Tweet
<TABLE cellSpacing=0 cellPadding=1 width="100%" border=0><TBODY><TR><TD><SPAN class=TopStory>Crime: Not so simple, Kevin O'Brien Chang</SPAN>
<SPAN class=Subheadline></SPAN></TD></TR><TR><TD>Geof Brown
Friday, February 09, 2007
</TD></TR></TBODY></TABLE>
<TABLE cellSpacing=0 cellPadding=5 width=80 align=left border=0><TBODY><TR><TD>
</TD></TR><TR><TD><SPAN class=Description>Geof Brown </SPAN></TD></TR></TBODY></TABLE><P class=StoryText align=justify>In a well-thought out and commendably reasoned article, Gleaner columnist Kevin O'Brien Chang makes a case for the title of his piece, "The real root of crime" (Sunday Gleaner, February 4). But then he fell into the trap of simple correlations - if two conditions always exist side by side, one is likely to be the cause of the other. Statisticians have called this tempting logic "spurious association". Based on the good evidence which Kevin O'B supplies, he concludes that father absence in families is the major explanation of our high crime rate, especially our high murder rate. He thereby falls into another trap - that of seeking the single magical explanation of a phenomenon which may have several causal factors associated with it, as crime assuredly does.<P class=StoryText align=justify>Showing that it is not poverty, poor education, income inequality or political tribalism that can be accused for Jamaica's high murder rate when compared to other countries in similar or worse conditions, K O'B zeroes in on the absent father as Jamaica's prime culprit cause. He also shows that two-parent families are much less associated with crime and that in rural areas as compared to the inner-city ghettoes, crime rates are much lower. And understandably he associates teenage pregnancy as a corollary cause, since teenage mothers do not have the maturity to pass on appropriate values to their offspring. Good arguments you will agree, backed up by data from some eight countries named by the writer.<P class=StoryText align=justify>But here is a fallacy. For if a "cause" holds true in one place at one time, it must hold true in all other places at all times in order to be genuinely valid and not be a case of spurious association. The Italian Mafia, for instance, has always been associated with a high crime rate and an especially high murder rate. Yet the Mafia men have always been exemplary fathers and strong family men. They do not desert their family responsibilities; indeed "family" for them is virtually sacred. Even the American law enforcement authorities, in attempting to describe how dangerous Jamaican young criminal men are, actually compare them to the Mafia.<P class=StoryText align=justify>So whereas Jamaican criminal murderers spring from families where fathers are mostly absent, Italian Mafia criminal murderers spring from families where fathers are always present. What both sets of high-rate murderers have in common is greed for more of the riches others around them possess. In short, they share the same value system coming nevertheless from very different family backgrounds.
One has to look at the source of the "bad" values they have in common to understand the "bad" behaviour that the Mafia criminal men and the Jamaican criminal young men have in common. The typical young Jamaican murderer today is driven by greed for the high and fast-paced lifestyle that dealing in drugs can bring. Your Mafia murderer was at the height of Mafia notoriety, driven by a similar greed and preyed on legitimate business people just like Jamaican gang murderers now do. And in their heyday, the Mafia fought among themselves for "turf" just as Jamaican gang members now do.<P class=StoryText align=justify>Now Mr K O'Brien Chang dismisses the slavery antecedents as an explanatory factor in the Jamaican father-absent behaviour. But distinguished fellow Edward Seaga in a superb article of the s
<SPAN class=Subheadline></SPAN></TD></TR><TR><TD>Geof Brown
Friday, February 09, 2007
</TD></TR></TBODY></TABLE>
<TABLE cellSpacing=0 cellPadding=5 width=80 align=left border=0><TBODY><TR><TD>
</TD></TR><TR><TD><SPAN class=Description>Geof Brown </SPAN></TD></TR></TBODY></TABLE><P class=StoryText align=justify>In a well-thought out and commendably reasoned article, Gleaner columnist Kevin O'Brien Chang makes a case for the title of his piece, "The real root of crime" (Sunday Gleaner, February 4). But then he fell into the trap of simple correlations - if two conditions always exist side by side, one is likely to be the cause of the other. Statisticians have called this tempting logic "spurious association". Based on the good evidence which Kevin O'B supplies, he concludes that father absence in families is the major explanation of our high crime rate, especially our high murder rate. He thereby falls into another trap - that of seeking the single magical explanation of a phenomenon which may have several causal factors associated with it, as crime assuredly does.<P class=StoryText align=justify>Showing that it is not poverty, poor education, income inequality or political tribalism that can be accused for Jamaica's high murder rate when compared to other countries in similar or worse conditions, K O'B zeroes in on the absent father as Jamaica's prime culprit cause. He also shows that two-parent families are much less associated with crime and that in rural areas as compared to the inner-city ghettoes, crime rates are much lower. And understandably he associates teenage pregnancy as a corollary cause, since teenage mothers do not have the maturity to pass on appropriate values to their offspring. Good arguments you will agree, backed up by data from some eight countries named by the writer.<P class=StoryText align=justify>But here is a fallacy. For if a "cause" holds true in one place at one time, it must hold true in all other places at all times in order to be genuinely valid and not be a case of spurious association. The Italian Mafia, for instance, has always been associated with a high crime rate and an especially high murder rate. Yet the Mafia men have always been exemplary fathers and strong family men. They do not desert their family responsibilities; indeed "family" for them is virtually sacred. Even the American law enforcement authorities, in attempting to describe how dangerous Jamaican young criminal men are, actually compare them to the Mafia.<P class=StoryText align=justify>So whereas Jamaican criminal murderers spring from families where fathers are mostly absent, Italian Mafia criminal murderers spring from families where fathers are always present. What both sets of high-rate murderers have in common is greed for more of the riches others around them possess. In short, they share the same value system coming nevertheless from very different family backgrounds. One has to look at the source of the "bad" values they have in common to understand the "bad" behaviour that the Mafia criminal men and the Jamaican criminal young men have in common. The typical young Jamaican murderer today is driven by greed for the high and fast-paced lifestyle that dealing in drugs can bring. Your Mafia murderer was at the height of Mafia notoriety, driven by a similar greed and preyed on legitimate business people just like Jamaican gang murderers now do. And in their heyday, the Mafia fought among themselves for "turf" just as Jamaican gang members now do.<P class=StoryText align=justify>Now Mr K O'Brien Chang dismisses the slavery antecedents as an explanatory factor in the Jamaican father-absent behaviour. But distinguished fellow Edward Seaga in a superb article of the s
Comment