Here's a book recommendation for those who fail to understand: Lord of the Flies.  

Laura, I just don't understand why exactly you first read the Feagler column and then called the PD to cancel your subscription, along with a suspected horde of others. I just don't get it. Please, I await enlightenment.

  Vote for some one who lives in the city and understands children.

The problem we live with....Here is some perspective.  An African-American woman came to this community to accept a job with a local development corporation.   She was told to avoid Cleveland schools, so she and her family settled in Brecksville.  Her children stood out as minorities and were tormented for being different.  She chose to move her children back into a system that provided some diversity, so that her children would not be persecuted for being different.   Imagine how it feels to be the mother, father of any child that is not accepted?  How do you think generations of families feel, time after time, to essentially be told: "My child is too precious to be exposed to your child?"  Do you really think that you provide your child with reality by sending them to a school district that offers zero-to minimal diversity??  Would it kill you to spend more time with your child and invest your time with your child's school?  In fairness, I will say I do not have kids by choice.  I know that I have limited time, patience and energy.  Kids are an investment.  You have to think about investments.  Please think about your kids.

Do we save our outrage for victims that look like us?  I am as guilty as Dick Feagler of not caring enough to understand the perpetrators of a crime.  I am old and tired, too.

Just like someone in the suburbs, I want to bury the body, so "outsiders" will only see the good side of my community.  I don't want to know the names or see the faces.

Body--this the impersonal word you use to do a reference search on a murder.   We cease to become anything but a lump of colorless flesh.  It helps to remember that we all end up the same way, despite our fear and running.

I live with the guilt for not caring enough to express outrage over this story:

Teen denies charges in death

Ismael Irizarry Jr., 16, denied charges in Cuyahoga County Juvenile Court that he tampered with evidence and obstructed police from investigating the death of Gabriel Feliciano. The 17-year-old's body was discovered near Brookside Reservation Wednesday. He had been missing since Sept. 23. Cuyahoga County Coroner Frank Miller said Gabriel was shot at least once. Miller has not yet completed the autopsy. According to court records, Irizarry is accused of destroying evidence near where the body was found sometime around Sept. 25. He also remains a suspect in Feliciano's death and could face more charges once the investigation is complete.

Gabriel was found under the Brighton-Brooklyn Bridge.  Poor Gabriel.  I cry for you today and I cry for Ismael, too.  I have written about the teen underworld that lives in the shadows.  I was one of those kids, once.  I sometimes feel my field biologist skills, when I see the tracks and signs on the landscape, invisible to so many people.

What helped me to become not-so-angry, not-so-vicious?  I was forced to take care of an older bed-ridden man during my senior year in high school.  I hated every minute of it.  It was my senior genesis project foisted upon me by my parents.  I still don't have a lot of compassion, but now that I am older, I see that I am just a body, too.

January 22, 2008,  9:45 am

What Do Declining Abortion Rates Mean for Crime in the Future?

 

By Steven D. Levitt

The abortion rate in the
United States is at a thirty year low — though even with the decline, we are still talking about a large number of abortions in absolute terms, or 1.2 million per year. To put this number into perspective, there are about 4 million births per year in the
U.S.

John Donohue and I have argued that the legalization of abortion in the 1970s reduced crime in the 1990s. The logic is simple: unwanted children have an increased risk of growing up to be criminals, and legalized abortion reduces the number of unwanted children. Consequently, legalized abortion lowers crime in the future.

So what does the steady decline in abortions performed in recent years predict for future crime patterns? The answer is not obvious, because it depends on why abortion rates are falling, and I’m not sure we know the answer to that question.

If abortion rates are falling because it has become harder or more costly to get an abortion, then a falling abortion rate is bad news for crime. As the “price” (whether in monetary terms, social stigma, having to travel a long distance, etc.) rises, women who otherwise would have sought an abortion will not get one. This suggests that more unwanted children are being born, and thus crime rates may rise in the future.

On the other hand, there are other reasons why the number of abortions might fall, and none of these have dire crime implications. For instance, because abortion has been legalized since the 1970s, there may be fewer women today who are seeking abortions — the women who might have been at highest risk for unwanted pregnancies today may never have been born.

A second scenario in which low abortion rates don’t lead to high crime is an increase in reliable birth control. For instance, following the increased spread of AIDS and other sexually transmitted diseases in the 1990s, condom use may have risen. More condoms would lead to fewer conceptions, including fewer unwanted conceptions. The result would be both a lower abortion rate and a lower number of unwanted births.

A third possibility is that the demographic most likely to obtain abortions is conceiving less for other reasons — including, possibly, less sex. My student Amee Kamdar has a fascinating paper in which she shows that incarceration of twenty-something males greatly reduces the number of teenage births. Indirectly, the continuing rise in incarceration may be contributing to reduced rates of both teen births and teen abortions.

As this discussion points out, the relationship between abortion rates and future crime is subtle. Subtle enough, in fact, that I believe that many researchers studying this issue do not understand it themselves.

Donohue and I present evidence that the rise in abortions in the years immediately following legalization was due to the fact that abortions got “cheaper.” As such, during that period, more abortions implied less crime. Whether that is still true today is quite questionable. My hunch is that the recent declines in abortion are not really a result of abortions becoming more expensive. There are fewer abortion providers today, so maybe that makes it harder to obtain an abortion. On the other hand, when demand for a good (in this case, abortions) falls, you expect the number of providers to shrink. It is unclear which is causing which.

Perhaps more importantly, one might think that the introduction of RU-486 represents an important technological shock that lowers the cost of getting an abortion. Yet there are fewer abortions.

So, ultimately, although this is a bit of a guess, I would surmise that the low abortion rate today is being driven by a decrease in unwanted conceptions. If that is true, then these low abortion rate statistics are good news for future crime rates.

From: http://freakonomics.blogs.nytimes.com/2008/01/22/what-do-declining-abortion-rates-mean-for-crime-in-the-future/#more-2250

  Jimmy Malone weighs in on irrational fear and anger in the Plain Dealer.