We Can Make Chicago Safer By Prioritizing Stronger Families

It was a cold winter morning in 2021 when my youngest son ducked into a local gas station to grab a snack before heading to work. As he came out and entered his car, a gunman approached, yanked on his door, pointed a gun at him and commanded him to give up his car. My son refused. He was shot in the head.

Miraculously, my son was not killed. The bullet passed through his left temple, exiting down through his right cheek. But the incident made the local Chicago crime problem real for me and my family in the most personal and painful way possible. Unfortunately, my family’s experience is not uncommon. Across the city, Chicagoans saw a decade-high number of assaults and car thefts and homicide rates last year, according to a recent Illinois Policy Institute report. Certain offenses are on pace to increase in 2023.

Typically, solutions to crime in urban centers are built upon improving social structural factors or shoring up support for traditional law enforcement institutions. Both efforts are important. But a third factor too often gets ignored: the home life. City leaders and those fighting to decrease crime rates should put more emphasis on encouraging and fostering a healthy family life, including two-parent households.

According to a new report from the Institute for Family Studies, crime rates are lower in neighborhoods and in cities where stable, two-parent families are the norm. Conversely, crime rates go up in places where fathers are absent, single mothers are common and family instability is the norm. Chicago often falls into the “broken family” category. In fact, the assailant who was arrested in connection with my son’s carjacking came from a home without a father.

In Chicago specifically, we found neighborhoods with more single parents witness violent crime rates 226% higher and homicide rates 436% higher than in neighborhoods with lower levels of single parenthood. 

Continue reading at The Chicago Tribune . . . .