That would work for a few, but I think the biggest problem is the poor families living in squalor, with kids not in school, who have a feeling of hopelessness, apathy, low motivation, etc. There is no way that they will give a rats ass about family values. 1 out of every 142 Americans are now in jail. I think many would just as soon knife you as listen to a lecture on family values. We have a falling middle class. Half the families live on $40,000 a year or less and it is getting worse as the years go by.
First: poor families living in squalor, does not result in crime. I've told this story before, and I think even to you. I met a guy from Romania who immigrated here with a wife and two kids. He had no schooling, no marketable skills, and no money. He walked to work. His kids rode cheap bikes to school. He worked at Wendy's for just about minimum wage. Had a one bedroom apartment. He worked his way up, got management skills, and now runs a Hertz Rent-a-car outlet.
Second: the reason we have middle class families living on $40,000 a year or less, is because they are breaking up. When a family breaks up, two people that used to combine incomes, now are split, reducing the average. Or when a woman divorces, she must now work, and since she didn't before, her income will be low, reducing the average.
Third: Crime is a combination result of having lax punishments, and glorifying criminal acts. Instead of calling evil acts evil, we attempt to claim it's because they grow up in families living in squalor, which justifies their acts in their own minds. "Yeah I deserve to take others stuff because I live in the low-rent district."
Solution: Increase penalties on crime until it's no longer worth taking the risk. Remove no fault divorce so more families stay together. Stop making excuses for evil, and justifying criminal acts with lame excuses.
According to the second graph, that would apply to only half the women. For poor families I would bet that it would up the 5% that are married with husband absent. If a couple wants divorce, but can't afford it, and still stays together, I don't think the family values will be very high.
Reasonable to say that. But I have heard from too many families and personal stories, that sometimes the marriage vow was the only thing that held them together. Even if the couple directly involved don't have a great thing going on, it still sets a good example for the children.
A friend of mine had this happen. Instead of ending up all screwed up and in counseling, and having a history littered with broken relationships, he is happily married for 8 years. Why? Because his father and mother, when they separated, refused to divorce, and ended up sticking it out. It set a good example for him and his brother. (they got back together obviously, and made the best of their marriage)
As I said before, that may lead to more crime.
My point is that it is not an easy problem to solve. There has to be a complete understanding of the ramifications on inner city life, and perhaps a total change in culture. Nothing like that is easily changed.
During the great depression, crime rates were very low. Yet, everyone had recently become very poor. Moreover, in Australia, after the passage of gun control, crime has increased in some cities by over 3000%. Yet the average wealth per capita has increased.
The theory that cutting welfare will result in crime is false, and I can prove it completely.
In 1996, the republicans passed welfare reform as part of the contract with America, for the third time. After Clinton veto'd it twice, he finely signed into law a massive change to the system that made it so you couldn't take welfare indefinitely.
The resulting drop of 58% in caseloads, means slightly more than 1 in every two welfare recipient was kicked off the roll. Yet, crime rates declined from the mid-80s all the way to about 2000. There it has remained steady for the last 8 years, with a minor jump in 2005-2006 seemingly due to Hurricane Katrina.
http://www.usnews.com/articles/news/national/2008/06/11/crime-rates-shown-to-be-falling.html
http://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2007-02/uoc--nrr021207.php
There's dozens of sources for this information, but that should be enough.
Again, the theory that cutting welfare will increase crime is a joke. Crime goes up or down based on the penalty for doing crime, and the ability to stop it.
Crime can be nearly eliminated by simply allowing free arming of the public, or drastically increasing the penalties. Either one will wipe crime out fairly quickly.
Crimes rates in Switzerland are so low, they generally don't even bother trying to keep a tab on it. Why? The population is nearly 100% armed with assault rifles. Think about breaking into a house, or steal a car, when you know every person in every home in the entire city has a fully automatic rifle? Heck no.
Or we could go the Singapore route where very few of the population has any weapons yet has one of the
lowest crime rates. If you kidnap, murder or commit drug trafficking,
the death penalty is mandatory. Shockingly, not many are willing to try any of the three, knowing their government has no problem
putting people to death for criminal acts. Singapore has one of the highest state executions per capita of any nation in the world.
So if we really want to deal with crime, there's only two ways to do it. Arm the public to fend off criminals themselves, or enact very tough penalties. In the middle east, someone who can't use their hands properly, and steals, will have their hands amputated. Since I was just recently burglarized, I fully support this idea. They can't keep their hands off other peoples stuff, they should lose them.
