Trying to understand the psychology behind N.O. murders
10th October 2011 · 0 Comments
By Michael Radcliff
Contributing Writer
The FBI’s recently released its annual Uniform Crime Report for 2010. The good news is that crime across the nation is down for the fourth year in a row. The bad news, however, is that here in New Orleans the murder rate is 10 times the national average and five times the average of cities of a comparable size.
For the first time in history, cities are home to half the world’s population and this trend is expected to continue for the next 25 years. Today’s cities – especially those that are growing very quickly – experience a plethora of factors that put them at risk for high levels of violence.
On the most basic level, in today’s economy many city governments and labor markets are simply unable to keep pace with this population shift. Additionally, markets for firearms and illegal drugs are more prominent cities, adding another layer of risk for violence. The large number of guns available in cities increases both the possibility that these weapons will be used and that the consequential violence will be lethal.
Causes of Murder Uniquely N’awlins
Sociologists, statisticians, and other experts have recently noted that many of the murders which take place in New Orleans do not follow the typical urban causes of murder (i.e. gang- or drug-related); but instead murders here seems to be crimes of passion or uncontrolled rage. In essence, perceived disrespect can get you killed.
According to Dr. Steven Ostertag of Tulane’s School of Sociology, “[Traditionally], high one-on-one interpersonal violence is pretty common in a lot of cities in the United States. Globally, it seems to also be common in places where there seems to be high rates of inequality. Not just straight-up poverty where everybody’s poor, but in places where there are lots of rich and lots of really poor and those tend to be the places of high rates of violence. Also you will notice that in the South in particular, there seems to also be high rates of interpersonal violence. I believe too that there’s a direct relationship between the high level of violence in this region and (1.) a poorly developed social welfare system, (2.) [the fact that] they don’t invest a lot in schools or health care, and (3.) fluctuating, and often instable economies.”
“With regard to New Orleans….. a combination of factors — severe marginalization [those outside looking in], family disruption, and adolescence or young people looking for ways to find value in their lives,” he said. “This happens when traditional or mainstream sources of value are denied or is inaccessible; people look for it in other ways, especially adolescents, who are trying to find that value by taking it out on other people.
“Another factor,” Dr. Ostertag continued to say, “may be the unique culture of New Orleans. Unlike many other major urban cities in the country where there is a substantial gang influence, New Orleans is all about neighborhoods — the 9th Ward, the 7th Ward, Central City, Hollygrove, etc… And usually families tend to congregate together in these neighborhoods. It is because of this family/neighborhood influence that gangs have never really been able to take a strong foothold in this city. But this influence may also be a factor in the high murder rate.”
While the concept of a gang affiliation carries with it a well- deserved negative connotation, “[m]any of the murders of and by young African-American males elsewhere are drug-related,” Ostertag told The Louisiana Weekly. “Gangs, especially the large gangs you find in big cities, can actually be a stabilizing factor to a certain extent in decreasing the murder rate for drug-related crimes.”
This is why you don’t see cities like Los Angeles, Chicago, or New York — all of whom have large gang affiliations — represented in the top 10 murderous cities. “Large gangs,” Ostertag explained, “are virtually run like a business, a corporation. Since gangs usually deal in illegal drugs, this gives you an organization with a set hierarchy – a president (i.e. gang leader); board of directors (lieutenants); managers (crew leaders); and staff (street dealers); and a product — drugs — that are sold for a profit. While gangs are without a doubt violent, they tend to regulate that violence – usually taking out the competition (i.e. other gang members). After the initial violence of taking out the competition, the only other people that they are motivated to kill are customers who don’t pay, or their own employees with a sub-par performance rating.
“New Orleans on the other hand is made up of small groups or independent dealers, many of whom are related,” Ostertag pointed out. And because of the lack of organization, chaos reigns and retaliations are never ending.”
“And finally,” Ostertag added, “we are still dealing with the effects of Katrina. Instability resulting from the mass movement of people, change in the composition of families, neighborhoods still in a state of disrepair, and an increase in the number of people suffering from alcoholism and mental illness — each of these factors contributes to increased levels of stress, frustration and anger.”
Moving On Up and Out May Be a Good Thing
Dr. Ostertag’s Blog offers an interesting social fact about urban crime.
“People who live in the crime ridden sections move out, the crime, by and large, stays,” he writes. “That is, it doesn’t move with them. This was something criminologists discovered way back in the 1920s. Today, the reasoning and argument are much more complicated than was the case back in the day. For instance, it’s now also widely recognized that some of the high rates of crime in particularly urban areas are also due to the low rates of police surveillance, so that some of the difference in crime rate is due to the simple fact that some areas of the city aren’t crawling with police. Despite this issue of visibility and enforcement on crime rate numbers, the fact remains: As people move out of crime-prone areas, the crime tends not to move with them. The reason people believe this is an important social fact is because it makes us ask about crime as a function of an individual, where it’s due to one’s psychological makeup or genetics or a function of conditions/environment. That is, an area as criminogenic, where crime is a somewhat normal reaction to abnormal conditions. If crime stays in areas that share certain characteristics, then perhaps addressing those characteristics might help reduce crime.
“In fact, one of the characteristics of crime-ridden areas is the frequent ebb and flow of residents and some of the new criminological research is noting how concentrated incarceration where up to 40 to 60 percent of residents in these neighborhoods have gone to jail/prison actually exacerbates the characteristics and conditions that seem to foster crime in the first place. How ironic. We pay about $22,000 per prisoner, per year (though expenses increase as one ages in prison and their healthcare needs increase) to create more crime. This is not just a New Orleans thing, but is certainly pertinent to New Orleanians. We could also ask, if a great majority of those suffering from this great irony weren’t Black men, would we see greater action to address this issue? We might also ask, if they weren’t Black, would these conditions be allowed to arise and fester for so long in the first place?”
