Non-violent grass roots reform and Democracy: June 2022

We now have a standard routine that we follow after every mass shooting that gets national media attention, without actually discussing the vast majority of contributing causes or how to prevent them, and the one subject, gun control, that the media provides obsession coverage on, never leads to policy changes, nor, even on this one subject do they report on the best research on it. If there's one change in this routine that has taken place over the past ten or twelve years or so, it's that there are now some pundits that actually admit this has become routine, but they do nothing to change the routine or discuss effective solutions that have been proven to work; instead they take turns blaming others.

Another big part of the routine is to act as if they only want to stop mass shootings, without solving all forms of violence, even though deaths from mass shootings are only a small fraction of all murders, and the same contributing causes for other forms of violence are also contributing causes for mass shootings. It should be clear that if they stop the leading contributing causes for all violence they'll make mass shootings much less likely as well as all other forms of lives, which will save many more lives than reasonable gun control, although that should still be part of the solution. And they often act as if the only thing they can do is wait for the last minute and try to minimize the damages by killing the shooter first, which rarely if ever works, as Uvalde showed.

I'm not saying that reasonable gun control shouldn't be part of the solution, but there should be little or no doubt that there are dozens of contributing causes, or risk factors, as many academics call them, leading to all forms of violence, including murder and mass shootings. At least half a dozen or a dozen of these contributing causes, or risk factors, are probably more important than most of the others, so it's understandable that they provide more media coverage on those, assuming at least a modest amount of time is spent on less important risk factors, but the only potential solution the media and politicians spend much time discussing is gun control, and they don't even do anything about that.

One of the most important factors that I've focused on in the past is child abuse, including corporal punishment, which routinely teaches violence, and contributes to much more violence later in life, but other factors, including abandoned inner cities, income inequality, poverty, inadequate education or economic opportunities are almost as important. As I pointed out in several previous articles including Research On Preventing Violence Absent From National Media Corporal Punishment is used more at homes in the states allowing it in schools, and is also associated with more child abuse; and it results in higher rates of violence among adults, including murder, as indicated by FBI crime reports which show that on average the states still allowing it, which is now only 19 states, always have had lower murder rates going back at least to 1991, and the gap has been growing steadily the longer they ban it. In 1992 there was only a gap between the CP states and non-CP states of just over 2%, but in 2019 they broke another record with the states still allowing it having an average murder rate of 6.07 per 100,000 compared to 4.22 per 100,000 in states not allowing it, which comes to a gap of about 36%.

I've also checked to see if various other forms of violence are more common in states allowing corporal punishment and found that more often than not they are, especially when there are large enough samples to be statistically random, as statisticians recommend. In 2014 I did a review comparing the top ten states for various violent crimes, Ignored evidence linking corporal punishment, poverty and crime grows and found that based on 2012 crime reports the states still allowing corporal punishment in schools were more likely to be in the top ten states for violence, while the only two, Wyoming and Idaho, in the bottom ten were very rural states without any abandoned inner cities. I looked at more recent FBI reports and found the trend was similar, although I didn't crunch the numbers quite as thoroughly. Sometimes this is easy to recognize by simply looking at the FBI reports which show that the South, where corporal punishment is much more common, is much more violent than other regions, including the Northeast, where it's much less common and banned in schools. I also did several comparisons of police killed in the line of duty or police killing civilians, and found that even though the nineteen states still allowing corporal punishment in schools only have about 41.5% of the population, they have between 50% and 60% of the police killed or civilians killed by police, consistently in several different years.

However, in all fairness, mass murders, including those in schools, haven't always been so consistant. In 2002 there was a peer reviewed study saying states allowing corporal punishment had significantly more school shootings and deaths than those that banned it, and in 2018, after the Parkland shooting I did a review for that year, Inciting School Shootings In Trump Country, which includes a link to the 2002 study, and found that in 2018 the number of school shootings and deaths in CP states was much more extreme than the 2002 study; the increased shootings and deaths for the most part since then was higher in CP states, but when I checked the years from 2003 to 2017, I found that even though there were more schools shootings per capita in CP states, there were more deaths per capita in non-CP states. This is because of several of the biggest mass shootings in schools, like Newtown, Virginia Tech and Clackamas, were in non-CP states. A closer look at all mass shootings had similar inconsistent results, perhaps partly because of limited samplings for mass shootings, but there might be other unknown contributing causes. Nevertheless all other comparisons I looked at show consistently higher rates of violence in the CP states, clearly showing we should reduce or eliminate child abuse including corporal punishment when ever possible.

Another major contributing cause is many economic factors that create abandoned inner cities where the majority of all murders happen, mostly in poorer areas, although the vast majority of these murders don't get nearly as much media attention, and there's little or no discussion about the most effective way to preventing them in the media or by Congress or any president in the past few decades, even though there's plenty of academic research showing how to reduce violence, including a lot that also shows it saves money, and would be good for the economy. Previously in Politicians increase crime; Grass roots efforts reduce crime; Politicians steal the credit I reviewed a series of studies that started with the one mentioned above about corporal punishment and followed up with several additional contributing factors to violence that impact abandoned inner cities more than most of the country, including poverty, income inequality, inadequate educational opportunities, gambling, gun control and several other factors. This also highlighted some states or cities that dramatically reduced violence with help from local grassroots, including Richmond California, which still has high murder rates, but not nearly as bad as they used to, thanks to local programs to address the needs of local people.

Before the 2020 COVID surge there were on average almost fifty murders every day; over 40% of them were in one hundred-twenty-nine cities with just over 10% of the population and double the national murder rate in 2019, which are listed at the end of this article. This chart actually underestimates the concentration of abandoned inner cities with high murder rates, as explained in more detail at the end of this article, since it doesn't include many large cities with murder rates less than twice the national average, even though many neighborhoods within those cities have much higher murder rates and should be included, but the FBI didn't break down the data for where in these cities there was more murder. We also have research showing how to prevent them and save money at the same time, but it also shows our rigged economy is part of the problem.

