Post in North Minneapolis Crime and Community Vengence

Jul 19 05:42 UTC

I have been really challenged by crime and its ballet with social isolation of
the poor and working classes within middleclass communities. Over North we have
focused a lot on physical blight and its impact on crime. Much of what we have
discussed goes around the concepts that if we crack down and put them away our
problems would decrease. But.. what if its exactly the OPPOSITE! Well the blog
Freakonomics quoted from a working paper by Naci Morcan on the concept of
vengeance. I am appending from Freakonomics their citation of the abstract.
Does Naci have a point? How does the Northside react if he is right? How does
this impact issues of crime and education?

This paper investigates the extent of vengeful feelings and their determinants
using data on more than 89,000 individuals from 53 countries. Country
characteristics (such as per-capita income, average education of the country,
presence of an armed conflict, the extent of the rule-of-law, uninterrupted
democracy, individualism) as well as personal attributes of the individuals
influence vengeful feelings. The magnitude of vengeful feelings is greater for
people in low-income countries, in countries with low levels of education, low
levels of the rule-of-law, in collectivist countries, and in countries that
experienced an armed conflict in recent history.
Females, older people, working people, people who live in high-crime areas of
their country, and people who are at the bottom 50 percent of their country’s
income distribution are more vengeful. The intensity of vengeful feelings dies
off gradually over time. The findings suggest that vengeful feelings of people
are subdued as a country develops economically and becomes more stable
politically and socially and that both country characteristics and personal
attributes are important determinants of vengeance. Poor people who live in
higher-income societies that are ethno-linguistically homogeneous are as
vengeful as rich people who live in low-income societies that are
ethno-linguistically fragmented. These results reinforce the idea that some
puzzles about individual choice can best be explained by considering the
interplay of personal and cultural factors.