A Culture of Death and Violence
New Orleans Mayor Mitch Landrieu said during his his State of the City address this past April that his primary focus this year is to “Change the culture of death and violence on the streets of New Orleans to a culture of peace, a culture of safety and a culture of security.”
He then proceeded to appoint former New Orleans City Councilman James Carter as his new Criminal Justice Commissioner. Mr. Carter is an attorney who is the former director of the city’s “Weed & Seed” crime-prevention program which “attempts to weed out violent crime, gang activity, and drug use and trafficking in target areas, and then seed the target area by restoring the neighborhood through social and economic revitalization”.
Prevent or Curb the Appetite for Self-Destructive Behavior
According to the United Nations Bureau for Crisis Prevention and Recovery on Preventing and Reducing Armed Violence in Urban Areas, “The relationship between cities and violence is more complex than often assumed. While many cities are plagued by high levels of violence that threaten development, there is nothing inevitable about violence in cities.”
In essence, there is hope.
“Cities have the potential to be prime sites for violence prevention because resources and services are concentrated there and geographical proximity facilitates outreach to communities and households,” The UN Bureau for Crisis Prevention and Recovery on Preventing and Reduced Armed Violence in Urban Areas says.
The bureau goes on to say, that “risk factors are characteristics of an individual or his/her environment that increase the propensity for violent behaviour. Experience has shown that programs tackling more than one risk factor tend to be more effective in reducing violence. No one government agency, with the possible exception of police, has violence prevention as its main priority. This means that violence is only a peripheral concern for most government departments. In addition, risk and protective factors for violence cut across various sectors. Because of this multi-dimensionality effect, interventions in one sector alone, or in various sectors done in isolation, are likely to either shift the problem elsewhere or duplicate efforts. The available evidence suggests that a key component for effective prevention is collaboration across multiple sectors (health, education, criminal justice), to ensure a more integrated response.”
In the past, the city administration has embraced programs such as the Weed & Seed Program. While this program has been highly effective in certain urban communities, it’s primary focus is “to prevent and control violent crime, drug abuse, and gang activity in target areas.”
However since as previously noted, there is negligible gang activity here, and the motive for violence in New Orleans is more akin to passion and uncontrolled rage – a program of this nature, unless modified, may not be a good fit.
“The [Ultimate] goal,” observed Dr. Steven Buddington, a social worker and Professor of Sociology at Dillard University, “is to prevent or curb the appetite for self-destructive behavior, consequently self-love, a respect for one’s own life and therefore the life of other humans.
“Educational attainment… Educational or vocational competence often results in career success, with the possible implication of financial success, thereby negating the need to criminally exploit others for their possessions. Appropriate social integration, and recreational pursuits are the primary ‘bedrocks’ to preventing or abating violence or the murder rate in the city. The achievement of the prior mentioned ‘bedrocks’ are manifested in vocational/technical competence, elevated self-love/self-esteem, social and interpersonal discipline, and financial integrity.
“Recreational pursuits — the participation process — necessitate the need for mutual respect, team building, academic achievement, personal, social, and human growth,” Dr. Buddington continued. “[It] fosters elevated interpersonal skills and the respect for personal, bio-psycho-social, racial or ethnic differences.”
Dr. Ostertag’s solutions all embrace making multi-level changes to reduce violent behavior.
“If you don’t address the economic condition, which is a root cause of crime and stress, everything else will become moot,” Dr. Ostertag told The Louisiana Weekly. “We don’t have rich people killing other rich people; we have poor young Black males killing other poor young Black males. Then we must face the fact that violence isn’t something that just happens overnight. So we must start altering that behavior at a very young age, in pre-school for instance. And then as children age, that cohort will over time become less and less violent. But this is a long-term approach that will take years to produce these results.
“As for those children who are already in their early to late teens, I feel that hiring individuals who are now adults, who have successfully aged out of a period of juvenile delinquency as counselors and mentors will make a tremendous impact,” Ostertag continued. “It has been proven time and time again that these type of people, with that prior personal experience, can be highly successful. Additionally, we need to improve life skills, by creating activities to keep our youth busy doing positive things that nurture an identity which seeks non-violent solutions to problems — and they need to receive positive reinforcement for successful solutions. Additionally, for harder to reach kids, utilizing programs like Job Corps as well as MST or Multi-Systemic Therapy seems to work to an extent under certain conditions and within the context it was intended. It’s a holistic approach the seems to recognize that people don’t exist in vacuums, but are part of a wide array of systems. The focus is on improving each of those systems.
For example, a teenager may be having problems at school, which may be a direct result of something happening at home. So in order to fix the problem in school, you will need to fix the problem at home. It follows the philosophy that “no man is an island” in and of himself, but that we are all networked together and as such we need to look at things from a holistic perspective. Multi-Systemic Therapy (MST) for juvenile offenders addresses the multi-dimensional nature of behavior problems in troubled youth. Treatment focuses on those factors in each youth’s social network that are contributing to his or her antisocial behavior. The primary goals of MST programs are to decrease rates of antisocial behavior and other clinical problems and improving the youth’s ability to function (e.g., family relations, school performance).”
This article was originally published in the October 10, 2011 print edition of The Louisiana Weekly newspaper
