It’s not just Washington D.C. – it’s every major city

 

A recent study points out the reality behind violent crime in our nation’s capital.

Every year, about 500 identifiable people in D.C. drive as much as 70% of the city’s gun violence, according to a new report commissioned by the city.

The study was authored by the National Institute for Criminal Justice Reform, which has been working with the District to come up with a strategic plan for reducing gun violence. It found that a relatively small group of people — likely as little as 200 people at any one point in time — are driving a majority of homicides and shootings in the city. And the study echoes an argument that community leaders in the neighborhoods most affected by violence have long put forward: If the government and community groups can come together to reach those high-risk people, invest in them, and make intensive intervention efforts, the city can reduce homicides and help save lives.

“In Washington, D.C., most gun violence is very tightly concentrated on a small number of very high risk young Black male adults that have a shared set of common risk factors,” says David Muhammad, the executive director of the National Institute for Criminal Justice Reform. “This very small number of high risk individuals are identifiable. Their violence is predictable and therefore it is preventable.”

There’s more at the link.

I could have told them that.  Any experienced corrections officer, dealing with inmates in any big prison or jail in the country, could have told them that.  It was our common experience – and, I’m sure, still is for those still working in that field – that the leaders in prison gangs and crime behind bars were those who’d led criminal gangs and activities outside the walls before being arrested.  Once incarcerated, they didn’t stop their lives of crime;  they merely continued them by preying on the other criminals around them, and (of course) on the corrections officers who had to supervise them.  When they’d served their sentences, many of the prison gang leaders went back to their lives of crime once more.  They were “lead predators”, super-criminals who dominated those around them and led and focused their activities on what they wanted.

They were (and probably still are) overwhelmingly black, with a strong hispanic minority component.  Rivalry between the groups was a given, and often turned deadly.  White criminals were not so likely to wield the same “command influence” except among their own race – it didn’t cross color lines in prison.  Race was a defining criteria of the “in crowd” and the “out crowd” in every institution.  There are those who object that there are far more black prison inmates than the proportion of their race to the national population should predict, and this demonstrates that the criminal justice system is racist.  Unfortunately, such pontifications ignore the fact that blacks commit a vastly greater proportion of crimes, relative to their numbers, than do other races.  That’s objective, undeniable fact.  The FBI has documented it for almost a century.

The report notes:

While many point to programs for youth as a solution to violence, Muhammad says the city also needs to be extremely focused on reaching older young adults.

“It’s extremely difficult engaging a 25-year-old who has seven previous adult arrests, who is an avowed member of his neighborhood clique, who’s not currently interested in services, but that is the individual we have to serve. That’s the individual we have to pour resources into,” he says.

It sounds nice . . . but I fear it’s doomed to failure.  It was my experience as a prison chaplain that by the time a hardened criminal had reached his mid to late 20’s, he was usually beyond saving.  There were exceptions, of course – they were the reason I was there, after all – but I doubt whether even as many as one in twenty qualified for that label, particularly in a high-security penitentiary.  (In a low-security institution for less hardened offenders, perhaps one in ten might qualify.)

The Bible tells us to “Train up a child in the way he should go, and when he is old he will not depart from it“.  Well, the streets “train up” a child too, even if it’s not in the way he should go.  It’s incredibly difficult to break that kind of youthful conditioning, particularly when the individual in question has had friends killed around him, and may have killed more than once himself.  (The worst, most hardened gang-bangers usually have, even if they’ve never been charged with murder or any related crime.  Killing comes all too easily in the inner-city streets, and life is cheap, and “snitches get stitches and end up in ditches“, so nobody talks to the cops about who did it – not if they value their hides.  If you doubt that, just look at the number of pointless, casual, drive-by assaults with deadly weapons and murders in our cities every day.  You’ll find plenty of reports in the newspapers.)

I entirely agree with the report that those behind the majority of deadly crimes in any city are a relatively small, identifiable group.  However, when it comes to preventing their violence, I doubt very much that “services” or “reaching out to them” will get anywhere.  Locking them up permanently, and throwing away the key?  Yes, that will work.  Taking strong, direct action against perpetrators of such crimes, not handling them with kid gloves as the current criminal justice system all too often does, but being ruthless in giving them a choice between real, lasting change, or never being a free man again?  That’ll work too – but we have to follow through on that, and actually do what we threaten to do.  These people are experts in threatening others, and they know bluff when they see it.  All too often, they see bluff in the criminal justice system.  If they have nothing to be afraid of, and no consequences to speak of because our threats are empty, then why should they listen or reform?

Another factor – politically incorrect, but undeniable – is that when their intended victims are ready, willing and able to defend themselves against attack, such criminals learn the hard way that they’re vulnerable.  As the late, great Jeff Cooper put it:

We continue to be exasperated by the view, apparently gaining momentum in certain circles, that armed robbery is okay as long as nobody gets hurt! The proper solution to armed robbery is a dead robber, on the scene.

That’ll work as well as, and probably a lot better than, even the best programs.

Peter