of “desistance” from crime. Desistance refers to the cessation of criminal behavior and eventual ending of a criminal career. Typically, the process of desistance coincides with aging, maturity, and other factors that influence normative development. However, it doesn’t mean the same thing to everyone, largely because it has been defined in different ways over time.

From 1970-1999, desistance used to be considered simply the opposite of recidivism. It was defined as binary event, i.e. the complete termination of criminal behavior. Newer definitions (from 2000-present) define desistance as a process that evolves in different stages throughout the life course rather than a discrete event. Instead of focusing on risk factors as a way to predict recidivism, desistance focuses more on factors that motivate someone to leave that path. A November 2021 publication by the National Institute of Justice (NIJ) details some of the research on desistance and outlines implications and recommendations for policy and practice.

Continue reading . . .

Breaking News: The Media is Pushing Racism

by · Dec 1, 2021 3:20 pm

As if we already did not know this, but sometimes the national media exposes itself so blatantly it defies logic.  Jason Riley has this piece in the Wall Street Journal discussing the amazing double standard in the way the national media covered the death of George Floyd, the Rittenhouse case and the Waukesha massacre.  “The protests that followed Floyd’s death rested on two assumptions. The first is that Floyd, a career criminal and drug addict, was somehow representative of black America, which is not only false but deeply insulting. The second is that police acted out of racial animus, which has never been proven. This is what happens when racial identity becomes the centerpiece of politics and public life in a multiracial society.”  But that was the prevailing narrative and the riots and murders swept the country in response to Floyd’s death were generally reported as justified.  “The Biden administration has picked up where the Obama administration left off.”  Although the criminals killed by Rittenhouse were white, he was immediately characterized as a racist white supremacist in “a clumsy attempt by President Biden and his allies to further a narrative about bias in the criminal justice system.”

Continue reading . . .