Click Here For An Empowerment Strategy For Eliminating Neighborhood Crime

"Writes former Director of the National Institute of Justice, James K. Stewart: 'Crime is the ultimate tax on enterprise. It must be reduced or eliminated before poor people can fully share in the American dream.' (James K. Stewart, 'The Urban Strangler: How Crime Causes Poverty in the Inner City,' Policy Review, Number 37, Summer 1986, p. 8.) Controlling crime is a precondition to improving the lives of the urban poor because no neighborhood can grow economically unless it is first safe. As sociologist Charles Murray, Visiting Fellow at the American Enterprise Institute, notes, the key to reducing crime is to create an atmosphere of lawfulness. (Charles Murray, 'Crime in America,' National Review, June 10, 1988, p. 35.) Low-income neighborhoods explicitly should project the message to the would-be criminal, whether a resident or not, that crime is not tolerated, that moral principles are observed and enforced. "