One of the clearest factors in this chart is that virtually all of these abandoned inner cities are in very low income areas, with only nine out of one-hundred-twenty-nine of these cities with a median household income of more than $60,000, and most of those are in areas with a high cost of living. The most extreme and outrageous exception in this chart is Washington DC with murder rates of 23.5 per100,000, four and a half times the national average, and an average household income of more than $92,000, which is the highest of any other city on this list. Just in case the hypocrisy isn't obvious to anyone, the explanation for this is that very wealthy people, presumably associated with the government, or possibly lobbyists, live on one side of the city, where it's relatively safe, and much poorer people live on the other side of the city, where it's much more dangerous with higher murder rates and lower income. It's not hard to find explaining part of this, a few listed below, or check your own searching "Washington DC high crime in ghettos," or something similar on Google.

It's not like they don't have effective solutions to solve these problems, and there's an enormous amount of evidence showing it's often far cheaper to solve social problems before they escalate to violence as many studies show including a study pointed out by James Garbarino in his book "Lost Boys" which I cited in Burying Solutions to Prevent Gilroy, Dayton and El Paso Shootings an excerpt shows that research finds home visitor programs reduce many social problems including crime, and saves more money than it costs, Garbarino also cites Zagar's study which shows that for every dollar spent on prevention programs at least six dollars are saves as shown in another excerpt which I included in Ten Ways To Reduce Violence, Backed Up By Research, in another video he also reports on a study in some of the most violent parts of Chicago or other violent cites that mentoring programs for at risk kids reduces the murder rates by 50% in those areas.

There are apparently several studies from Dr. Robert John Zagar, who was cited by James Garbarino, and I can't be certain which one he was referring to, but I found Delinquency Best Treatments: How to Divert Youths from Violence While Saving Lives and Detention Costs 2013 from him which claims that his studies show programs saved between one dollar and ninety-eight dollars for each program, which means that a small number may be below Garbarino's estimate, but many more are much higher savings. None of the programs in this paper saved less than $3.88 for every dollar expended and as the following excerpt shows most of them save much more:

Table 1 lists the Washington State Policy Institute (2006) evidence-based options to reduce future prison construction, criminal justice cost, and crime rates. In these prevention programs, the best ROI was pre-kindergarten, low-income interventions for three to four year-olds, with $20.57 in savings for every dollar spent. For juvenile offenders, the best ROI was inter-agency coordination programs, with $25.03 in savings for every dollar spent. For adult offenders, the best ROI was in-class, cognitive behavior therapy, with $98.09 in savings for every dollar spent. ......

The above expanded trials resulted in an estimated 52 lives and $297 million costs saved over a four-year period. The ROI was $3.88 in savings for every dollar expended. ......

Structured psychiatric interviews, psychological tests, pharmaceutical management and treatments, and computers can all help us to deal with these challenges in a cost-effective manner. It is economically feasible to diagnose and treat the 1% who are seriously mentally ill at approximately $1,000 a year rather than pay $2,500 annually for electronic surveillance, or $18,500–40,000 per year to keep them in prison or in institutions for the seriously mentally ill.

According to an article from Vox The biggest benefit of pre-K might not be education 07/30/2014 which cites several studies all find that investment in child care saves more money than it costs and reduces violence saving lives as indicated in the following excerpt:

One of the most common arguments in favor of universal pre-K is the argument that it will actually save money: $7 for every $1 invested, according to President Obama's proposal for expanding pre-K access. Some studies have found an even higher return — as high as $16 to $1 — on investment from sending 4-year-olds to school. ....

The Chicago Longitudinal Study saved about $11 for every $1 invested for preschool-aged children, and researchers estimated that two-thirds of those savings were due to lower crime costs.

These studies all focus on the cost savings, which should be enough to show they're worthwhile; however, they don't show a much bigger savings in lives of people that shouldn't be killed, either in murders of one or two people at a time or mass murders like the Uvalde and Buffalo shootings. These mass shootings seem much worse, based on the way they're covered by the mass media; however, as I pointed out before, they're only a modest fraction of the murders every year, so other murders add up much more even though the media doesn't pay attention to the vast majority of them, except to report them individually at the local level. These lives should create much more shock and demand for solutions, and I have no doubt they would if the media covered both the murders and the research to prevent them. Why don't they? It's hard to avoid the conclusion that they're mostly in poor areas, and profit driven media and political organizations are far more concerned with profits for the rich. This report from Dr. Zagar also indicates that availability of jobs is one of the most important factors to prevent violence; which means that shipping jobs overseas to increase profits for the wealthy and drive wages down both here and abroad is a major contributing cause to violence as well as poverty.

And there are many more studies that show how to solve many more social problems that will have a direct or indirect impact on all forms of violence, including mass murder; many of these studies also show that solving social problems saves far more money than they cost including a couple examples from Europe that I discussed in Machiavellian Ideology Ignores Real Science, which cites a large effort in Finland to virtually eliminate homelessness by housing them first, then solving other problems, and they found that it saves over $17,000 per person per year since it prevents more social problems that are more expensive, possibly including crime and violence; and another effort in Portugal to decriminalize drug addiction and treat it instead, which also proved to save many lives, prevent related social problems, including other crimes and violence, and presumably saving an enormous amount of money related to these social problems, although they don't have a precise estimate that I know of.

Furthermore, either Congress has been aware of this all along, or if they're ignorant of the best research, it's because they don't want to know; numerous good researchers have explained how they could save many lives and money at the same time, including James Garbarino who testified before Congress on numerous occasions, including the following excerpts of his from 1983:

Dr. Garbarino: I think the first thing we have to recognize is that child abuse and delinquency bear a striking family resemblance. We know that many children who are abused become juvenile delinquents, but we also know that delinquent behavior often precipitates abusive treatment at the hands of parents and other adults. We also, know that the same kind of environment that produces child abuse tend to produce juvenile delinquency as well.

