Crime and education: Teaching the two biggest ‘elephants in the room’ to dance
By Bill Settlemyer
President and CEO, Setcom Media Inc.
Whenever crime spikes upwards, especially the murder rate, people take notice. That’s happening in Charleston County with the alarming epidemic of murders this year.
As is often the case, many murders involve people who already had a criminal record of drug dealing, assault and property crimes. Some arise out of disputes between those engaged in criminal activity, while others involve domestic violence like the recent and tragic murder of a mother and four children in North Charleston, a horror that made national news even as the senseless murders of schoolchildren in Colorado and Pennsylvania shocked the nation.
Crimes rates are on the rise nationwide, especially in mid-size communities. Demographers have pointed out that one cause may be a rise in the population of young people entering the ages where violent criminal behavior is most common.
Cue the elephants
The issues of crime and public education are two of the biggest figurative elephants in the room we all occupy as members of a community. There is a depressing racial component, given the high incarceration rate of young African-American men and the disproportionate number who fail to graduate from high school.
Speaking personally, I cringe every time I turn on the local TV news and see a young black man in an orange jumpsuit standing before a judge at his bond hearing. It’s an image of a life wasted, an opportunity lost.
Not that crime is proprietary to African-Americans; it would be a false assumption to think that race is somehow the direct cause of the high incidence of black men running afoul of the law, though undoubtedly some people still think in those terms. It would, however, be a correct assumption to think there’s been far too much apathy about the failure of African-American men to fare better in society. Race continues to be the wedge that allows us to disown a shared civic responsibility for overcoming this glaring weakness that hobbles communities around the nation.
Aside from the moral imperative to take responsibility for this appalling failure, there is a huge economic cost associated with crime regardless of who happens to be the perpetrator. One study concluded that the monetary benefit to society from saving a high-risk youth from a life of crime is between $1.7 million and $2.3 million.
Think about it. First, that high-risk youth who turn to crime won’t be a productive member of the work force. Second, he will cost society directly through the consequences of the crimes he commits. Third, if we incarcerate him, the cost for that “service” will probably be $20,000 a year or more. And if we “fix” the problem he’s causing by imprisoning him for 20 years, that’s another $400,000 right there. So it’s not too hard to see why every high-risk youth we lose really could, on average, cost society somewhere around $2 million.
Here’s an interesting number: In 2000, there were more than 2 million people imprisoned in the United States. Check my math, but at a societal cost of $2 million apiece, that would be four trillion dollars.
The sound of knees jerking
When crime spikes, the first impulse is to focus on the courts and the criminal justice system. We need more police, more judges, more jails and tougher sentences. In Charleston County, it doesn’t seem that many years ago that we built a new jail to deal with overcrowding. Now the “new” jail is overcrowded.
No, this is not going to be a liberal “soft on crime” column arguing that we shouldn’t lock up the perpetrators because they are suffering from a social disease and just need a hug. But I will argue that adding more cops, judges and jails and mandating harsher sentences are all band-aids that will never heal the underlying wound caused by our failure to help more at-risk youths graduate from high school and achieve productive lives.
Here’s another point to ponder: For all the “get tough” rhetoric, the public and their elected representatives tend to be stingy when it comes to spending money to beef up law enforcement and the criminal justice system. We always seem to want safe communities “on the cheap.”
How can we help at-risk youth?
There has long been powerful statistical evidence demonstrating that kids who stay in school and graduate are much less likely to join the ranks of America’s criminal population. With the national dropout rate now hovering at around 30%, I think it’s fair to say we’ve got a serious problem to deal with.
If educating more at-risk youths is the cure for high crime rates, how do we accomplish that? As with the criminal justice system, we’re very good at looking for scapegoats. It’s the “educrats,” the teachers’ unions, or the school administrators who’ve dropped the ball. It’s all their fault!
Whew! Great—we’ve laid the blame. Our work is finished here. We can all go home, smug and satisfied that we’ve done our job.
Sorry, that won’t cut it. One of the worst casualties of today’s polarized political atmosphere is that we’ve lost the ability to work together to tackle the tough issues. It’s time we snapped out of it and recognized how much harm we’re doing to our country and to each other. Put simply, our behavior has been “unpatriotic” in the most fundamental sense of the word.
How do we step up our efforts to help at-risk youths? It will take more money, more creativity, good policy making and a widely accepted responsibility to tackle this challenge. Volunteer mentors can help, as can special schools for kids who are falling behind and staying back a grade.
In New York City, Mayor Michael Bloomberg is proposing to raise $24 million in private donations to pay poor kids to stay in school and on track to rise out of poverty. My view is that we need to develop and fund neighborhood outreach programs that provide guidance and support to low-income parents and caregivers so they can be more effective in helping their kids stay in school.
The point is not that one particular solution is right or wrong. The point is that we’d better start doing far more than we have been to turn things around. We have to be willing to take risks, including the risk of trying things that may not work or that may not be “politically correct” or popular.
It’s time to teach those two big elephants in the room to dance.
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