Chicago’s Criminal IrresponsibilityProgressive thinking on urban violence is so unrealistic it is dystopian.
Jukka Savolainen
29 Apr 2023
The second weekend of April in Chicago was a wild one. On Friday April 14th, hundreds of teenagers took over a public beach creating chaos. There were reports of illegal fireworks, a 14-year-old boy was shot, and the window of a police car was smashed. The following day, crowds of Chicago youth decided to heed social-media invitations to participate in a genre of mob madness known as “wilding.” Hundreds of young people, mostly teenagers, descended on the Loop district of central downtown. Ample video evidence documents incidents where innocent victims were beaten.
In an area limited to just one intersection, about 200 juveniles were fighting, vandalizing storefronts, and jumping on moving vehicles. Several pedestrians and motorists, including tourists, were attacked and escorted to safety by the police. Before pulling its crew out of the area, a local TV station reported that one man was beaten so badly he required hospital treatment after a group of youths smashed the windshield of the car in which he and his wife were sitting.
This particular episode of wilding received national attention, probably because of its central location and the shocking nature of some of the videos. Eventually, the Chicago’s mayor-elect, Brandon Johnson, issued a public statement: “In no way do I condone the destructive activity we saw in the Loop and lakefront this weekend. … However, it is not constructive to demonize youth who have otherwise been starved of opportunities in their own communities.” In unprepared remarks, he went on to say that “demonizing children is wrong” and that “we need to keep them safe as well.” The mayor-elect characterized the Chicago teens’ predatory takeover of downtown as an example of “silly decisions” kids make.
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As frustrating as it may have been, Brandon Johnson’s response was entirely consistent with his political platform. Throughout the mayoral campaign, he had rejected his opponent’s tougher-on-crime agenda, favoring instead the raising of corporate taxes to fund social programs. The mayor-elect’s worldview is grounded in progressive activism. He quit his position as a middle-school teacher to work for the Chicago Public Teacher’s Union where he helped organize the strike of 2012. He is on record supporting defunding the police as “a real political goal.” In 2020, he defended widespread looting in downtown Chicago as an expression of “anguish” among those living under a “failed racist system.”
Federal government agreesGiven his politics, Brandon Johnson’s response to the endemic problem of urban violence was predictable. However, Johnson’s approach to juvenile justice administration is perfectly aligned with the position of the Office of Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention (OJJDP)—the federal agency tasked with improving the nation’s juvenile justice system.
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Citing “scientific research,” the OJJDP is keen to recognize that “most brains are not fully developed until a person reaches their mid-20s, and that younger youth are prone to impulsive, emotional, and risk-taking behaviors.” However, as the cognitive psychologist Stuart Ritchie explains, this uncontroversial observation is irrelevant to the administration of criminal justice. Merely noting that the adolescent brain is still developing fails to explain why most people in this “vulnerable” demographic refrain from attacking innocent bystanders with metal pipes or twerking on top of a moving bus.
The OJJDP believes that: “Youth contact with the justice system should be rare, fair, and beneficial.” I have nothing against fair or beneficial—assuming the benefits include public safety—but why “rare”? Shouldn’t the frequency of contact with the justice system depend on the behavior of the individual? Sure, it makes sense to aspire to a world in which juvenile offending is rare, but this statement is about contact with the system. In other words, it implies that minimizing accountability is inherently desirable. But if the punishments are fair and beneficial, shouldn’t we administer them as frequently as necessary?
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Conspicuously absent from these considerations is the impact of punishment—or lack thereof—on the victims of juvenile offending. What about the “collateral consequences” of tolerating epidemic levels of looting and shoplifting? It is hardly a coincidence that Walmart, CVS, Target, Whole Foods, and other major retail establishments have recently decided to close or curb their operations in the high-crime areas of Chicago. What about the negative health and economic consequences of being robbed, assaulted, and shot? It seems unacceptable for a federal agency to completely ignore serious victim outcomes in its effort to “improve juvenile justice systems.”
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Source:
https://quillette.com/2023/04/29/chicagos-criminal-irresponsibility/
