When it comes to America’s criminal justice policy, the cure is often worse than the crime. Nowhere is this fact more apparent than in the war on drugs, which has inflicted more social damage than drugs themselves. So too with the war on gangs, according to a report by the Justice Policy Institute, released this July. The conclusion of the… return to article
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Reader Comments (9)Page 1 of 1 pagesI would have to agree with your point-of-view. As an African-American male I notice the ‘demonization’ of the culture-music, clothes, language. And have noticed that instead of finding the source of the communites (Black & Hispanic) disengagment with the status-quo it has been much easier for lack of a better term to incarcerate and attack these communities. Gangs are the tip of the iceberg which is a direct result , in my opinion, of the eradication of the black leadership in the 60’s & 70’s by the federal government. Now they are trying, unsuccessfully, to clean up the mess they created.
Posted by C. LyOns on Aug 23, 2007 at 2:01 PM Somehow my memory fails me —when did we first decide the individual has no responsibility for his own life?
Behavior such as drunkenness now a disease.
This week it was annnounced that obesity is due to a virus.
Women have been having babies by multiple fathers and fathers decline to support the women or children.
Children have “behavioral problems” and receive drugs — not a spanking.
Presidents while in office lie, cheat on their wives, pander to special interest groups at the expense of the rest of the citizens and go on to charge big money for books and speaking engagements based on their time in office.
Now… gangs need our sympahy and understanding.
This country is more than energy dependent — it forgotten that independence requires with individual responsibility.
Posted by whattheheck on Aug 25, 2007 at 9:38 AM Very true, the gangs don’t deserve our sympathy. They are violent, reprehinsible human beings that should take responsibility for their OWN actions. But each one of these gangs operates as a function of individuals who are living in the same plight of society and can relate that situation with one another...thus they form gangs. They come from a part of society, each one of the individual members, that lacks leadership, education and resources and become a product of this....in a not so obvious similarity to a tribe/clan...they are a reaction of the environment and they’re survival, by whatever means that maybe, is related to that.
And what I’m suggesting is not necessarily passing the buck ,so to speak, off the gang members, but we as a nation should be look at why these conditions still exist despite the advances made in equality and openess to jobs and education and tackle that before we continue to build more prisons and put more young miorities in a very dangerous prison system.
Posted by C. LyOns on Aug 25, 2007 at 10:28 AM C. LyOns,
OK, I understand that unity can come of simiilar circumstances and problems, but instead of forming gangs (which requires leadership) why don’t they form a company, a union, a social club or some other association wiith a positive goal?
Isn’t it just because that would require work? It’s much easier to join together and commiserate about how tough life is than to do something to improve it. It is easier to blame the system, some other people, or a lack of opportunity than it is to think of a service or product which people would be willling to pay for.
The main thing I can think of for government to do to improve things is to do less.
• Stop the stupid “War on Drugs.” It has not worked, is not working and willl never work. If people are truly free — they should be free to do stupid things.
• Do not reward counter productive behavior by paying for having kids.
• Do not subsidize farmers, corporations or anything else (including ethanol). Let us pay what we see as the value we place on each. The illegal alien issue is due to “subsidizing” by allowing cheap labor to increase profits. If people won’t pay what an item costs, let them do without.
Just because someone is not wealthy doesn’t mean they are dumb. One of these kids (or a group) may be able to coome up with an idea to employ a whole bunch and lower costs as well.
The things the government provides never are valued as highly as what we do for ourselves.
About the only thing JFK ever said or did which I agreed with was, “Ask not what your country can do for you, but what you can do for your country.”
Something we can all do for our country is stop asking for more for ourselves.
Posted by whattheheck on Aug 25, 2007 at 12:50 PM Everyone has made valid points, and that very fact underlies the complexity of the enormous problem facing the pervasive culture of violence in our inner cities.
The terrible mess we find ourselves in begs the proverbial “chicken or egg” conundrum.
But as I see it, searching for answers to questions like “how did this happen” and “who’s responsible for it” are exercises in futility without also immediately asking questions like “how do we fix this” and “where do we start?”
The statistics are grim:
* Nearly 30% of minorities (Black & Hispanic) will drop out of high school
* More than half will enter the penal system by age 23
* Once in “the system” they will be sentenced and incarcerated to longer terms at far higher rates than any other race
I could go on and on, but the point is that life in America is not good without both a solid education and a strong sense of responsibility. And that is where concerned community leaders need to focus their efforts.
We can no longer sit around and wait/hope/wish that Uncle Sam will save us from ourselves. The cavalry isn’t coming!
