fatherphil

why have we accepted the reality that the safety of a neighborhood is a factor of its income level?
what moral actions should be taken to insure the safety of your neighbor inspite of a lack of funds?

Godless Dave

I'm not sure we have. However, poorer people are more likely to commit crime, so if you live in a neighborhood with lots of poor people there will be crime for that reason. Also, career criminals are more likely to live in poorer neighborhoods: it's more affordable, their scuzzy lifestyles are less conspicuous, and they are more likely to find landlords who don't do background checks or care that there are 15 or 20 people living in the residence that aren't on the lease.

I think Neighborhood Watch-style organizations are effective in getting neighbors talking to each other so they are less likely to take the "it doesn't involve me" attitude. Also, if you know your neighbors it's easier to spot someone on their property who doesn't belong there. Not being afraid to talk to the authorities is very important: reporting absentee landlords and multiple housing code violations; calling the police when appropriate (and attending any community outreach your local police might do); and contacting municipal, county, or state government if you feel the police are neglecting your neigborhood.

fatherphil

i'm not ready to accept that. i mean are you talking about a type of relationship of income level to criminal behaviour one could graph?

Jennie

Are all poor neighborhoods less safe than middle-class ones? It's clear that most people don't have the level of safety that a gated neighborhood with private security guards would, and I don't think we can afford to do that for everyone.

If some poor neighborhoods are as safe as the middle-class ones then what is the difference between them and the middle-class ones?

I think it more likely that the safety/poverty connection is a vicious cycle. If a neighborhood isn't safe, then those who can afford to leave do leave; so the neighborhood is poorer and less able to resist the type of crime that is perceptible in a neighborhood. For instance, I suspect that most embezzlers are middle-class and up; but it wouldn't show in their homes. So it's a type of criminality that shows in poverty, not an impulse towards criminality. Other than the obvious fact that people will steal if they are starving, which is a mitigating factor in my opinion.

Loren Pechtel

I think it works both ways. Crime breeds poor neighborhoods as those with the means leave, and poor neighborhoods breed crime because people don't want to get involved.

callmejay

A start would be to get the police to protect people who aren't rich and/or white. (Well, I guess before that it would be nice to get the police to stop actually causing harm to the poor and minorities through all sorts of abuse.) Crime goes unreported in many poor areas in part because the residents believe, with good cause, that police response will be late and inadequate, and that police are NOT sympathetic toward them. I believe that our society has to some extent written off certain areas, saying "What do we care, WE don't live there anyway."

fatherphil

call, i think the police problem runs up against the funds problem. i got to believe that to be successful, the policing really must come from within the community.

scigirl

True. For this discussion I think we would have to limit "crime" to a certain subset of crimes like "armed robbery" and muggings, etc. When I walk home late from the bus stop to my home, it ain't embezzelers or insider trading people that I'm afraid of.

Jennie

True, I was pointing out simply that being poor didn't make people more likely to be criminals. On the other hand, if you don't get hurt during a mugging, you might lose less money than, say an identity thief would cost you.

fatherphil

does a homeless man have the right to sleep in front of the home of a poor man?