I think we need to recognize that most children and young people experience occasional incidents of severe physical or psychological discipline or punishment, and we need to recognize that most youths engage in some sort of delinquent or delinquent-like behavior, but our primary concern is that a chronic, serious pattern of abuse and a chronic, serious pattern of delinquency, particularly aggressive delinquency go hand in hand.

Senator Spector: Dr. Garbarino, you are saying, then, in your professional opinion, that there is a direct causal connection between child abuse and delinquency?

Dr. Garbarino: Yes, I think that is well established. The experience of being abused produces anger. It produces difficulty in relating to other people. It isolates the young person from their peers and from other adults, and those kinds of feelings and social skills tend to lead a kid into an escalating pattern of delinquent behavior.

Senator Spector: Is that part of the chain which eventuates in the commission of major crimes, such as robberies and burglaries in adolescents and later in adulthood?

Dr. Garbarino: I think it is fair to say that it is, for two reasons. The first is that many of these kids are going to be difficult to help, to divert out of the escalating cycle, and we know that most of the most serious adult aggressive crimes come out of an escalating pattern of increased delinquency and aggressive acts. The other part of the equation, is that often in the initial response to delinquent behavior, whether it's petty thievery, petty aggressive acts, vandalism, and so on, often parents and institutions that deal with youth respond to them in an abusive manner.

Senator Spector: Who responds to them in an abusive manner?

Dr. Garbarino: Who responds to them in an abusive manner? The parents and the institutions.

Senator Spector: How do the institutions respond to them in an abusive manner?

Dr. Garbarino: We know that when kids are sent off to reform schools, detention homes, and so, there the likelihood of their being physically and sexually abused at the hands of staff as well as other inmates is quite high.

Senator Spector: So they are on a cycle. They are abused by their parents. They become angry. They in turn, commit minor crimes and are spent to institutions which are really training schools for more crime?

Dr. Garbarino: Training schools for crime and for more anger.

Senator Spector: Dr. Garbarino, you said earlier that there was conclusive evidence of a connection between child abuse and criminal conduct or delinquency. Why are you sure?

Dr. Garbarino: I am sure because without exception, to my knowledge, studies that have examined the life history of people involved in serious aggressive crime find the experience of abuse, sometimes going very early into their lives, certainly in early childhood and almost universally in adolescence.

And I think that connection is so prevalent that it warrant's the conclusion I drew earlier.

There were several other good researchers in addition to James Garbarino testifying at this hearing, but the only one from the Senate that participates, and perhaps the only Senator there at all, is Arlen Spector. All the good researchers agreed that they needed to fund programs at the local level, and even though some of the best research showing that these programs would save more money than they cost there was good reason to believe that they were worth it. But, of course, throughout the eighties and beyond, they continued cutting social spending while giving increased tax cuts to the wealthy; and this continued no matter how much more research showing how effective programs could save both money and lives.

In an appendix, "Children Who Killed for the same hearing there were a few comments from Dr. Dorothy Otnow Lewis, another good researcher:

Another researcher who has found a high incidence of brain damage among homicidal children is Dorothy Otnow Lewis, a psychiatry professor at the New York University School of Medicine. However, Dr. Lewis and her colleagues believe the violent, often homicidal father is the most significant factor in explaining the child's homicidal aggression. Often the homicidal child has witnessed his father's violence against the mother. The researcher also found that homicidal children were much more likely than others to have mothers who had been psychiatrically hospitalized and fathers who were alcoholic. This study, which compared homicidal children under 12 to other children brought into psychiatric service, appeared in the American Journal of Psychiatry in February.

Dr. Lewis said in an interview that one reason that one reason there may be more homicidal behavior among children is the cutback in mental health facilities in recent years. As a result, she said, "you have more and more extremely disturbed people who are trying to raise children with very few supports."

In studying violent children, Dr. Lewis has found that about four-fifths have witnessed extreme directed at themselves or others, usually in their own homes. This is true for only 20 percent of nonviolent children, she said. "It curdles your blood to hear what the parents have done," she said.

Dorothy Otnow Lewis went on to write Guilty by Reason of Insanity where she confirms much of the research provided by James Garbarino, and numerous other good researchers. She went so far as to say that every time she thoroughly investigated a killer she found credible evidence, often including police or hospital reports, showing that the killer came from an abusive background, and that this clearly was a major factor in turning the person, usually men, but some women as well, into a killer.

The media practically never covers the best researchers, at least in a high profile manner, but there's no doubt that there is an enormous amount of good research in the academic world, good non-fiction books and alternative media showing the leading causes of violence and how to make it much less likely, and these researchers have indicated they would be willing to talk about it if they had the chance on mainstream media. I've contacted several good academics on numerous occasions, including James Garbarino, and when they have time, they're willing to answer a reasonable amount of questions, which they wouldn't be able to do if they had adequate opportunity to address the public through mainstream media. One occasion where Dr. Dorothy Otnow Lewis did appear in a one hour documentary about serial killers, which I watched years ago, she indicated that she wanted an opportunity to make her case to a larger audience, although I don't remember her exact word. Traditional media provides obsession coverage to pundits or demagogues that focus almost entirely in punishment as a deterrent without considering anything else, including many demagogues like Nancy Grace or politicians like Ted Cruz, Josh Hawley and many other ideological fanatics that aren't familiar with any good research, and some of them have even expressed outrage when suspects that were proven to be innocent were released.

Numerous academics repeatedly testify before Congress, including James Garbarino, who testified at least two or three more times after the 1983 hearing including Hearings on the Reauthorization of the Higher Education Act of 1965: Titles ... By United States, United States. Congress. House 1991 where he testified in favor of a specific program which would fund education for teachers so they would work in abandoned inner cities, and while they were at it, they also pointed out that many other programs that were being cut were actually very effective. The evidence continued to grow that many good programs saved far more than they costed, especially in the nineties, yet they keep cutting educational programs that work, while increasing the funds for police, courts, and prisons, which don't work. In the 1991 hearing there were more lawmakers present, but several of them indicated that they were going in an out and didn't hear all the testimony, sometimes saying they would read it, but there's no evidence that they did, or that they pushed to get this new program funded or prevent other good programs from being cut, instead they did the opposite.

