Tough love?

Mayor Frank Jackson is wisely turning to anthropologist David Kennedy, the director of the Center for Crime Prevention and Control at New York’s John Jay College of Criminal Justice, in an effort to curb the rampant violence and increasing murder rate among Black urban youth in Cleveland. Boston put in place “Operation Ceasefire,” which dramatically lowered the murder rate there, and other cities across the nation have experienced similar results ... at least for a time.

The simple, sad truth is that the small handful of inner-city youths that are bent on violence are probably too far along a dead-end path to be reined in by intervention and mentoring; the only thing some of them are going to comprehend is the jackboot of the criminal justice system placed firmly on their necks. While civil libertarians and soft-hearted social worker-types might decry this method of crime control, most of them don’t live on the mean streets where the bullets are too often flying. The law-abiding residents of these neighborhoods need and deserve succor and a cessation of the violence that has been plaguing them for years.

Placing Blaine Griffin at the helm of the effort is also a smart move by Jackson since Griffin knows life from both sides — growing up as he did in the inner-city, no one would have called him an angel back then. He’s knows this population and has compassion for these youth — but it’s going to be tough love.

However, the methods prescribed by Kennedy — while they might warm the cockles of the hearts of local law enforcement at all levels — are stopgap and temporary at best ... as attested to by Boston’s once again slowing increasing murder rate. We’ll probably experience the same phenomenon here: A sharp reduction in murders, and then, starting at about the five-year out point, a gradual return to increased numbers. Here’s why: When the penalties for criminal activity are increased, the thug perpetrators tone down their behavior because they don’t want to incur the stiffer penalties. But then, five years down the road a new generation of at-risk youth come along who never knew anything but the tougher sanctions, so they’re adjusted to them; they were raised with them; they’re not afraid of them so they begin to engage in the same behavior the tougher sanctions used to prevent in the previous generation.

The laws of diminishing returns soon set in; just how much can any society ratchet down on malefactors and expect increasing results? Anthropologist Kennedy has to know that human beings are amazingly adaptive — they learn to adjust to whatever is thrown at them. Additionally, we have to view our results through the prisms of the socio-economic and socio-racial realities of Cleveland. Cities like Boston and San Diego are not as economically depressed as Cleveland, so young Blacks there are probably better able to land jobs, and, racism in the job market in those cities might not be as prevalent as here in Cleveland. The federal discrimination lawsuit brought against Area Temps here in Cleveland is one indicator of the depth of racial animus faced by Blacks attempting to enter the job market. Say what you will, jobs lower crime.

In a perverse way, some of these street dudes would actually enjoy the crackdown — for two reasons: One, it gives them cover and a real reason to quit shooting at each other (something they wanted to do all along. but don’t want anyone to think they’re “breaking weak”); and two, a crackdown enhances their self-image as tough guys. They’re getting more of what everyone desires — and what these ill-raised youth are usually starved for ... attention. Kennedy should also know that if you starve someone (especially juveniles) of positive attention, they’ll soon start acting out to attract any kind of attention they can get. When you see these young cats pulled over by the cops and having everything but their tailpipes looked up, you automatically think — “Man, I’m sure glad that ain’t me!” But these youths don’t mind because they are being validated, how else are they to know they are bad-asses if the Five-O don’t jack them up every now and again?

What I’m not hearing in this discussion is a strategy to prevent thug values from being inculcated in at-risk kids in the first place — when they are very young and more malleable. The notion that we have to crack down on generation after generation of Black youths comes dangerously close to making the statement that something is genetically wrong with these Black kids ... and there isn’t, they’re just ill-raised.

Something, however, is wrong with the society that tells unprepared teenaged mothers to take newborns back to the same projects that failed them and raise anything other than a thug; a feat that’s well-neigh impossible for them, with their limited skills, to do. What’s needed is the plan former U.S. Senator Bill Bradley proposed over a decade ago: A total, 24-7 mentoring program to show these mothers how to raise children with the values society expects everyone to have. Absent such a program (which would only have to be in place for 12 to 15 years) we’ll continue to raise too many kids that, upon reaching their mid-teens, will pick up a dope bag and then a gun.

We also should be mindful of the fact reentry is one of the hottest topics on the criminal justice/social service radar. Why? Because we allowed Richard Nixon and conservatives like John Q. Wilson (whose theories are in part driving the current strategy) to convince us we could lock away the results of our failed social programs and policies. We could not do it then, and we cannot do it now. All of the young men we are getting ready to body slam and ship off to the joint will one day return home ... smarter, tougher and meaner.

When are we going to begin to really attack the problem where it begins ... at the beginning of life? Short term solutions without long term strategies will always fail eventually. How many times have we been down this same road with the same outcome? One of the clinical definitions of insanity is to keep doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results. I’m all for getting tough to stop the violence we’re experiencing today, but I also want to hear about what we’re going to do to prevent it five, ten years down the road. Waiting for every Black boy born into poor circumstances to turn 15-years-old, and then stepping off in his ass the minute he steps one inch out of line is no answer — come on, all teenagers occasionally step out of line. We simply must change how these kids are being raised.

From Cool Cleveland contributor Mansfield B. Frazier mansfieldfATgmail.com
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