Crime, violence are spiking all over. Yet these solutions aren’t discussed. Why not?
It’s been a particularly violent time of late. Kansas City Mayor Quinton Lucas calls the city’s homicides “insanity,” and “a substantial challenge to the future of our city.” Wichita has been branded the most dangerous city in Kansas, and certainly is for victims of domestic violence.
Nationally, spikes in crime have the San Francisco mayor and others scurrying to re-fund the police.
Yet, with violence, shootings and murders so evident in the news and streets today, it’s curious why potential solutions are not.
“Nobody wants to discuss solutions. They want to scream at each other,” says Kevin L. Jamison, a Gladstone criminal attorney and president of the Missouri Sport Shooting Association.
Why can’t we talk about solutions? Perhaps because they go way, way beyond politically expedient arguments about guns. Guns are a major part of the problem, to be sure, and we need a much more coolheaded discussion on them. But the root causes of violence go infinitely deeper into societal and personal ills that we don’t often discuss, at least in the media and halls of power.
The many causes are deep-rooted and require massive cooperation, commitment and perseverance to solve. They include, as The Star’s Missouri gun violence project has rightly noted, historic racial inequities, poverty, housing and food insecurity and access to elevating education and safe neighborhoods.
Given our ideological segregation these days, my friends on the left might be delightfully surprised at how many conservatives agree with all of that.
“If you give people hope for a better life, they will respond,” says Jamison.
But conservatives I’ve talked with cite some other very big factors contributing to crime and violence: our lengthy breakdown in stable families; the erosion of religion and morality in secular society; absent, disinterested and overwhelmed parents; the near death of individual responsibility; a culture that glorifies violence and rule-breaking and rarely depicts the consequences; a frightening pullback of policing and punishment; and, of course, alcohol and drugs.
“If it wasn’t for drugs and alcohol, I’d have to learn how to write wills,” says attorney Jamison. “All of my criminal cases have something to do with drugs, whether they’re buying, selling, using or doing things while under the influence.”
Some of these challenges are easier to solve than others. Enforcing laws already on the books would be one of them, you would think.
“Public safety has been politicized,” says Kansas state Rep. Stephen Owens, Republican of Hesston. “What we have witnessed over the past few years is a general disdain for law and order. Organized retail theft with no consequence. Decriminalization of felonies to misdemeanors. Near elimination of accountability in the pre-trial setting (bail reform).
“If these criminals do not believe in law and order, if they don’t believe they will be held accountable, if they don’t believe they will ultimately be sent to prison for their actions, then they have no reason or incentive to act differently.”
“It’s taken decades to get where we are, and I’m not sure it’s recoverable,” says Wichita businessman Steve Clark, a former Air Force fighter pilot distressed at the breakdown of civil behavior. “But we should start by demanding our laws are strictly obeyed, and enforcing them. In many ways it’s simple — but in reality not so, because this behavior has been tolerated far too long in our society.”
He’s right. But I noticed, in Googling this topic, that conservative solutions to crime and violence don’t get much traction at all in the national media. Why not? To get at the root causes, we’ve got to tackle chronic deficiencies that go to the very soul of both society and the individual — something we have yet to commit to as a people.
What are we waiting for?