Joe Biden was one of the Senators on the committee from Garbarino's 1983 testimony, but there's no indication that he was actually there, and his record in politics clearly indicates he didn't take this good research seriously, and often voted to do the opposite of what good academics wanted, and in many cases, what voters wanted as well. In addition to the studies from within the United States there's also an enormous amount of evidence showing that when Europe funded educational programs much better than the United States they had much better results, including much lower murder rates. If you look at Wikipedia: List of countries by intentional homicide rate to compare European murder rates to ours you'll find that they were at least forty percent lower in 2019 than the United States, and if you exclude Russia and Ukraine, which have highly dysfunctional governments and unusually high murder rates, even worse than the United States, the murder rates are at least fifty percent, if not over sixty percent lower than the United States. In 2020 that gap surged even more, since there was an unprecedented jump in murder rates in the United states of about twenty-nine and a half percent, presumably related to COVID, but Europe, which also handled the pandemic much better, only had a three and a half percent increase in murder rates for that year.

In a 2001 speech James Garbarino discusses one program which he claims was first tried in Germany, but that when we tried it in the United States they watered it down in several ways and it inevitably became less effective, and instead of saving more money, they cut the effectiveness of the program and the financial savings as well as social savings, accomplishing the opposite. This is the same home visitor program which I mentioned above, and cited on several previous articles. When I first reported on this program I mentioned the fact that I heard about it from the Boston Globe in the mid to late nineties, and they said it was new to Massachusetts and several other states, but that they had studies from Hawaii, the first state to use this program, which showed this program was effective, implying that they began it on their own. But James Garbarino claims it came from Germany, and our history routinely ignores social programs from Europe, as if they never existed, so I consider Professor Garbarino's claims far more credible. He claimed that when it was adopted in the United states one way to try to save money was to try to use volunteers without nearly as much training as nurses, and it became less effective, and another way to cut corners was to start the program after the birth of the child, instead of having a nurse visit the at risk mother and advise on health issues and help prepare the mother for caring for the child, and once again, the program became less effective, and the small savings from corner cutting weren't nearly as big as the lost savings from a more effective program.

Another consideration is who the at risk parents are that are eligible for this program, and why they became at risk. The short answer is that they were probably raised in violent or at risk families themselves, and that they never learned adequate social or parenting skills themselves from their own parents. In many cases, this program is designed to brake a cycle of violence that might go back generations, although Professor Garbarino doesn't go directly into this, he does cover it indirectly in some of his other research, including a citation of All God's Children Fox Butterfield 1995 which explains how the Boscott family passed down a culture of abuse and violence going back to before the Civil War and explains how violence was taught to minorities by slave owners. The was explained in even more detail by Dr. Stacey Patton Author of "Spare the Kids" 2017 which also shows that violence was taught to slaves by their slave owners and passed down from generation to generation and additional confirmation for this comes from the autobiographies of Frederick Douglass. Unfortunately most people, including African Americans, never heard about this history or research, and Stacey Patton corrects misunderstandings by many of them, including parents and teachers from Saint Augustine Catholic School about ten years ago or so, who thought that white people were intervening in their culture by banning corporal punishment in their schools. In many cases African Americans are justified to be skeptical of teachings from white people; but, as Stacey Patton explains, there were two different versions forced on them by white people, one during the slave years, which was passed down from generation to generation, supporting corporal punishment, and another by modern academics, including some minority academics, like Patton. I hope a growing number of them have learned to reject the slave owners teachings, which Patton is trying to explain, although she gets very little attention from corporate media.

They finally appear to be ready to pass a bill on the subject, although it isn't likely to be nearly as thorough as it should be. The bill advanced by the Senate, which they call a gun control bill has very little to control gun sales, ignoring the gun show loophole, increases in the age required to buy guns, bans on assault weapons, and many other of the most popular recommendations, instead only closing the "boyfriend loophole" which is unlikely to effect many if any sales, especially for domestic violence, since potential partners are often the target, and are unlikely to buy a gun they could be killed with, and vague supports for "red flag laws," which are rarely effective. It also provides some funds for mental health and security, but ignores the vast majority of programs that are likely to prevent all types of violence that many academics like Professor Garbaino and Dr. Lewis have been recommending for decades.

There's also a lot of evidence showing that class conflict is a major part of the reason for increased violence as well, some of which goes back it least forty years, when Professor Garbarino first testified, or as must as one hundred and forty years, based on one of the sources cited by Murray A. Straus and Alan Jay Lincoln author of "Crime and the Family" 1985. This book discusses several examples where violence in the family is taught because there are no other ways to make a fair living in economies where everything is rigged in favor of the rich, including many Indian (not to be accused with native Americans) tribes where they resort to crime as a family, often with certain patterns for different families, the most famous was the Thuggee, although the vast majority weren't so extreme, and large clans in Italy that resorted to kidnapping for ransom during the seventies. In both cases they were much more likely when there wasn't a functioning political or economic system that served everyone fairly, and there was a large amount of income inequality, and there are many more examples of this, including all the abandoned inner cities in the United States where there is more than double the national murder rate, which is already much higher than Europe, where they take care of their social problems much better.

This hypothesis that income inequality is a major contributing factor was also supported by Richard Louis Dugdale, "The Jukes, a study in crime, pauperism, diseases, and heredity," 1877/1910, which Straus and Lincoln refer to as a "famous" study, which may be true in the academic world among Sociologists or Criminologists and other related fields, but I doubt very much if the vast majority of the public ever heard of this study, which is unfortunate, because although, as Struas and Lincoln say it doesn't have the most advanced evidence to back it up or thorough recommendations, compared to modern research, it's far better than the research covered by mainstream media or used to make political decisions, and it shows that they had good research to reduce violence far earlier than most people realized. Dugdale doesn't put as much emphasis on income inequality as some more recent scholars, but he does recognize that abuse within the Juke family teaches violence, and that addressing the social causes, or what he refers to as the "environment" is the most effective way to reduce crime and violence. And there's an enormous amount of follow up research showing that he was right all along, and that if the establishment had taken his advise many increases of crime throughout the twentieth centuries could have been avoided, and decreases in crime could have been sped up, almost certainly including many mass shootings that could have been avoided.

