Chicago Sun-Times

Kudos to the Chicago Sun-Times for their extensive piece on how the increased violence is affecting children in neighborhoods where much of this violence is taking place.   Although I thought it could have gone further in-depth in writing about the violence as a generational cycle, they did a great a job in letting the children speak for themselves, as evidenced by the responses they posted from children saying what they would do if there were no more guns in the city.

Reading about 11-year-old Maria Rivera’s fear of playing outside reminded me of moments in my own childhood.  For the most part, my neighborhood (Chatham) was a safe place, but it had enough negative elements to make my mother and grandmother limit where I was allowed to play.  I could never walk anywhere by myself, even to the park that was just three blocks away.  The farthest I ever went was my old elementary school playlot across the street from my house.  But each time over there I found myself looking over  my shoulder every now and again; something that slowly became a normal routine.  A good chunk of my playtime was relegated to playing baseball or catch by myself in the backyard.  It was probably the one place other than inside my house I felt safest.

It took awhile for me to appreciate my family’s protective nature.  Getting robbed one block from home at the age of 14 might have sped up that realization, but better late than never.

Our random headline of the day award goes to the Southwest Observer.

Gangs possible cause for rise in murders

Sonia Clark

This past week the New York Times published an editorial on the rise of child prostitution in major American cities, in particular Atlanta. The paper of record called action beyond stiffer criminal penalties, such as expanded treatment and resources for the young people caught in this cycle. Atlanta is one of 14 major U.S. cities cited by the Federal Bureau of Investigation. Also on that list? Chicago.

The Barton Law and Child Policy Clinic at Emory University recently published a report on the commercial sex trade involving children in Georgia, but it included comparable information on similar laws in Illinois.

Illinois has adopted a strong criminal statute that allows the prosecution of the johns and pimps who commercially sexually exploit children. Its strong sentencing provisions appropriately reflect these crimes’ grave nature, and its provisions coincide with federal law, which will permit international victims to easily take advantage of federal immigration protections.

Illinois’ anti-human trafficking law clearly recognizes that prostituted children under the age of eighteen are victims rather than offenders. However, under Illinois’ prostitution statute there is no minimum age for commission of the offense, so these child victims can still be arrested and charged as juvenile delinquents. Moreover, the trafficking statute does not affirmatively require services to be provided to victims, and does not fund efforts to develop services. Thus, though their exploiters may be subject to more punishment, the immediate needs of child victims of commercial sexual exploitation are not met under Illinois’ anti-trafficking approach.

Illinois does attempt to address victims’ economic problems by providing for restitution and civil actions against their exploiters. However, because assets earned or used in the exploitation are forfeited to the state, it may be difficult for the victim to collect any judgments they receive. Thus, while Illinois’ efforts are admirable and may be very effective from a law enforcement standpoint, they still leave child victims of commercial sexual exploitation vulnerable and underserved.

Now, why would such an issue be talked about on a blog named The Violence Project? Because, like youth violence, the roots of child prostitution lay at the same foundation: broken communities (poverty, lack of access to resources, inadequate education, broken families, failure of institutions). It is time we begin looking at the big picture and connecting the dots before it is too late.

I wanted to give a special nod to the Chicago Tribune’s recent investigative piece on taxpayer money targeted for after-school programs being squandered on things not related to school or after-school.

The juicy details:

Powerful Senate Democrats quietly gave out the money to handpicked nonprofits, schools, businesses and churches. The lawmakers funneled the money through the Illinois State Board of Education, which rubber-stamped the choices.

But a Tribune investigation found that nearly half of the 48 groups that got money this past school year were running dubious programs, or declined to show how they spent the money. Only 11 of the grants went to established programs with a history of tutoring or mentoring school-age children.

Singled out in the article is Illinois State Sen. Rickey Hendon, who is the main sponsor for these grants in question. Hendon responds further in the article by saying, “yeah, I take chances on people. I’ve had success and failures.” If half of the 48 programs are squandering their $20,000 grants or are not able to show how this money is being spent, we come to a situation beyond a simple success or failure.

In a year where close to three dozen young people in Chicago (not counting the suburbs) have been killed, it is an outright shame to find such little disregard from a public official we elected to serve in our best interests, not his or his friends and associates. What will Sen. Hendon have to say if a child in his district is shot because they had nowhere else to be other than the streets since the money for their promised after-school program is in someone else’s pockets instead? Another simple failure? Try telling that to the child’s parents, or the parents who have already had to live the nightmare of losing a son or daughter.

Over the past two weeks we have seen more shootings, more marches, and a gun turn-in day that saw more than 6,800 guns exchanged for gift cards.  In the end the number of young people killed this summer has risen to nine.

Third teenager since June shot within several blocks on Far South Side

Teen slain on Albany Park street

2 wounded in South Side drive-by

Mother, 18, charged with murder in newborn’s death

Peter Macdiarmid/Getty Images

Good read from today’s New York Times on the alarming number of young people falling victim to knife violence.

