Crime Is Not The Problem
The July 31, 2015 AP headline reports “Baltimore killings soar to level unseen in 43 years.” The story documents that there have been nearly 200 homicides in Baltimore so far this year, compared to 119 by the end of July 2014. Predictably, there has been much concern expressed by local leaders. Part of the response included Baltimore Mayor Stephanie Rawlings-Blake firing the Police Commissioner Anthony Batts on July 8. The mayor stated “Too many continue to die on our streets. Families are tired of dealing with this pain, and so am I. Recent events have placed an intense focus on our police leadership, distracting many from what needs to be our main focus: the fight against crime." Baltimore is not alone in this trend of increasing urban violence in the U.S. -- Milwaukee, New Orleans, St. Louis, Chicago and Houston have seen murders spike this year. Baltimore is also not alone in responding to this increase in violence as a “fight against crime”, which naturally places the responsibility for addressing it on the criminal justice system. Local police, the front line in the fight against crime, are the primary agents tasked with fixing the problem.
Unfortunately, policy makers and local officials have failed to see the bigger picture. The problem is that the violence in Baltimore and other cities across the U.S. is generally but a symptom. Unfortunately, the current criminal justice system can fix neither the symptom nor the underlying disorder.
For the past 50 years, we have thought of crime as largely a matter of criminals making bad choices and hanging out with the wrong people. A substantial element in this way of thinking about crime is that offenders act out of some kind of free will. That assumption has guided our responses to crime – punish offenders severely so that they change their decision making, so that they make better choices. While there is some truth to this, it tragically misses a vitally important reality. Offenders engage in crime for a variety of reasons and under a variety of circumstances and constraints. Over 40% of criminal offenders who end up in the American criminal justice system have a diagnosable mental illness. Eighty percent of offenders have a substance abuse problem, consisting of abuse, dependence or addiction. Many suffer the neurodevelopmental consequences of growing up in poverty, exposure to violence, living in households characterized by abandonment and chaos, and physical brain trauma, among many others. Moreover, large segments of the offender population have substantial educational and employment deficits, which severely limit opportunities and viable alternatives to crime.
I don’t cite this evidence about criminals and their characteristics to excuse bad behavior. No matter the underlying causes, crime has profoundly negative consequences for victims, families, neighborhoods, and larger communities. The point is to highlight the futility of continuing down our well tread path of punishment centered, tough on crime policies. Punishment doesn’t work because it doesn’t do anything to change these underlying conditions, disorders and deficits that characterize the vast majority of criminal offenders. The situation is really not that different from simply treating a fever with aspirin, rather than diagnosing the underlying causes of the fever and treating them. Unfortunately, we don’t even have a sufficient aspirin equivalent in the criminal justice arsenal.
While there is clear and convincing political pressure on the mayor of Baltimore and public officials in many other large cities across the U.S to address the increase in crime, especially violent crime, the reality is there is little they can do under the current criminal justice regime to effectively reduce crime.
This is not just a failure of the American criminal justice system. There are many others involved, including inadequate public mental health and substance abuse treatment, failed public education especially in the poorest areas in urban America, unrelenting poverty, absence of adequate neurocognitive and neurodevelopmental interventions, and lack of employment training and jobs. For a variety of reasons, the justice system has been the default repository for the consequences of many of these institutional failures, and unfortunately, with recidivism rates north of 80%, we just seem to make the situation worse.
The good news is that we have the tools today to effectively change behavior. The scientific evidence is quite clear that correctional intervention and treatment can dramatically reduce recidivism. If we continue to fail to adequately address the reasons people commit crime, why should we expect the situation to change?
We also need to appreciate that we all share some of the responsibility for crime. After all, we elect the public officials who make the decisions about criminal justice policy, mental health and substance abuse treatment, public education, job creation, and poverty.