Blacks killing for respect in Oakland

Whereas in most American cities murders and many other crimes have gone down or remained stable over the past decade, they have gone up in Oakland. Poverty cannot be the primary reason, says Jack Levin, a criminologist at Northeastern University in Boston. Oakland has much less poverty than cities such as Hartford, Baltimore or Memphis, which also have high crime rates. Nor is it racial tension, since the overwhelming majority of Oakland’s violent crime is black-on-black. In the late 1980s much of it could be blamed on the twin epidemics of crack cocaine and handguns. But today’s shootings, often among men who were “crack babies”, are more likely, says Mr Levin, to happen for “respect”. Respect killings defy reason. A wrong look, a casual gesture, can lead to a full-blown shoot-out. The murders tend to happen in the two or three areas where black former prisoners — by some estimates, about 7.5% of Oakland’s population of 400,000 — are to be found. Most of them go in and out of prison, getting more brutal as they go. Three-time offenders are killing four-time offenders because younger criminals are fighting for the turf of older ones, and for the respect of their peer group.