According to FBI national statistics, crime is going down.
That’s true enough, criminologist David M. Kennedy said Tuesday.
“But not if you’re a young black man,” he told a standing-room-only crowd at the Savannah Downtown Business Association’s monthly luncheon at the Charles Morris Center.
“Black men comprise 6 percent of the U.S. population but make up a whopping 50 percent of our incarcerated population,” said Kennedy, director of the Center for Crime Prevention and Control at John Jay College of Criminal Justice in New York City.
“If you are born black and male, there is a one in three chance that you will be locked up at some point during your lifetime,” he said. “If you are a black male and you don’t finish high school, that possibility jumps to 70 percent.”
There are neighborhoods all over the country where people are afraid to go outside, where everyone knows someone who has been shot or killed, Kennedy said, adding that the homicide rate is significantly higher in African-American neighborhoods.
Law enforcement has been dealing with this issue for decades, he said, primarily by consistently locking up the offenders.
“We should all care about this,” he said. “It’s destroying entire neighborhoods, and it’s deeply, profoundly worse than most people on the outside realize.”
But, Kennedy said, a solution is within reach, and it’s based on the fact the violence that drives all other issues in a community is being committed by a remarkably small group of individuals.
“These groups, which make up less than one-half of 1 percent of a city’s population, account for up to 75 percent of the violent crime.
“In Savannah, we’re talking some 300 people in not more than 15 groups.”
Reaching out to these individuals with specific violence-reduction initiatives, rather than simply incarcerating them, can change the face of the entire neighborhood, he said.
Kennedy’s violence reduction model focuses on these known offenders who are the sources of most crime, requiring them to meet with police, city and community leaders and offering them education and employment assistance as alternatives to violence.
If they refuse to cooperate, police will come down hard on any illegal activities in which they or their associates are involved.
The program is proving successful in big cities such as Boston, Chicago and Detroit as well as smaller communities such as Chattanooga, Tenn., and High Point, N.C.
A similar initiative for Savannah has the support of City Manager Stephanie Cutter and interim Police Chief Julie Tolbert. Last month, Cutter and Alderwoman Mary Osborne visited Chattanooga for a briefing from city and law enforcement officials on their violence reduction program.
Savannah Mayor Edna Jackson and Chatham County Commission Chairman Al Scott were at Tuesday’s meeting.
“I like what I’m hearing,” Jackson said, adding that she met with Kennedy on Monday.
“But this can’t be a city project,” she said, “To really affect change, this has to be a community initiative.
“It has to come from the Downtown Business Association, the Downtown Neighborhood Association and others. There needs to be a call to action and we, as elected officials, have to be supportive. If it’s going to work, it has to be all of us.”
Scott concurred.
“We talk about this all the time,” he said. “The numbers are not new. What’s new is the audience.
“Hopefully, this will lead to a rethinking of the issue.”