By Robert Pawlicki
Posted Jan 13, 2020 at 10:26 AM
The Chatham County Jail is the fifth largest jail in Georgia, only exceeded by jails in Fulton County surrounding Atlanta. Our jail now houses more inmates than any of the state’s 34 prisons, save one. And, according to officials at the jail, the population is estimated to increase to approximately 2,300 inmates from its current level of roughly 1,950. What’s happening?
Savannah Police Chief, Roy Minter was asked that question at a recent panel discussion sponsored by the 100 Black Men of Savannah.
“An increase in crime,” he replied, “Violent crime is the major issue.”
Expanding further he noted that “poverty and the wide availability of guns, are the most likely causes – even to the point that some young men prefer living in jail than in their poverty-laden homes.”
Chief Minter cited poverty and the wide availability of guns. Unfortunately, some of our citizens blame race. With over 1,100 African American at the jail, that appears to be an easy argument. However, experts clearly dispute race as the cause. Studies consistently show that, when white populations are in poverty and jobless, they show similar patterns of crime as African Americans.
And when African Americans achieve middle class status, they show the same crime rates as the white population. Skin color is not the cause.
How to account for the disproportional number of African Americans in the Chatham County Jail? One likely answer is that the black population in Savannah is roughly twice as likely as the white population to be in poverty.
Nationally two cities frequently mentioned in the news as hot spots of crime are St. Louis and Baltimore. Both have among the highest levels of urban poverty in the United States. Unfortunately, Savannah matches some of their statistics.
The similarity between Savannah and cities like Baltimore and St. Louis is striking. “Nearly 24 percent of Baltimore’s population is living below the poverty line, which was $20,090 a year for a family of three in 2015,” according to a CNN Money report, St. Louis’s poverty rate stands at 20.3%.
Savannah’s most recent rate of poverty is 24%, exactly like Baltimore’s. It is nearly double the national rate of 12.3% and 9% higher than Georgia’s state level of 15%, according to the U.S. Census Bureau. Drilling further down into the Savannah data reveals that 40.8% of the unemployed are in poverty.
To add to the picture at the jail, it’s worth noting that the overwhelming majority of the population are young men, where the highest concentration of unemployment resides.
Our city leaders are aware of the relationship between poverty, our crime problem and the growth of the Chatham County Jail. The Savannah City Council, in its Connect the Dot initiative, adopted a strategic plan in 2017 that included poverty reduction as a priority. The goal set by the mayor and aldermen was that by 2021, the poverty rate will be reduced by 1% every four years until the rate is at or below the statewide level.
This goal needs to be revised. Such a target is simply too little and too slow. With our poverty level nine points worse than the state’s, it would take 36 years to reach their modest goal. With a new mayor and seven new council members, poverty deserves a priory place on their agenda.
Meanwhile, the Chatham County Jail population continues a growth that far outpaces our expanding population. It is decimating our minority population, making us less safe, and harming and sometimes destroying minority communities.
Why should you care? Because the jail is a barometer of the health of our community. Until it stops growing, until our poverty and minority unemployment is reduced to an acceptable level, our community remains sick.
Police can do only so much. We need to seriously attend to the root cause.
Robert Pawlicki is a semi-retired psychologist who lives in Savannah.
