Why New York is Safer than Chicago

Фото: Depositphotos

While the United States is confronting gun violence, the New York City Police Department has released encouraging news. At the moment, 2016 of the year, reports the Office, 435 shooting incidents occurred in the city - a record low number in the last 20 years, as well as 161 murder. On the other hand, in Chicago in the first half of this year, more than 2000 people were shot and 315 killed, which is 50% higher than in the same period last year. Only on the weekend of Memorial Day, 64 people were shot. Six of them died.

Behind these headlines is the fact that today the crime rate in America is about half as high as the one at the peak of 1991. New York from one of the "most dangerous cities in America" ​​has become a "one of the most peaceful metropolitan areas of the developed world."

As Franklin Zimring, a criminal law expert at the University of California at Berkeley, writes, New York is rather an exception to the general picture. From 1985 to 2009, murder rates fell by 82%, assaults by 67%, and robberies by 86%. And while Chicago's crime rate is lower now than it was in the '80s or '90s, the city is still less safe than other cities: As of 2014, Chicago's crime rate was 32% higher than New York's. , and 44% higher than in Los Angeles (although almost twice (!) lower than in Detroit, St. Louis and Oakland). By comparing crime in New York and Chicago, one can get to key questions such as how American cities develop (or don't develop), how isolated their communities are, how violence is transmitted between people, and how, ultimately, the environment shapes behavior. And while academics, experts and others offer their own explanations for why crime rises or falls in a particular city (for example, because of abortion), there are a number of very empirical explanations for these trends.

Behavior is formed «on area»

Brooklyn College sociologist Alex Vitale is skeptical about the impact of public order rules on reducing crime. He says it should be seen more in the context of a national downward trend. “It would be fair to assume that the NYPD has probably done something to reduce the number of shootings in New York compared to other cities,” Vitale says. “It’s not that they detained and searched everyone on the street to take away weapons, and because of this they began to shoot less, no. This does not explain 95% of the change in car thefts and robberies.”

Environment is the best explanation. It is in this area that New York and Chicago are very different. Due to economic factors, systemic housing discrimination, zoning laws that marginalize the poor, and many other factors, Chicago has areas of concentrated poverty, especially for African Americans. A 2015 study by Paul Jargowsky of Rutgers University found that more than a third of all poor African Americans in Chicago live in census tracts with a poverty rate greater than 40%—compared to just 26% in New York City.

Such a concentration of poverty leads to a “district effect”, sociologists say — that is, the area of ​​residence greatly influences behavior. For example, when single mothers of Philadelphia were placed in communities with low poverty levels, their learning success was higher than in the control group in communities with high levels of poverty. Vitale says that poverty concentrated in one place becomes total. If you are a teenager or young person 20 for years and live in such an environment, then, according to Vitale, you need to demonstrate the ability to violence, otherwise you will constantly be made a victim. That is, it is more self-defense than the desire to be a predator, a sociologist believes.

“There are only a few places where the neighborhood effect exists in New York City,” says Vitale. “There, concentrated poverty—for example, in public housing—is a source of gun violence. “But in Chicago, a third of the city falls under this dynamic.”

That is why, according to the sociologist, working with individuals will not produce results in the long term, because it does not change the culture of the environment. When one generation grows out of violence, sits in custody or dies, the next group of 13-14-year-olds are ready to replace them. Structural poverty creates social structures.

Shootout are contagious

Andrew Papachristos, a sociologist at Yale University, says that most of the violence with weapons in Chicago does not occur between strangers, but among acquaintances. According to Science of Us, 70% of non-lethal gunshot wounds in Chicago between 2006 and 2012 years were inflicted inside a network of acquaintances covering no more than 6% of the total population of the city. And 89% of these victims belonged to a single social network comprising 107 740 people.

This shows how violence with the use of weapons - like smoking or obesity - is spread from person to person, as a social infection. Symbolic motifs — revenge, status acquisition, and collective memory — lead to skirmishes between gangs. And although today no one has analyzed the New York skirmishes from the point of view of social groups, it can be assumed that the less concentrated poverty of the city, distributed between five districts, means a lower level of transmission of “social infections” than in Chicago - although without confirmed data it remains just an assumption.

In the short term, says Papachristos, local interventions can be initiated, similar to those that have been successful in the fight against HIV. Police visits to families affected by gun violence can also be complemented by visits from trauma specialists, since immediate intervention can help reduce the risk of post-traumatic stress. Such interventions at the level of small communities have already been implemented in other cities. In Richmond, California, there is a program for 50 young people who are most at risk of shooting or being shot down, for which they receive mentoring and a monthly stipend in exchange for abstaining from violence and fulfilling the “life plan” of their ambitions. Thanks to this program, the number of murders from 2007 to 2014 year was reduced by 70%. The founder of the program DeVon Boggan said that its goal is to send young people to the “right” channel and provide them with social services. This, in turn, reduces the risk of their “contamination” by social violence.

There are so many explanations for reducing crime, especially in New York, that these should be dealt with separately and with a scientific approach. Among all these relationships and statistics, it becomes clear that criminology is as important a science as sociology, and that it will need a lot of empirical research. But it seems that people commit violence with weapons because, like other people, they fall into the midst of people and the place in which they live. Therefore, if we want to change this toxic, destructive behavior, we must also change the context from which it comes.

Read also on ForumDaily:

New York - the city of lonely hearts

New York tap water recognized as the best in the region

During 2016, 2300 people suffered from gunshot wounds in Chicago

Go to the page ForumDaily on Facebook to keep abreast of the latest news and comment material. Also follow the social network for events in your city - Miami, New York и San Francisco Bay Area.