Straus and Lincoln cited at least two more sources that go into more detail about how a rigged economy controlled by the wealthy for the benefit of the wealthy also contributes to higher crime by refusing to address social problems, The Social Reality of Crime (Law and Society Series) 1st Edition by Richard Quinney 1970/2001 and "Whose Law? What Order? A Conflict Approach to Criminology" 1976 by William J. Chambliss (Author), Milton Mankoff and another source making similar claims is Controlling the Dangerous Classes: A History of Criminal Justice in America By Randall G. Shelden, Pavel V. Vasiliev 2018. So far I've only read summations of these books and they all appear to be out of print with only somewhat expensive used copies available for some of them, but even a few excerpts or summaries clearly shows they have a good point, especially since there's an enormous amount of supporting evidence to their claims which I have read, and simply Googling "White Collar crime not prosecuted nearly as much as Blue Collar crime even though it often does far more damage" or something similar like "White Collar crime verses Blue Collar crime" turns up an enormous number of articles including Follow the Money: Why Financial Crimes Often Go Unpunished After 2012 and White Collar Crime vs. Blue Collar Crime 05/18/2019 It doesn't take long to realize that our legal system is rigged heavily in favor of the wealthy, who are rarely prosecuted for their crimes, and some of their efforts to rig the economy and commit fraud against the working class isn't even illegal, and some crimes, like wage theft, is often treated as a civil action, not a criminal one with the threat of jail time, even when the amount of theft is much higher, while petty crimes like shoplifting food or clothing, or even vagrancy, when people can't support themselves in a rigged economy is often prosecuted relentlessly, and sometimes even turned into felonies.

About five hundred years ago Niccolò Machiavelli claimed that those in power should "Keep the citizens poor," which was an important part of his ideology to control the masses, either under the control of a "Prince" or a larger ruling class, which would still be a fraction of the wealthiest people. Despite some efforts to reform his image, he is rightly seen as an authoritarian control freak, and schools and the media rarely ever mention him at all, they certainly don't come out and admit this is what they want to do, even if they demonstrate it with their actions, but occasionally come close to telling the truth. This is what happened recently, although, as usual traditional media paid very little attention to it, when Jerome Powell, chairman of the U.S. Federal Reserve, said his goal is "to get wages down," even though income inequality has been steadily growing for decades, it's a result of epidemic fraud by the wealthy and it's a major contributing factor for increased crime and violence, yet he has no qualms about massive pay increases for the wealthy that are clearly unearned. Which means he clearly supports a rigged economy based on epidemic fraud by one class of people against the majority. This isn't something new, as Noam Chomsky explained about former chairman Alan Greenspan in the following excerpt of How America's Great University System Is Being Destroyed:

This idea is sometimes made quite overt. So when Alan Greenspan was testifying before Congress in 1997 on the marvels of the economy he was running, he said straight out that one of the bases for its economic success was imposing what he called "greater worker insecurity." If workers are more insecure, that's very "healthy" for the society, because if workers are insecure they won't ask for wages, they won't go on strike, they won't call for benefits; they'll serve the masters gladly and passively. And that's optimal for corporations' economic health. At the time, everyone regarded Greenspan's comment as very reasonable, judging by the lack of reaction and the great acclaim he enjoyed. Well, transfer that to the universities: how do you ensure "greater worker insecurity"? Crucially, by not guaranteeing employment, by keeping people hanging on a limb than can be sawed off at any time, so that they'd better shut up, take tiny salaries, and do their work; and if they get the gift of being allowed to serve under miserable conditions for another year, they should welcome it and not ask for any more. That's the way you keep societies efficient and healthy from the point of view of the corporations. And as universities move towards a corporate business model, precarity is exactly what is being imposed. And we'll see more and more of it.

Chomsky was apparently referring to this long speech Testimony of Chairman Alan Greenspan February 26, 1997 which describes clear efforts to rig the economy, and indicates that he doesn't oppose the suppression of worker rights through a variety of means, including shipping jobs over seas. This applies to both workers and academics that challenge the fiscal ideology of the wealthy, even if they're in different fields from economics. Not only do colleges give preferential treatment to academics supporting the ideology of the wealthy but so does the media and this include refusing to cover good academics like James Garbarino, Dorothy Otnow Lewis, and many others, even, or perhaps especially when they report on how a rigged economy, poverty, and income inequality are major contributing factors of crime. Ironically there may even be at least one example where this even extends to the animal kingdom.

One example, which many people may not take seriously, since they don't consider whether animals should have rights was described in Almost Human: A Journey Into the World of Baboons 1990 by Shirley C. Strum, where they refer to baboons as "bandits" when they take fruits or vegetables from a farm, but this omits the background, which indicates who the real "bandits" are. The author, who studies baboons the way Jane Goodall studied chimpanzees was sympathetic to them, and even though she doesn't challenge those that call them bandits, she does explain the background. The local farmers were relatively poor but previously earned a fair living before international corporations started exploiting the natural resources preventing them from earning a living, so they cleared land and became farmers. But the land they cleared previously supported the baboons, who were forced to move to the nearby jungle which wasn't cleared, but didn't provide adequate food for them. Then when the farmers grew their crops the baboons came back to the land that previously supported them and ate the crops, and the farmers referred to them as bandits. The truth of the matter seems to be that the real bandits were the multinational corporations who exploited the natural resources, then the poor farmers responded by stealing land from baboons instead of holding the multinational corporations accountable.

