Research shows stable families deter criminality. Here’s what society can do.
Homicides were up in Dallas last year, and despite mixed results for other crime statistics, a record-high 63% of U.S. adults are unsettled about the crime situation, according to Gallup. Those statistics, plus an election year, have reignited debates about how governments should respond.
After dramatic drops in the 1990s and early 2000s, Violent crime—especially aggravated assault and homicide—has risen slightly since 2014, when it reached a half-century low.
The fashionable view—particularly from the political left—is that governments need to spend less on efforts that treat crime as a law enforcement problem and more on initiatives that will address crime’s root causes. This is the view you’ll see in press outlets such as The New York Times; it’s the received wisdom passed down to young students in university lecture halls; and it’s the go-to line of public officeholders that made their names criticizing the police.
The “root causes” view is that structural factors like poverty, underfunded schools, and a lack of job opportunities are the primary drivers of violent crime. There is much to debate about this list; but the biggest problem is with what’s left out: another important structure, the family.
Continue reading the entire piece here at The Dallas Morning News (paywall)
______________________
Rafael Mangual is the Nick Ohnell Fellow and head of research for the Policing and Public Safety Initiative at the Manhattan Institute and a contributing editor of City Journal. He is also the author of Criminal (In)Justice: What the Push for Decarceration and Depolicing Gets Wrong and Who It Hurts Most. Brad Wilcox, a professor of sociology at the University of Virginia and director of the National Marriage Project, is the Future of Freedom Fellow at the Institute for Family Studies and a visiting scholar at the Sutherland Institute. Based off a recent report.
Photo by Halfpoint/iStock