OUT ON A LIMB: No, Philly doesn’t need to cure poverty to reduce crime.

“This weekend’s tragic, alarming gun violence,” said Krasner “underscores why we must address the root causes of this public health crisis: Poverty, hopelessness, and a lack of gun control …”

Having recently re-read James Q. Wilson’s Thinking About Crime, I am regularly frustrated by how little progress has been made in the debate about crime in America. The book, which helped influence the crime-fighting revolution that took place in cities across America (especially New York), dedicates an entire chapter to explaining why addressing root causes is not a prerequisite for crime reduction.

Perhaps the strongest evidence supporting Wilson’s argument as to “root causes” is the drastic and long-lasting crime decline experienced in New York City between 1990 and 2018, a period during which annual homicides went from 2,262 to 295. And with that decline in mind, I can’t help but wonder: Why is it you never hear people like Mr. Krasner offer a “root causes” explanation for the Big Apple’s violent crime decline? After all, if addressing root causes like poverty is the only way to reduce crime, surely we would have seen a drastic improvement in the Big Apple’s poverty rate during that period. Well, we didn’t.

Some might be quick to point out that Philadelphia’s poverty rate for 2017 (26 percent) was higher than New York’s (19 percent); but the latter’s poverty rate has been essentially steady for over a decade. Indeed, New York’s 2016 poverty rate (19.5 percent) was actually slightly higher than it was in 1989 (18.8 percent), when violent crime was an exponentially bigger problem.

Read the whole thing.

(Via City Journal.)