There are many similar examples where multinational corporations plunder local resources and leave local residents destitute, and they often have little or no choice but to resort to crime, and when it happens the media often doesn't explain the full context including a dramatic rescue described ten years ago in Navy SEALs rescue kidnapped aid workers Jessica Buchanan and Poul Hagen Thisted in Somalia 01/25/2012, which makes military action sound heroic and glorious, but it doesn't tell the whole story about why the coast of Somalia is so lawless, which would implicate international corporations. Somalia has had problems for a long time, of course, but many of their local residents previously were able to support themselves by fishing, either to feed themselves or trade with others. But after international corporations began over-fishing in the local waters, or polluting the local waters, local fishermen were less able to support themselves. At this point they began resorting to piracy, first to hold international fishing boats accountable, preventing them from depleting their stocks, and holding them for ransom to replace their previous livelihood, which was no longer available to them. But this story is hardly ever mentioned in traditional media; at the time I heard about it from alternative media, which told additional details, which I can't find now, but they showed that many of the so-called pirates only resorted to crime after their sources of income were destroyed by international corporations, some of this is confirmed in Wikipedia: Piracy off the coast of Somalia

This also applies to many other areas that have become high crime locations, including the abandoned inner cities where corporations shipped all their jobs overseas to suppress wages leaving people with no economic opportunities, while simultaneously cutting funds for education and increasing funds for police, courts, and prisons to control the people, not protect them, as Randall G. Shelden and Michael Parenti claim. They also deprived Native Americans of their livelihood and stole their land hundreds of years ago leaving them destitute, and their intervention south of the border was also devastating with similar results there. As I said above, many European countries implemented some of the best reforms, based on good scientific research which our media doesn't report and our government doesn't use to make policy decisions, and solved many of their worst social problems resulting in much lower murder rates; in many cases this was also attempted by many countries in Central America, South America or the Caribbean, but almost without exception, when this happened our government intervened one way or another to prevent reforms that helped the working class, or that was based on good research, in most if not all cases, because they interfered with corporate profits. This often involved coups or inciting war one way or another. If you look at Wikipedia: List of countries by intentional homicide rate not only will you find that the European countries have much lower rates of violence than we do but you'll also find that two thirds of the countries with higher murder rates than the United States are all in the Americas, South of the border and our government has routinely intervened to prevent reforms there a lot of examples were provided by William Blum author of "Killing Hope" and "Central America's Forgotten History" 2021 by Aviva Chomsky also covers four of these countries, Guatemala, Nicaragua, El Salvador, and Honduras; and even though she doesn't cover all the countries that William Blum covers, she goes one step further and shows how our intervention is responsible for the immigration crisis, and that far from being criminals, most of these immigrants are victims of our foreign policy, and they're fleeing violence that was a result of this intervention and shows how this intervention was a direct cause of their high crime and violence problems.

Not only are our politicians not making decisions based on the best research showing how to reduce violence, but they're not making policy decisions based on policies supported by the majority of the public either, as I previously pointed out in The "Big Lie" Used As An Excuse To Censor An Even Bigger Lie!, which shows about twenty polls on various fiscal issues where between 57% and 90% of the public is on one side of these issues, but the vast majority of campaign donors are on the other side of the issue, and large majorities of elected officials side with campaign donors on most of these issues, so progress isn't made on any of them. This includes many issues that would also help reduce violence, either directly or indirectly. This means that even though the media doesn't provide adequate coverage on research showing how to reduce violence the majority of the public supports policies that do this, whether they understand it or not, but elected officials refuse to serve their interests. This includes 90% of the public that supports universal child care, which as studies cited above show, will actually save more than it costs and greatly reduce violence.

Over forty years ago the fictional character Doctor Who said "You know, the very powerful and the very stupid have one thing in common. They don't alters their views to fit the facts, they alter the facts to fit the views, which can be uncomfortable if you happen to be one of the facts that needs altering." This may not seem like an authoritarian source to many; however, the closer you look at the best research on any given subject, and how the political establishment makes policy, the clearer it may be that this statement stands on its own merits and is accurate. It's not limited to reducing violence it also applies to many other subjects. In "Rising Tide: The Great Mississippi Flood of 1927" 1997 John Barry explains how engineers studied the potential for floods and how to minimize the damage shortly after the Civil War and came to the conclusion that they needed to plan reservoirs for water to go in case of epidemic floods, which meant leaving a lot of land unused, which disappointed a lot of businessmen, this theory was replaced by a "Levees Only" theory, which assumed that if they built levees the water would drain faster with less threat of flooding, which was supported by some of the same engineers that came up with the first theory. In 1927 when they had the great flood they found out the hard way that the first theory was right all along and hundreds of people died as a result of the switch to the theory supported by wealthy businessmen, and an enormous amount of property was also destroyed, often belonging to poorer or middle class people, and as often happens in disasters like this, the rich made promises to make amends when repairing the damage, but broke them later. In "The Johnstown Flood" David McCullough makes similar claims about that flood.

In "A Terrible Thing To Waste'' Harriet A. Washington explains that Robert Bullard told her that in many cases when large corporations say they're not responsible for pollution related deaths they simply don't do the research at all, and claim to have the true explanations; both Washington and Bullard along with dozens of other sources describe how the political, media and court systems overwhelmingly favor industries with political connections forcing activists to come up with strong evidence, which they often still refuse to accept. This also applies to research into the most effective ways to reduce violence; in addition to the examples I explained above the political and media establishment refused to do much if any research into whether or not Teach a soldier to kill contributes to violence when they come back or Whether or not Insurance is letterally providing an incentive for people to kill, even though there's evidence to show that both are true, and if they did good research this would confirm it. In my previous article about veterans killing after they returned I cited a series from the New York Times and some research from David Phillips a former reporter for the Colorado Springs Gazette who wrote a series "Lethal Warriors" and a book by the same name indicating there's a major problem with veterans having high rates of violence when they return, and I also provided additional research of my own indicating that veterans almost certainly have higher murder rates, often of their own family members or other veterans than the majority of the public, and David Swanson also did some research showing that veterans are much more likely to be mass shooters than non-veterans, yet there's no follow up research.