Tidbits:

Knife crime, most often involving weapons like simple kitchen knives, has dominated the headlines in recent weeks, with reports of fresh cases every day. But statistically, the picture is more murky. Violent crime over all has actually decreased by 41 percent from a peak in 1995, according to the British Crime Survey, in which citizens report their exposure to crime.

Yet the survey accounts only for people 16 and older, and evidence suggests that young people in poorer areas are increasingly likely to carry knives, and increasingly likely to use them. The Daily Telegraph, which examined data from three-fourths of the police forces in England and Wales, reported recently that nearly 21,000 people had been stabbed or mugged at knifepoint so far this year.

Here’s an article focusing on the rise of UK hospital admissions for violence, which is mentioned in the New York Times article.

(Luis Torres / Diario de Juarez)

Here is an interesting article on the consequences of the ongoing drug war in Mexico. It looks like the problems we see here aren’t confined to our own backyard.

Opacity.us

The Chicago Defender recently published a compelling cover story about one mother’s struggle to protect her son from the influence of gangs in their neighborhood. The boy, who is only 10 and learns at a slower pace than other children at his school, is the type of child gang members look for when taking in new recruits. Sadly, this same story is found not only in neighborhoods across Chicago, but in cities across the U.S. Situations like this are no different than the stories we read of children forced to become soldiers in places we consider a world away from ours.

Thanks, Human Goods, for the heads up on this story.

The July/August edition of The Atlantic takes a look the recent rise in violence across the country, focusing on the movement of crime in Memphis, Tennessee. In less than 10 years, Memphis has seen a rise in crime in areas long deemed “safe” or upwardly mobile. Experts pointed to the closing of public housing complexes and migration of its residents as a possible factor, since crime in the areas that housed the complexes has declined.

Lately, though, a new and unexpected pattern has emerged, taking criminologists by surprise. While crime rates in large cities stayed flat, homicide rates in many midsize cities (with populations of between 500,000 and 1 million) began increasing, sometimes by as much as 20percent a year. In 2006, the Police Executive Research Forum, a national police group surveying cities from coast to coast, concluded in a report called “A Gathering Storm” that this might represent “the front end … of an epidemic of violence not seen for years.” The leaders of the group, which is made up of police chiefs and sheriffs, theorized about what might be spurring the latest crime wave: the spread of gangs, the masses of offenders coming out of prison, methamphetamines. But mostly they puzzled over the bleak new landscape. According to FBI data, America’s most dangerous spots are now places where Martin Scorsese would never think of staging a shoot-out—Florence, South Carolina; Charlotte-Mecklenburg, North Carolina; Kansas City, Missouri; Reading, Pennsylvania; Orlando, Florida; Memphis, Tennessee.

Memphis has always been associated with some amount of violence. But why has Elvis’s hometown turned into America’s new South Bronx? Barnes thinks he knows one big part of the answer, as does the city’s chief of police. A handful of local criminologists and social scientists think they can explain it, too. But it’s a dismal answer, one that city leaders have made clear they don’t want to hear. It’s an answer that offers up racial stereotypes to fearful whites in a city trying to move beyond racial tensions. Ultimately, it reaches beyond crime and implicates one of the most ambitious antipoverty programs of recent decades.

If this issue seems familiar to Chicagoans, it should. This has been a source of debate as Chicago public housing buildings are being torn down and its residents sent to neighborhoods just as violent or more violent than the ones they left behind. Medill colleague Erin Halasz recently wrote about this very issue, finding that the decline in murders this past decade has skipped a number of Chicago neighborhoods, or moved to neighborhoods that did not see such violence in the past. The following chart examines homicides in the Grand Boulevard neighborhood (which housed the notorious Robert Taylor homes) and Greater Grand Crossing and Washington Park, just two miles south of Grand Boulevard.

Erin Halasz/Medill

The next question in this murder mystery is how much of this violence has moved farther into the suburbs surrounding Chicago. While homicide numbers for the city of Chicago are easy to find, I’ve had a harder time finding something on homicides in the Chicago metropolitan area. If anybody has any leads on this, feel free to write. If not, investigation time it shall be.

Francis Oduro (Chicago Tribune)

A native of Ghana, Francis Oduro came to America 18 months ago to study engineering. Sadly, instead of following in his father’s footsteps, he became another victim of gun violence that has taken too many lives this year.

Oduro was shot and killed Wednesday, one block from Truman College where he had been attending for the past year. Police believe another man, who was shot at the scene, was the intended victim, calling the shooting gang related.

His parents said that Oduro wanted to find a city less violent than Chicago after finishing school. Unfortunately, he won’t get that chance. More unfortunate, one less person is gone who might have decided to stay here and help make things at least a little better in their community. The Violence Project’s thoughts and prayers go out to the Oduro family.