The global economy, with its demands of quality, tolerance, competence and skilled workforces, will wait for no one.
The longer we sit idly by shaking our heads at the evening news while young mothers are being left to raise babies on their own, the worse this viscious cycle will become, until, as Hurricane Katrina showed us, one perfect storm at the wrong time in the wrong place will be all that is needed to wipe out a once vibrant and influential culture.
I believe the best way to attack this problem is ‘from the ends in.’ That is, take a super hands-on approach with respect to educating the very young on one end, and on the other end, approach those in the 18-24 age range with innovative “re-education” endeavours.
If successful, this approach will have a simultaneous trickle-up and trickle-down effect, thereby rapidly spreading this newly-planted burning desire to succeed throughout the spectrum.
My theory is that if you want to burn down a forest quickly, you don’t just light one end and hope the wind blows your way. You light it from each end, and the flames will meet in the middle.
I’m going to try and do my part by starting up an after-school mentoring program for at risk youth where the focus will be on strengthening fundamentals in reading & comprehension, writing, math, science, and goal-setting while acting as a direct liason to each student’s teacher, guidance counselor and parent or guardian via weekly emails, phone calls, and/or face-to-face visits.
There are many good programs out there already in most communities. But when 59% of Black 4th-graders are reading below the national average, more needs to be done to halt the potential of these persons from becoming future gang members.
This is not just a Black or Hispanic issue either- with population numbers of nearly 75 million combined, it’s ultimately an American issue.
I believe the key to success is education…
Posted by key2success on Aug 29, 2007 at 12:35 PM Key2success,
The stats you sight are staggering. But I fear that minorities will once again suffer even more with the continuing job losses due to our rush to globalization. (Inevitable? Perhaps, but a planned transition would help.)
I agree as a community we need to stress education and do our best to make it available equally to all. However, unless it is held in high esteem at home little will come of community efforts.
My wife was an enthusiastic teacher’s aide in the Title One program back in the ‘70s. The school she worked at had kids from the poorest part of town. Teachers were truly dedicated and caring — often they bought materials and even clothes for kids out of their own pockets.
But the home environment — usually several generations of women and few or no men — was more than enough to outweigh the few hours of school. Girls as young as age 12 dropped out due to pregnancy. Gang problems increasingly caused truancy. This was in K-6!
You’re right, “The cavalry isn’t coming!” So, just as in the old west, people need to become more self-reliant and move on from where they are. This is a battle for survival.
Let Katrina be a lesson to all. If you are below sea level — move. Don’t expect more from Uncle Sam than to pull you from the water. Decide for yourself where you want to go and what you need to do to get there. If you have kids do what you can to give them a chance for something better and encourage them to go for it.
It’s not just that the cavalry isn’t coming — THERE IS NO CAVALRY!
Posted by whattheheck on Sep 1, 2007 at 9:12 AM whattheheck,
Good point there regarding the potential for continuing job losses due to a rush to globalization.
It’s already happening in Africa with the emergence of the ever-expanding Chinese appetite for anything and everything to feed its voracious growth towards Western ways and mass modernization. They are mining Africa dry in a largely imbalanced trade exchange, and the notoriously corrupt African leaders(?) are only too happy to continue selling out.
So a planned transition would help, but that would be the easy way and we both probably suspect that world governments would find a way to to make it anything but easy.
I do agree that education must be held in high esteem at home for it to be valued by the youngsters. I applaud your wife’s efforts. Attitudes at home towards proper education are a major hurdle no doubt, but I think that if you can start somewhere, anywhere, and then somehow achieve repeated series’ of small successes, the success mindset will eventually take hold, trickle-up and rub off on other home members.
Unfortunately, the destructive side of the hip-hop culture has quickly and deeply embedded its nasty nature into a large portion of the minority community, and education was one of the institutions that took a rapid dive. The gangster/pimp/pusher lifestyle got pushed to the forefront in its place and street gangs became a natural offshoot of this shared mentality of gross irresponsibility.
Now something this widespread and insidious didn’t neccessarily happen on its own, but I’ll leave my conspiracy theories for another time.
I will offer though that Welfare in the 60’s and 70’s was a major stake to the heart of the minority sense of responsibility. That and the fact that females were financially rewarded for having more and more babies, but then financially punished if the baby’s father lived with the family…
...Do the math...(hint: the answer’s real ugly!)
Suffice it to say that the minority community in America has tons of digging out to do.
But I’ll add, “Start digging today- tomorrow might be too late.”
Posted by key2success on Sep 3, 2007 at 10:22 PM Page 1 of 1 pages -
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