The same goes for life insurance inciting murder; even though I couldn't find any research on this at all, except many isolated articles about many people who did commit murder in an attempt to collect life insurance, the article on this subject, and several earlier ones, used Murderpedia as a sampling, which is large enough, although it's not guaranteed that it's random enough for statisticians, and found that over five percent of the entries had a possible murder incentive for murder, and over one percent of the total, or twenty percent of the insurance related murders, sucessfully collected money after getting away with murder, at least for a little while. These murderers were eventually caught, of course, otherwise we wouldn't know they succeeded temporarily, but we have no way of knowing how many more people knew when to quit killing and got away with it. The reason I say this is quite a few of them only got caught because after getting away with it once or twice they kept killing until they got caught. There were numerous examples of serial killers based on incentive provided from life insurance, although this was more common in the nineteenth century, and five or six examples of mass murder to collect on the insurance policy of one person when they blew up a plane,most of these were in the fifties or sixties, some when they bought insurance from automated dispensers; but there were more multiple murders, either killing several people at once or killing additional people after sucessfully collecting from previous policies since then. If this is statistically representative, then it could mean there are seven or eight hundred murders each year based on incentive provided by life insurance companies, or even if it's an over estimate it's still virtually guaranteed there's well over a hundred people killed each year for insurance, yet there's no effort to investigate it or set policies to make them less likely, presumably since it would have a negative impact on profits for insurence companies.

There's no doubt that we have plenty of research showing how to reduce violence of all kinds, including mass shootings, some more complicated than others, but even when it comes to the simple things the media and political establishment refuse to report on it or base policies on it. This research also shows that most if not all causes of violence are interrelated, so focussing on only one one issue is guaranteed to fail, especially when they don't even accomplish anything on that one issue. Some of these things are very simple, like that they should reduce or eliminate child abuse, corporal punishment, poverty, income inequality, and provide much more funds for edcuation, child care, and other programs that have been proven to be far more effective than police, courts and prisons, but this contradicts the agendas of the wealthy so they refuse to report on this good research or make policies based on it, which is why even though we only have 5% of the world’s population, we have roughly 31% of the world’s mass shootings!

This isn't entirely accidental, despite the act by the media and politicians that they can't understand why we have so many mass shootings!

The following is a chart with the one-hundred-twenty-nine cities with the highest murder rates in the country. They all had an average of over 10 per 100,000 over an extended period, although a few of them fell slightly below 10 in 2019 and were included anyway and a few more had an average of less than 10 over an extended period but went above 10 in 2019 and were not included. This chart shows that cities with a little over 10% of the population have over 40% of the murders.

As I said above this underestimates the concentration of violent neighborhoods, since the data only calculates rates for many large cities which have more violent neighborhoods that belong in this list and less violent neighborhoods that don't. If the murder rates were broken down to neighborhoods or parts of the city that only had about 100,000 people then many segements of New York, Los Angeles, Phoenix, Tucson, San Antonio, Fort Worth, Charlotte, Denver, Boston, Wichita, Los Vegas, Anchorage, Lexington Ky., Durham, Orlando, Fresno and a few other cities would be added to this chart bringing the total mumber of murders and population higher. If you broke down the larges cities that are on this list including Chicago, Houston, Dallas, Philadelphia, Columbus, Jacksonville, Indianapolis, Washington, D.C., Louisville, Nashville, Memphis, Detroit, Oklahoma City, Baltimore, Milwaukee, Albuquerque, Kansas City, Atlanta, Miami, Oakland, Minneapolis, New Orleans and a few others into smaller neighborhoods the wealtheists ones would almost certainly be removed, which would remove a fair amount of population but only a small amount of the murders, resulting in an increase in the gap between safe cities and dangerous ones. Without the break down, there's no way of knowing the exact numbers, but there's a good chance that the result might show that cities or neighborhoods with about 15% of the population might have about 60% of the murders, and an average of about four times the national average murder rates.

