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Crime and Poverty

These tales of gang violence in LA certainly are frightening. So frightening, in fact, that it's a bit hard to believe that squishy liberal ideas like "universal preschool, and all-day kindergarten" are going to ameliorate it. Consider this anecdote:

Years ago I asked gang members what happened to kids who "just said no" to the Bloods or V-18s. They brought me a videotape other gang members had made for a 14-year-old boy who had refused to join them. The tape showed gang members raping his 13-year-old sister. The boy joined the gang so that its members wouldn't return to kill her.
A better school system isn't going to stop that sort of recruiting tactic from working. Similarly, "When the LAPD set up a police kiosk in Jordan to quell rising crime, the gangs blew it up; the LAPD left and did not return for more than a decade." Now there's reason to think that universal preschool could be a very good idea for reasons that are unrelated to entrenched gang violence in select inner-city neighborhoods, and maybe pretending it's a solution to the gang problem is a good way to build political support for it. But still.

UPDATE: Speaking of LA crime control and poverty problems, I recently learned that "Skid Row" isn't a neighborhood that happens to be poor, but is a neighborhood that the local authorities have intentionally created as a center of hyper-concentrated homelessness and semi-homelessness. I'm surprised you don't hear much about that, because it's either an incredibly stupid idea (as it sounds, intuitively) or else a really clever one. Perhaps if Professor Kleiman can tear himself away from his love affair with the William Gibson blog he has something worth saying on either of these topics. All I really know about it is that the LAPD is phenomenally understaffed in light of LA's population and geographical size -- pretty much the domestic law enforcement equivalent of the US post-conflict reconstruction deployment in Iraq.

December 23, 2004 | Permalink

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» Truly Pro-Life from The Debate Link
UPDATE: This LA Times article, helpfully linked to by Mathhew Yglesias, shows why it's unreasonable to expect poor folks (especially poor youth) to "just say no" to a life of crime. Yglesias' excerpt is telling [Read More]

Tracked on Dec 23, 2004 9:28:45 PM

» William Gibson Pops Up Twice And Gets Me Thinking from Saheli*: Musings and Observations
Ultimately, Yglesias's doubt that a better school system would stem the tide of inner-city violence is really a doubt that capturing the imagination of children can be enough to fight all the negative dynamics of their life situations. [Read More]

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» What to do about LA's crime hot spots from Mark A. R. Kleiman
A bad problem. Not unmanageable, though. [Read More]

Tracked on Dec 25, 2004 1:45:34 AM

Comments

Legalization of drugs, the gangs profit center, would change the equation entirely. Police, press, pundits, drug dealers, etc. all benefit from the system the way it is. Not likely to change soon.

Posted by: epistemology | Dec 23, 2004 12:02:54 PM

You can legalize some drugs, but you probably can't legalize all drugs. So, I doubt it'll change the equation entirely.

Posted by: abb1 | Dec 23, 2004 12:08:04 PM

Sounds like a Janet Cooke story to me.

Posted by: Ellen1910 | Dec 23, 2004 12:08:26 PM

LA's big problem, or at least one of them, is simply that it's waaayy underpoliced. NYC, with roughly twice LA's population, has 40,000 police officers, while LA has fewer than 10,000. And this fact is exacerbated by the greater geographic spread of Los Angeles (nearly 500 sq. mi vs. NYC's 300).

Posted by: P.B. Almeida | Dec 23, 2004 12:11:46 PM

"These tales of gang violence in LA certainly are frightening. So frightening, in fact, that it's a bit hard to believe that squishy liberal ideas like "universal preschool, and all-day kindergarten" are going to ameliorate it."

Social solutions certainly won't cure anything in the short-term, but things like universal preschool can certainly help ameliorate these things over the medium and long-terms.

And on a related topic, why doesn't anyone in the lefty blogosphere seem to care about today's Pell Grant story? That seems a hell of a lot more important to me than a bombing in Mosul.

Posted by: Petey | Dec 23, 2004 12:17:34 PM

I disagree, Matt, that better education in these communities wouldn't help. It wouldn't help, immediatly, but in the long term, it would. The problem isn't just that the gangs are a black hole that sucks everything around them in, but that those who are in them do so because they have no other options. Education gives those options to people. It won't be immediate, but it will work.

Posted by: Dylan | Dec 23, 2004 12:31:32 PM

Blighted inner city neighborhoods tend to have very high rates of unemployment and low rates of home ownership. The residents are not economically tied to the neighborhood. If they want out, I'm sure they can scrape together enough money for a one-way bus ticket to North Dakota. So why don't they? If for some reason they can't afford the bus ticket, why not subsidize that? It's a lot more cost effective than any of the other solutions I've seen.

