Crime rate drops...again
Published September 7, 2013
Editorial by News and Observer, September 6, 2013.
One criminologist, commenting on the state Department of Justice report that overall crime in North Carolina was down for the fifth year in a row, said prevention programs have made the difference. There are more effective programs now, and courts are being more imaginative in the way they handle juveniles, whose crime rate was down 12 percent last year and 30 percent since 2008.
Individual communities also have increased the number of programs that focus on high-risk youngsters. State Attorney General Roy Cooper cited organizations such as the Boys and Girls Clubs and the presence of school resource officers. His opinion was echoed by, among others, Wake County Sheriff Donnie Harrison.
The downturn in the crime rate is, happily, a long-term trend. Statewide, the overall crime rate has dropped over 20 percent in the last 10 years, and the rate of violent crime has dropped over 21 percent.
The late John Baker, sheriff of Wake County for over two decades, always believed in law enforcement’s doing more than arresting people and locking them up. Baker, a former pro-football player from Raleigh, went into low-income communities virtually every day and talked forcefully to young people about the need to stay out of trouble. That mission is continuing in some form in most communities, where prosecutors and law officers and judges understand that intervention is a much better alternative than incarceration.
When we see young people in particular misbehaving, the temptation is to shrug our shoulders and wonder whether they have any chance at all to straighten out their lives. After investments in community programs and more awareness on the part of neighbors and teachers and officers, the answer is, “Yes.”
September 7, 2013 at 8:31 am
TP Wohlford says:
Oh jeez.
First, it doesn't take any money for the community elders to go talk some sense into the young. It might "Take a village" but the evidence is clear that it doesn't "take a bloated government program."
Second, I thought that the N-O was full of stories of such programs that were cut? So, were these programs cut over the past 10 years?
Third, this decrease in crime comes in the face of a massive increase in gun sales and gun ownership (more people own guns, not just a few gun owners stocking up). What gives? Isn't this a matter of dogma in the N-O that gun ownership means dead people?
September 7, 2013 at 8:35 am
TP Wohlford says:
Oh, and hasn't this been in the face of stagnant economic times (during Obama) and the worse economy since the Great Depression (Bush 43)? So, what about that liberal dogma that poverty and hard times breeds crime?