City	Murder Rate 2019	Total murders	Population	Medium Income
Chicago Ill.	18.2	492	2,693,976	$61,811
East St. Louis, Ill.	137.0	36	26,047	$25,221
Peoria, Ill.	22.5	25	110,417	$53,360
Maywood, Ill.	47.3	11	23,158	$53,877
Rockford, Ill.	9.6	14	145,609	$46,803
Houston Tx.	11.7	275	2,320,268	$52,450
Dallas Tx.	14.5	198	1,343,573	$55,332
Beaumont, Tx.	16.0	19	116,825	$30,253
La Marque, Tx.	11.7	2	17,319	$55,176
Philadelphia Pa.	22.1	351	1,584,064	$47,474
Pittsburgh, Pa.	18.8	57	300,286	$53,799
York, Pa.	45.3	20	43,932	$35,291
Reading, Pa.	21.5	19	88,375	$39,670
Harrisburg, Pa.	26.4	13	49,271	$39,697
Penn Hills, Pa.	17.2	7	44,614	$67,631
St. Louis Mo.	64.6	194	300,576	$47,176
Kansas City Mo.	30.2	150	495,327	$55,259
Ferguson Mo.	19.4	4	20,525	$41,544
Baltimore Md.	58.3	348	593,490	$50,177
Detroit Mi.	41.4	275	670,031	$33,965
Flint Mi.	24.2	23	95,538	$32,236
Pontiac Mi.	16.7	10	59,438	$34,196
Saginaw Mi.	18.8	9	48,115	$29,769
New Orleans La.	30.7	121	390,144	$45,615
Baton Rouge, La.	31.7	70	220,236	$28,511
Shreveport, La.	18.7	35	187,112	$45,013
Alexandria, La.	19.3	9	46,180	$46,461
Monroe, La.	18.8	9	47,294	$30,450
Lake Charles, La.	14.0	11	78,396	$37,894
Cleveland, Ohio	24.1	92	381,009	$32,053
Cincinnati, Ohio	21.1	64	303,940	$46,260
Columbus, Ohio	8.9	81	898,553	$57,118
Toledo, Ohio	12.4	34	272,779	$36,709
Youngstown, Ohio	35.8	23	65,469	$29,143
Akron, Ohio	13.6	27	197,597	$41,013
Dayton, Ohio	34.2	48	140,407	$33,116
Lima, Ohio	10.9	4	36,659	$40,716
Warren, Oh.	13.2	5	38,752	$28,780
Memphis, Tn.	29.2	190	651,073	$43,794
Nashvill Tn.	16.3	110	715,884	$46,141
Chattanooga Tn.	18.1	33	182,799	$46,533
Jackson, Tn.	25.4	17	67,191	$46,112
Knoxville, Tn.	11.7	22	187,603	$41,388
Newark, NJ	20.3	57	282,011	$40,235
Camden, NJ	86.3	67	73,562	$33,120
Paterson, NJ	13.1	19	145,233	$47,369
Trenton, NJ	18.0	15	83,203	$34,000
Atlantic City, NJ	29.3	11	37,743	$29,834
Irvington, NJ	13.0	7	58,920	$52,592
Birmingham, Al.	41.8	88	209,403	$36,753
Mobile, Al.	10.6	26	188,720	$46,788
Montgomery, Al.	14.6	29	198,525	$51,074
Huntsville, Al.	11.3	22	200,574	$54,342
Anniston, Al.	32.4	7	21,287	$36,738
Opelika, Al.	16.2	5	30,908	$50,577
Milwaukee, Wi.	16.4	97	590,157	$44,192
Indianapolis, In.	18.5	162	876,384	$49,661
Gary, In.	76.3	57	74,879	$31,341
Hammond, In.	12.0	9	75,522	$48,333
East Chicago, In.	25.3	7	27,817	$33,397
Fort Wayne, In.	9.7	26	270,402	$49,855
South Bend, In.	13.7	14	102,026	$41,599
Oakland, Ca.	18.0	78	433,031	$82,018
Bernardino, Ca.	21.2	46	215,784	$49,721
Compton, Ca.	18.6	18	95,605	$62,200
Stockton, Ca.	10.8	34	312,697	$59,504
Richmond, Ca.	14,4	16	110,567	$72,130
Vallejo, Ca.	9.8	12	121,692	$71,265
Barstow, Ca.	20.7	5	23,915	$43,545
Oklahoma City, Ok.	11.4	75	655,057	$55,492
Tulsa, Ok.	13.7	55	401,190	$49,158
Lawton, Ok.	16.3	15	93,025	$46,886
Washington, D.C.	23.5	166	705,749	$92,266
Atlanta, Ga.	17.7	88	506,811	$66,657
College Park, Ga.	39.3	6	15,159	$40,734
Albany, Ga.	16.0	12	72,130	$31,397
Columbus, Ga.	17.6	35	185,888	$47,008
Macon, Ga.	19.7	18	89,981	$33,443
East Point, Ga.	14.1	5	34,875	$49,902
Forest Park, Ga.	9.9	2	20,020	$39,274
Savannah, Ga.	14.1	21	147,780	$29,038
Stone Mountain, Ga.	15.5	1	6,281	$45,133
Louisville Metro Ky.	15.9	109	684,362	$51,960
Greensboro, NC	14.4	43	296,710	$49,748
Fayetteville, NC	11.4	24	211,657	$43,789
Burlington, NC	18.5	10	54,606	$35,301
Durham, NC	13.2	37	278,993	$65,534
Rocky Mount, NC	29.7	16	53,922	$41,551
Buffalo, NY	18.4	47	255,284	$40,843
Rochester, NY	16.0	33	205,695	$37,711
Syracuse, NY	13.3	19	142,327	$39,494
Hempstead, NY	12.6	7	55,113	$63,837
Norfolk, Va.	14.8	36	242,742	$53,093
Richmond, Va.	23.8	55	230,436	$51,285
Newport News, Va.	13.5	24	179,225	$53,029
Petersburg, Va.	60.8	19	31,346	$39,843
Portsmouth, Va.	17.0	16	94,398	$51,195
Hampton, Va.	11.3	15	134,510	$56,930
Roanoke, Va.	13.0	13	99,143	$45,838
Albuquerque, NM	14.9	84	560,513	$55,567
Roswell, NM	18.9	9	47,551	$42,016
Fort Lauderdale, Fl.	11.4	21	182,437	$67,750
Jacksonville, Fl.	14.2	129	911,507	$56,975
West Palm Beach, Fl.	15.1	17	111,955	$51,089
Miami, Fl.	8.9	43	467,963	$42,966
Miami Gardens, Fl.	22.8	26	111,640	$54,266
Daytona Beach, Fl.	18.6	13	69,186	$40,439
Fort Myers, Fl.	10.6	9	87,103	$53,246
Lake Worth, Fl.	15.5	6	38,526	$44,732
Ocala, Fl.	11.5	7	60,786	$45,625
Lauderhill, Fl.	17.9	13	71,868	$41,707
Minneapolis, Mn.	10.7	46	429,606	$65,889
Kansas City, Ks.	18.6	28	152,960	$45,391
Topeka, Ks.	10.3	13	125,310	$50,761
Springfield, Ma.	13.0	20	153,606	$44,596
Jackson, Ms.	48.6	76	160,628	$38,972
Meridian, Ms.	38.0	14	36,347	$28,582
Little Rock, Ar.	19.2	38	197,312	$54,878
North Little Rock, Ar.	18.0	12	65,903	$40,870
Pine Bluff, Ar.	55.4	23	41,474	$33,529
Hartford, Ct.	17.2	21	122,105	$36,762
New Haven, Ct.	10.0	13	130,250	$41,956
Bridgeport, Ct.	11.7	17	144,399	$44,035
Columbia, SC	21.7	29	131,674	$47,386
North Charleston, SC	22.5	26	115,382	$53,470
Sumter, SC	20.2	8	39,642	$45,439
Spartanburg, SC	15.9	6	37,399	$42,354
Beaufort, SC	22.2	3	13,436	$59,487
Wilmington, De.	34.0	24	70,166	$47,722
Puerto Rico	19.0	606	3,193,694	$19,350
Total	19.51	6,913	35,427,121	--