Posted by: Xavier | Dec 23, 2004 12:33:36 PM

"I recently learned that "Skid Row" isn't a neighborhood that happens to be poor, but is a neighborhood that the local authorities have intentionally created as a center of hyper-concentrated homelessness and semi-homelessness. I'm surprised you don't hear much about that, because it's either an incredibly stupid idea (as it sounds, intuitively) or else a really clever one."

Hamsterdam.

Posted by: Petey | Dec 23, 2004 12:35:04 PM

As to your idea on "Skid Road," maybe it's simply an incorrect idea? Where'd you get it?

Posted by: David Sucher | Dec 23, 2004 12:36:13 PM

Isn't it obvious that Bush and the Republican Party are personally responsible for gang violence in LA? If only Kerry had been elected president - we'd have universal pre-school, drug legalization, national healthcare, and no gangs in LA. Guaranteed.

Posted by: DBL | Dec 23, 2004 12:36:51 PM

I live about 20 miles south of downtown Los Angeles. Am a Los Angeles native. You have opened a proverbial can of worm with this innocuous blog post. There is so much to say.

One thing....Skid Row IS fascinating, and admininstered in a wasteful way. It might be the most over-served skid row in the nation....in the world. Almost all the churches and non-profits in greater Los Angeles focus their efforts on that small area, only a few blocks large and neglect the rest of this huge metropolitan area.

My 13 year old daughter recently went on an inner city weekend "mission" trip there with her middle school church group, where they served food at rescue missions. There were more volunteers than work for them.

Problem is...that small area is the only place in downtown where white middle class people feel safe. And they are probably correct, except for the gorgeous office buildings a couple miles away.!

Wish I could write more about this now , but I need to go out. It's a huge problem and a fascinating one for study.

Posted by: Deborah White | Dec 23, 2004 12:46:25 PM

I think Matt is dangerously close to a strawman argument. In his example things are just way too far gone for universal pre-school to be a solution. That doesn't mean it cannot be a great help in places where kids are truly at risk as opposed to almost certainly doomed.

Of course, universal preschool would be everywhere by definition. That's a good idea politically to prevent the program from being stigmatized as welfare. In that case, it should be judged as much by how it helps middle class kids achieve greater success as by how it helps those in terrible environments escape a future as career criminals.

The gang warfare problem is a separate issue that requires drastic measures. To make a disease analogy, you first have to see if you problem is like scurvy, in which you just need to fix a nutritional deficiency, or like cancer in which case you need drastic measures to achieve any effect and will probably fail whatever you do. In the former case, liberal "squishy" solutions are the best ones. I also tend to think that more social ills are analogous to malnutrition than to cancer; it's just the that cancer stories get the most attention.

LA Gangs? Beats me. Most of the thoughts that come to mind involve forcible resettlement and bulldozers, but I digress.

BTW, this should not be taken as an endorsement of preschool specifically. I grew up with unstructured play at home, and I'm a little skeptical about the benefits of modern obsessive parenting. But I also would not complain if my tax dollars were subsidizing preschool for those who wanted it.

Posted by: Paul Callahan | Dec 23, 2004 12:54:28 PM

The residents are not economically tied to the neighborhood. If they want out, I'm sure they can scrape together enough money for a one-way bus ticket to North Dakota. So why don't they?

Perhaps because they are socially tied to the neighborhood by friends and extended family. It's naive to imagine that non-homeowners will pack up and leave if you can just get them a bus ticket.

Posted by: Paul Callahan | Dec 23, 2004 12:58:19 PM

These, ah, fellows raped a child on videotape? What a weird polity we live in that they aren't in prison.

Posted by: Dabodius | Dec 23, 2004 1:03:18 PM

>>As to your idea on "Skid Road," maybe it's simply an incorrect idea? Where'd you get it?
Posted by: David Sucher | December 23, 2004 12:36 PM

I just googled up this: http://www.weingart.org/institute/research/colloquia/pdf/HistoryofSkidRow.pdf
(found at http://www.weingart.org/institute/research/colloquia/index.html ) Looks good to me, despite being from 1998. No idea where Matt gets his information from.

Posted by: markus | Dec 23, 2004 1:03:47 PM

Let's see...why would a black person who speaks Ebonics not move to North Dakota? Well, maybe in spite of speaking Ebonics they've noticed that the major industry in North Dakota is missile silos, that farming there has been shedding jobs for decades, and the last time anyone they knew drove through North Dakota the police offered them a choice- get the hell out, or go to jail.

Posted by: serial catowner | Dec 23, 2004 1:08:58 PM

abb1:

According to US govt stats, tobacco kills 400,000 a year, alcohol 100,000, and all the illicit drugs combined kill 20,000. Since 96% of the recreational drug deaths are from legal drugs, and all drugs were legal in the past, exactly why can't we legalize all drugs?

