Pine Bluff has yet again been crowned the least safe city in the nation.
Local leaders will equivocate and argue with the numbers. They will “explain” why that ignominious distinction doesn’t fit. They’ll blame the proverbial messenger. Their unwillingness to accept responsibility is as irresponsible as it is predictable.
I used to give a lot of talks to neighborhood and civic groups. Inevitably someone in the audience would ask, “Why are things the way they are here… why is there so much crime and poverty?”
Nobody likes the answer I gave, but I would give it to any audience in any city: Things are the way they are because they are profitable to someone and acceptable to the rest. Somebody benefits whether the city is safe, stable and successful. Somebody benefits if the city is crime-ridden, poor and failed.
Independent reporting for Pine Bluff & Jefferson County since 1879.
To be clear, the people who benefit in a climate of failure aren’t all drug dealers and criminals.
In fact, those people benefit in an economically trivial way. They are the social decoy for the real villains.
The things that make a city safe, stable and successful aren’t a mystery. They don’t require magical or divine intercession. They require two things: A population that won’t tolerate crime, chaos or poverty; and a population that won’t tolerate city leaders who treat their job as a hobby, who seek office for the benefit of themselves and their cronies, or who make decisions going against evidence and well-established best practices.
Unfortunately, that’s exactly what the people of Pine Bluff, myself included, have done. We routinely elect and reelect people who make uninformed or self-interested decisions. We have accepted negligent property owners and managers.
We permit well-ensconced financial interests to make public policy for their sole benefit. We tolerate schools whose bar for success appears to be achieving the bare minimum to regain local control.
Of all the destructive things we tolerate, there is one that reigns supreme.
It can be summarized as “it’s this way everywhere.” No, it isn’t. As the irrefutable statistics show, it’s only this way here – at least it’s the worst here. That “same everywhere” mindset normalizes and encourages crime, poverty, crumbling infrastructure, failed schools and the election of people who have no business in government.
Ironically, running a successful and safe city is just as easy as running a failed and criminogenic one.
We just have to want it badly enough; and apparently, we don’t.
Matthew Pate has a doctorate in criminal justice, is a lecturer at the University at Albany and the author of three books on crime and public policy. He lives in Pine Bluff.