Ideas for Improving Life in High Crime Areas

Crime is the base problem for a number of poor urban areas. Wherever you have high crime, you have trouble attracting employers. And without employment options, you end up with poverty, a low tax base to support schools, hopelessness, drug dealing, and the rest. So I thought I would share some ideas for reducing urban crime. The first idea comes from Black Lives Matters out of New York. I can’t judge this sort of idea from my suburban home in California, but I share it with you because it belongs in the conversation. There is a small experiment going on in part of Harlem that has drastically reduced violent gun crime. Police say the big difference is the number of illegal guns they took out of the neighborhoods in question, but they also credit a group called Street Corner Resources with “. . . a mix of adult education courses, connections to legal and housing help and free job placement programs that would result in positions that could pay $40 to $50 a day more than selling drugs.”

I think it’s always fair to be skeptical of success claims. But I like any plan that can be tested small and evaluated. This example fits that model perfectly. Ideally, we should have a dozen different programs running in different neighborhoods around the country to see which ones work best.

I’d also like to see a system in which senior citizens within a dangerous neighborhood can watch security camera videos of all public spaces in their general area and report suspicious activity to police. Perhaps they can be paid for this service........

I would also expect more police and security drones coming into use to get closer looks at crime in progress, and to follow perps back to their hiding places.

One of the biggest educational needs in America is high quality adult education in literacy. When I graduated from college from the real UT (Tenn) the adult functional illiteracy rate was about 73%. Functional Illiteracy was defined in 1980 as lacking the ability to fill out a typical job application, read a newspaper, interpret a menu, etc. This is typically less than a third grade reading level.
I live in Arkansas these days and today’s adult illiteracy rate is about 69%. One would believe with the billions of dollars in educational expenditures over the last thirty years our “ best and brightest” educators would have discovered the root cause and solved it. Alas, this is not the case. We would like to blame parents for the failure of children since all children theoretically receive the same education (same $$ per child) but the truth is our current educational system sorely fails those at the lower end of financial strata.
Even if a child has a traditional family with a mom, dad, two or three siblings, this is no guarantee of success. When the functional illiteracy rate across the land is as high as 60% in the adults of our nation we have a lose-lose situation in education. When the caring parents of a third grade student are not able to help that student with their homework there is a high likelihood the student will fall behind their peers each succeeding year at an increasing rate of failure until they become “the graduate that cannot read their diploma”. This student is unmarketable in America, especially when our government refuses to lock down our borders to ban illegals and allows immigration from nations that are less equipped for the workplace than our own citizens.
We are creating a double dependency of failing citizens and illegal/ legal drains on a treasury that cannot stand the strain economically. Controlling immigration by controlling our borders and limiting legal immigration to peoples with scarce skills willing to assimilate and desiring citizenship (no anchor babies, no tag alongs) will immediately create jobs for our citizens that would begin to change lives for the better. When people learn to work they learn to take pride in themselves and their work. This creates a desire to strive for success and creates a desire to learn skills that will lead to more success and a start up the ladder of financial independence.
The tools to this desired success come through education and training, but in a nation where there is no starting point (current status) intentionally created by a lost government ruling class, there is no hope, therefore no effort to improve.
We cannot solve this problem until we elect government officials that desire a citizenry that are able to live free and independent lives under our Constitution as intended by our founders. In the history of our nation each generation of children has achieved a level of educational success higher than their parents until the advent of the great society until it is no longer the norm in America.
The education industry would like us to believe the answer is more dollars, we have fifty years of increased funding per student with negative results to show for it. How then do we teach adults? We create business tax incentives to hire and pay trainees to become valuable employees. Bring the marketplace to bear on this issue, triple or quadruple tax deductions to hire a welfare candidate and train/teach them necessary job skills- pay them to learn, teach them to take pride in themselves, bring them back into society, help them to become the productive citizen the desire to be.
Then watch as their growth and success is passed on to their children and within a generation the face of a nation can be changed, but the political status quo will be destroyed. MAGA!
P.S. sorry for the long post.

It doesn’t “take a village”, but it starts with one house, on one street. Inside those four walls has to be a strong family unit that rejects the criminal or victim culture. Once that has been established, you get your neighbors in on the action. In this day and age, you may want to consider cameras at each end of your street, to your back and front. You involve the police in your efforts. When you feel safe enough to walk your dog without fear, you work with the next street. Most people want safety, and I think they’ll work for it, given the incentive of safety for their kids. You do NOT take away guns, as they be necessary to maintain what you, and your neighbors have earned. Criminals push back when you begin to control your own turf and destiny. Expect it, and be ready for it. As these areas improve, you’ll need to convince businesses that they can operate within them. It grows from there. Bad neighborhoods can be good neighborhoods if they consider themselves “settlers” and carve out their place in the world. Pilgrims, if you will. They are in a foreign land, surrounded by native savages (killers), and they have to fight as a team to overcome it. This is the way bad areas of any race predominance, can become good areas.

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