Sell all recreational drugs in federally licensed "drug stores", including alcohol and tobacco, and the decrease in deaths from those drugs will more than balance the increase deaths from heroin, etc.
Less AIDS
Fewer prisoners
More tax money
Less crime
Less gang violence
More rational.
But an array of monied interests are allied against this. Oh well, then shut up and put up with the gangs.

Posted by: epistemology | Dec 23, 2004 1:13:17 PM

When you look at the history of police in Los Angeles, it's hard to tell which side is supposed to be the good guys. Maybe this would be a good time to remember what happened to Gary Webb when he got a little too close to the truth.

Has Matt been watching The Wire, but not watching The Shield?

Posted by: serial catowner | Dec 23, 2004 1:14:12 PM

"Perhaps because they are socially tied to the neighborhood by friends and extended family. It's naive to imagine that non-homeowners will pack up and leave if you can just get them a bus ticket."

Maybe I'm just a cold-hearted bastard, but that makes them quite a bit less sympathetic to me. They clearly have the option to leave, but they choose to stay. A person with children who chooses to remain in a neighborhood like the one Matt describes is absolutely repugnant. In the suburbs, even minor differences in the quality of school districts have a substantial effect on property values. Any person who would raise a child in a neighborhood like that for the sake of friends or extended family should be arrested for child abuse.

Posted by: Xavier | Dec 23, 2004 1:14:59 PM

Matt is generally correct about Los Angeles' Skid Row. Not sure the word wealthy is the correct phrase...grossly over-served to the exclusion of the remainder of Los Angeles is a better description.

Was this originally by design or poor planning? Don't know, but it does make LAPD patrol easier to focus on this isolated, homogeneous area. And it's easier to attract funding and volunteer assistance when the area is well patrolled and controlled. And the homeless know exactly where to go for a hot meal and shelter.

Posted by: Deborah White | Dec 23, 2004 1:21:17 PM

They clearly have the option to leave, but they choose to stay. A person with children who chooses to remain in a neighborhood like the one Matt describes is absolutely repugnant.

There are actually a whole lot of reasons--some maybe better than others--why it usually takes more than a one-way bus ticket to convince someone to leave their home. Actually, you might get people to leave if you can convince them that the devil they don't know beats the one that they know. At a bare minimum, this would require a reasonable hope of finding a job and affordable housing on the other side of the bus trip.

But more to the point, as a liberal, I believe that it benefits society as a whole to help out even those whom I personally find repugnant.

Posted by: Paul Callahan | Dec 23, 2004 1:25:59 PM

Was this originally by design or poor planning? Don't know, but it does make LAPD patrol easier to focus on this isolated, homogeneous area.

Interesting. Sounds like this was the inspiration for building up Iraq as the "central front in the war on terror".

Posted by: Paul Callahan | Dec 23, 2004 1:28:09 PM

epistemology,
I am not an expert, but I once in a while I read about some extremely potent drugs, stuff that one gets hooked up on from the first use. I think heroin is like that, judging by what I've seen in movies. You can't really legalize this kind of stuff, can you? I don't think any country ever tried.

Now, you may be right and legalizing pot and other mild stuff would be enough to change the dynamics; OTOH - you said yourself: alcohol is widely available, but that doesn't help, maybe people want illegal stuff. I dunno.

Posted by: abb1 | Dec 23, 2004 1:34:11 PM

MY: Maybe I'm missing the intended humor about Kleiman and Gibson, from someone who posts much-more-frequently-than-I-read about "The Wire" and obscure pop/whatever music groups. But I'm with you, and hope he takes your assignment more graciously than it was given. FWIW, this _link_ suggests it's merely a term for the working part of a logging town or port, the place where logs are skidded to the sawmill. This link and others suggest the original one was in Seattle.

Xavier: easy for you to say. Maybe people in ghetto neighborhoods don't have any resources or friends at all beyond those neighborhoods, and a reasonable expectation that the great white world beyond won't be all that helpful to them when they get there.

Posted by: Thomas Nephew | Dec 23, 2004 1:38:13 PM

Legalized drugs would be regulated by the FDA or some other body, and would therefore be less potent than some of the varieties available on the street. They would also not be contaminated by toxic additives like embalming fluid (smoked with marijuana, called "Wet").

The number of people who would try heroin and then become addicted to it, seems to me, to be a constant. Illegal or not, these people want their fix. How many people here would suddenly get a hankering for some H if you could buy it down at the corner grocery?

Posted by: drjimcooper | Dec 23, 2004 1:38:38 PM

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