--- Blackmail <blackmail.is.my.life at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> I think it's scariest that there are no answers out
> there.
[ws:] Yup. That is what O'Malley administration in Baltimore disovered during its seven-year tenure. O'Malley run on a strong anti-crime campaign, which got him more black votes than his two black opponents combined, but he failed to deliver. Seven years later Bodymore, Murderland is still the murder capital of the nation, or close to it.
This is certainly not due to the lack of trying. O'Malley administration bent backward to do something about it, becaouse it was highly politicized issue. The problem is, however, that the usual approaches at the government's disposal - social work, policing, and revamping slums - do not work, because they do not address the root causes (drug trade, gangs, culture of poverty). They only helped some people in some neighborhoods by shifting criminal activity to other areas, but they did not reduce homicide rates.
As I argued on this forum time and again, there is no short term solution to this problem. Things will get much worse before they start getting any better - and there is not much that we as society can do about it, except perhaps trying to contain the violence from spilling it over to other areas or run away from it. That is really scary to many people. That is why people look into anything that looks like a solution, which is usually 'law and order' rhetoric - good on paper but rather ineffective.
Wojtek
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