Poverty among the issues that breed violence
To the editor:
Regrettably, there is increased violent crime in Lee County, especially among minorities and immigrant males.
The leading cause of death of young black males is violent crime. The perpetrator is usually another young black male. However, saying that does nothing to identify the cause. Violent crime is also increasing among young, immigrant males and poor white males. Does this suggest a cause? Yes, poverty and all of its associations, such as lack of education and unemployment.
Other leading factors are mass incarceration, racial profiling, housing in for-profit prisons, racism, and income inequality. Often the initial crime involves possession of a small amount of an illegal drug. The individual then is housed in a for-profit prison, completes his sentence and is released into the community with no skills, no assets and no rights.
These individuals have no place to go and congregate in low-income communities. They often live on the skills they learned in prison.
Lee County is not alone with this problem. This has been on the increase for sometime and will not be resolved with strong-armed police tactics, profiling, and harsh penalties. Many of these are the cause for the problems we have.
The communities are burdened with this problem and have no solution. Each community is unique and must be examined.
Dunbar is unique because of its location being near downtown being an older well-established mix community of homesteaders (older hard-working, educated, educators, health care workers, law-enforcement etc.many are retired.) mixed with newcomers some immigrant, some migrant, and- low income housing dwellers. More recent newcomers to the state in this period of downturn find it hard to get affordable housing and therefore settled in such areas. Among those are some college students. This must represent a very unwelcome experience in our state.
We must work on a solution to these problems that does not make the situation worse.
Lewis Robinson
Fort Myers