op-ed: Structural Inequalities Breed Crime
Published: Friday, June 26, 2009 – The Berkshire Eagle
Last week, Pittsfield’s approved budget cut funding for the city’s fire department, DPW, and public schools while increasing the police force’s budget. Mayor Ruberto insists the money will “combat” violent crime associated with drugs. His comment suggests a lack of understanding of the origins of his municipality’s crime.
According to the Food Bank of Western Massachusetts, 16% of those receiving emergency food are Black, and 23% are Latino but make up 5% and 10% of the population respectively. A FBWM survey found 18.2% of respondents in the Northern Berkshires to be food insecure.11.1% of Hispanics live with moderate to severe hunger but were 3.3% of those surveyed.
Households headed by single women account for almost three-quarters of all households living in poverty, and account for 25% of those receiving emergency food aid.
These statistics reflect race and gender-based discrimination and occupational segregation. They account for high levels of poverty among women and minorities, and disparities in quality of health, employment, and education.
2008 MCAS results questioned how diligently the city is working on behalf of low-income, minority, and disabled students. The majority of public elementary, middle, and high schools failed to meet progress goals for these students.
Poor and minority residents live incommensurately in areas devastated by PCB pollution where rent is cheapest. The combination of the geographic location of poor neighborhoods and pollution structures residents’ risk of getting cancer and other life-threatening diseases at disproportionately higher rates than those living outside contaminated zones.
GE’s flight left the economy and manufacturing labor force decimated. The economy continues to decline and Pittsfield has seen negative job growth, an increase in poverty, and official unemployment above the national average.
Interconnected oppressions (unequal access to quality education, employment, and healthcare, e.g.,) engender estrangement, hopelessness, desperation and hostility.
This is structural violence and creates situations where crime is an inevitable and predictable by-product.
If Pittsfield is to honestly engage in seriously reducing crime, the city has to focus on preventing and eradicating environmental conditions that cultivate crime. Ruberto’s budget is short-sighted and indicative of the city (and county’s) general disinterest in its poor and marginalized. Buying more police won’t solve the city’s structural inequalities that create crime.
Cut police spending and replace it with permanent, preferential programs designed to empower the poor and marginalized and the city would notice a legitimate decrease in violent crime and drug use.
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