There's an ever-increasing fear out there in America. Fear of both crime and of each other. A terrific article in The Washington Post started with an anecdote about a guy who owns a big house in a gated community in the safest suburb in town. He's got a full set of security cameras but they're not infrared, so he's shopping around.
"I'm still paranoid, and I live in this overdone gated community," the man tells the Post's reporter.
This man in a mansion is not alone. Some people in America feel less safe than they used to, even as crime goes down for them. They point to urban areas, where many poor people of color live and are afraid. People on the right—who are often the rural poor and are predominately white—say if there were just enough police boots on the ground, the fear of those boots would be so strong, crime would simply go away.
They blame "soft on crime" liberal governments in cities, where crime has increased somewhat. This is not a return to the days of crack that wrecked our urban landscape, with six people a day killed in New York City in 1990. In fact, crime is lessening in New York, the largest most Democratic city around, even if people are still feeling fear.
Most big cities have Democratic governments, but here the right has conflated correlation with causation.
I live in Washington, D.C., where carjacking has become a serious problem. There was an effort by the City Council to actually lower the penalty for this scary, scary crime. It was stupid, Mayor Muriel Bowser was against it, and when the Council overrode her, Congress stepped in.
I say the Council's effort was stupid largely because it doesn't feel right. Still, I don't know what stiffer penalties do once a certain threshold has been reached.
Let's take a case that may seem absurd. Why don't I join the wave of carjackers? I could use some extra cash and maybe a nicer ride. The right would argue that light sentences offer nothing but encouragement.
But I just don't want to. Let's say my sense of values was amputated, there's the fact that I could get hurt by picking the wrong person to fool with. I could get run over—a constant threat with my newfound pretend occupation. And of course, I don't want to go to jail. The thing is, there's no specific length of time in prison that would deter me more than another. I can't imagine I would last a long weekend.
I have a family and a job. I have responsibilities. I have an income and a place in society. I already have a car.
I'm deeply woven into a world that frowns on crime and helps provide for my wants and needs. The stakes are simply too high, whether it be because of the danger to my person—in or out of prison—or to my livelihood or the people I love.
Take away these supports—I'm not a fan of the term privilege, sorry—and you have a man who is very desperate indeed. A man willing to take risks, either to get what I want, or maybe even because frankly, Dear Reader, I don't give a damn.
Statistics show that I'm not alone. It's been said before, and it's been shown before, people who have better support systems from the very beginning of their lives are less likely to do dumb, violent stuff.
We know this to be true, but it seems like we always turn to the more macho "tough on crime" paradigm—for people who aren't like "us."
Some of these liberal cities have tried to rework old models of how to fight crime, mostly because some people were dying needlessly because of the actions of police officers, and very large numbers of people objected. Some of the new models of policing are pretty dumb, and they won't last long. But all these things are happening where crime has always lived—among those with the least stake in society, the least to lose, who need the most.
It has always been this way. It shall ever be thus.
People in big cities vote Democratic because they want to help those who are in most need and are willing to give a hand up in the hopes of getting one when they themselves are down. The vision of the left is a vision of hope and help. Whether they can deliver. Sometimes, if not always. The right offers jackboots and Billy clubs, with little to show for it other than broken skulls.
It's time to once again look to the causes, not just the effects.
Jason Fields is a deputy opinion editor at Newsweek.
The views expressed in this article are the writer's own.
Uncommon Knowledge
Newsweek is committed to challenging conventional wisdom and finding connections in the search for common ground.
Newsweek is committed to challenging conventional wisdom and finding connections in the search for common ground.
