A would-be shoplifter, an abandoned infant, and addressing the root causes of the new nature of crime
When a suspected thief left a 3-month-old behind at a Walmart, it was a sign of a new kind of heartlessness — one that puts everyone’s lives at risk. To fight it, our public safety leaders must adapt.
When I learned that a group of shoplifters fled security at a Northeast Philadelphia Walmart, leaving behind a 3-month-old infant, I was saddened but not at all surprised.
We are living in a time where the nature of crime has changed. Old clichés about honor among thieves have become almost laughable, as those who engage in illegality have adopted a sort of self-destructive recklessness. Gone are the days when women and children were spared.
Today, when even the pettiest of Walmart heists means risking the well-being of an infant, our shock lasts only a moment.
I believe the heartlessness we see in today’s criminals is a reflection of our larger society. Our connections to one another were frayed in the heart of the pandemic, and when we came out from our period of isolation, something about us had changed.
There may have been no better illustration of that transformation than on Jan. 6, 2021 — when thousands stormed the U.S. Capitol at the behest of then-President Donald Trump. That kind of lawlessness has permeated our society, and as much as we want to believe that it can be solved by law enforcement, I don’t think police alone can fix this. Criminals seem to have adopted a fatalistic mindset — one that puts everyone’s lives at risk.
Philadelphia, with new leadership in place, can be at the forefront of addressing this new reality, but we must first recognize that criminals no longer seem to fear consequences. If that is the case, our leaders must not fear change.
Change means focusing not only on the aftermath of crime but also on the root causes. For example, numerous studies have indicated that there is a correlation between lack of educational attainment and social ills, including crime.
In fact, the National Institutes of Health (NIH) released a study acknowledging that there are “disproportionately higher levels of mental health problems, substance use, and criminal activity of high school dropouts relative to their graduating peers.”
In schools the courts have said are underfunded, with kids who are more likely to live in poverty, is it any wonder Philadelphia has had double-digit dropout rates in recent years? And while those rates have decreased from 21.3% in 2019 to 14% in 2021, the numbers are still too high. Our young people are still at risk.
Saving them will require investing in education on the front end, so we can spend less on imprisonment on the back end. It will require parents to demand that their children graduate, so their children aren’t bound to lives of crime.
But as the NIH documented, the dropout rate is not only linked to higher levels of criminal activity. It is also linked to mental health problems.
While it is widely known in the mental health community that those who suffer from mental illness are more likely to be victims of violence than perpetrators of violence, the NIH says that when substance use disorder and mental illness are combined, violence can often result.
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In Philadelphia, where Kensington is home to open-air drug markets, and where the mentally ill wander our streets with seemingly untreated conditions, is it any wonder violence is too often the result?
Perhaps that’s what we see when officials say a suspected shoplifter at the Center City Macy’s stabbed a security guard to death while wounding another.
Maybe it’s at play when gunfire erupts on a SEPTA subway platform, killing a 16-year-old, with police officers standing nearby.
Maybe the mixture of mental illness, substance use, poverty, and lack of education have combined to create this violence, and it will take a different approach to make it stop.
When criminals are hell-bent on breaking the law regardless of the consequences or are unconcerned with protecting even the youngest, most innocent victims, we are not facing a situation that can be solved solely by policing.
We must deal with mental health, entrenched poverty, inferior education, and generational trauma.
We must deal with the mindset that makes people want to commit such heinous crimes in the first place.
Because if we don’t, things will only get worse.