EDITORIAL: Can we talk?

THE DUST HASN’T SETTLED. Instead it swirls faster. What’s troubling so many of us now shows no signs of improvement. What chance do we have that things will get better when the situation seems so dire?

Good question. Should we accept this anxiety as inevitable? Dismiss calls for reconnection with a shrug and a sigh. The problems are too big. The gulf between us and our neighbors too wide. They’re still wrong; we’re still right. There’s no reason to bridge the gap between us. And why would we want to?

Start with that last question: Why try? One answer is that no matter whose side we’re on, we share a desire to to survive. And there’s more to survival than food and water, clothing, a job and a place to live. We’re social creatures and wherever we live, we tend to connect with each other through groups, even when a pandemic stalks us all.

Groups promote our survival on national or global scale, though most of us have little involvement in how they affect our lives. But at the community level—for instance our county’s 18 towns, 4 villages and the small City of Hudson—the scale is tipped in favor of small groups and institutions. We need them now more than ever before.

That’s why it was welcome news this week when the Berkshire Taconic Community Foundation unveiled a grant program called Bridging Divides, Healing Communities. The foundation described it as “grants between $500 and $2,500 to support small-scale, community-based actions such as virtual forums, service projects, and artistic and cultural activities. Applicants [are asked to] consider how their projects would create new or strengthen existing relationships among people of different backgrounds, experiences or beliefs.”

The Berkshire Taconic Community Foundation (BCTF) manages philanthropic giving for projects located in Berkshire County, MA, Columbia County and northeast Dutchess County in New York, and northwest Litchfield County, CT.

BTCF is the major funder of this work, with a small grant from Berkshire Bank.

Eligible applicants include nonprofits, schools, municipalities and local government, and faith-based organizations (for non-religious activities). Community groups may also apply through a “fiscal sponsorship” with an eligible organization. The first deadline for applications is Tuesday, December 1. Apply at www.BerkshireTaconic.org/Healing .

Have any ideas for how these grants should be used? Can you think of an entity in Columbia County that can “bridge differences, build trust and promote reconciliation,” as Berkshire Taconic President Peter Taylor says the foundation wants? Would you be willing to imagine what one would look like?

If you can keep your response to 150 words or less, email it to letters@columbiapaper.com . We’ll set aside space in print and online to publish your ideas and opinions. Be sure to include your phone number so we can confirm your identity.

If you prefer to nurse a gloomy outlook, that’s understandable. The news will confirm your worst suspicions.

The alternative—the search for slivers of common ground—comes with no guarantee of renewing old bonds or creating new ones. All you can expect is that without searching we will weaken those essential human connections. It may not be our survival at stake. Maybe it’s just our humanity. Either way, we all have a lot to lose if we fail to give this a try.

Images of justice: Introduction to a series

In News - Columbia, The Columbia Paper

August 3, 2024

By DEBORAH E. LANS

First in a series

GHENT–The social scientist David Canter says that “to know a society, know its crime.” To think “of crime as generated by abnormal individuals that is [solely] the responsibility of law enforcement and the judicial system is to ignore the endemic processes that sustain it and those who deal with it on a daily basis.” Put another way, crime is often the inevitable offspring of our societal structures and shortcomings.

In medicine, there is a concept known as the social determinants of health which posits that social factors such as poverty, access to education and housing instability all heavily influence an individual’s health. Numerous studies bear out the theory, and they have additionally shown that social determinants also operate in a feedback loop. An individual’s health can compromise living and working conditions which may, in turn, compromise employment and income, which may, in yet another turn, affect housing stability or access to health care, and on and around.

Social scientists recognize that many of the same factors that affect health can underlie conduct that is characterized as criminal or that is violent. A recent study by two federal Centers for Disease Control scientists and a Vanderbilt University researcher, for example, linked income inequality, residential instability, diminished economic opportunity, institutional racism, and inadequate access to mental health or substance abuse services to a variety of forms of violence: bullying, child neglect and abuse, intimate partner and sexual violence.

Similarly, a study in Australia found that the chances of an individual ending up incarcerated increase to the extent that he or she experiences one or more of the “social determinants of justice.” In general, those include poverty, the effects of racism, housing and employment instability, mental health issues, and substance abuse

With the concept in mind that much “criminal” conduct and the justice system with which it interacts are often reflections of a community, this series will look at some images of justice in our area — some of the players who administer the system and those who work within and from outside the system to address the causes and daily impacts of crime.

In Columbia County, many of the key players are new and bring fresh ideas to the table. These include a new District Attorney, two new County Court judges, a new Sheriff and a new Chief of Police in Hudson – all of whom have opened the doors to change.

But first: what does the local landscape look like? In Columbia County, the poverty rate is 10.3% (15.3% for children); in Greene County, it is 10.4%. As this paper has frequently reported, housing instability is an urgent problem in Columbia County due to rising home and rental prices. Severe housing problems affect 15% of those in Columbia County. (A comparable statistic for Greene County could not be found.) As is true throughout the nation, substance abuse and mental health issues are prevalent, and the demand for care outstrips available services.

Both violent crime and property crime in Columbia and Greene counties is lower than the national average. In Columbia County the violent crime rate is 9.2 (per thousand) and in Greene County it is 7.2, compared to a national average of 22.7. In Columbia County the property crime rate is 20.7 and in Greene County it is 16.7, whereas the national average is 35.4.

Most local crime occurs in “urban” settings: in Columbia County, in Hudson and in Greene County, in Catskill. In Hudson, the crime rate has been declining year over year, and from 2021 to 2022 it fell by 40%. Whereas both the violent crime and property crime rates in Hudson had been equal to or, in some years substantially exceeded, the U.S. rate from 2012 to 2020, this decline was such that by 2022 the rate in Hudson was less than half of the national rate.

Murders are a rarity in Hudson; with none occurring in many years. Between 2009 and 2022, no year saw more than 10 rapes or 8 robberies. They averaged 4/year and roughly 3.5/year, respectively. Burglaries and thefts were much more common.

The same trends were experienced in Catskill, although at lower rates.

Almost half of all arrests in both Columbia and Greene counties were for drug crimes or DWI in 2023. Domestic violence was also significant – at a rate of about 10% of arrests in 2022 in Columbia County.

As of 2022, the vast majority of arrests in both counties resulted in convictions, with a small percentage, mainly of misdemeanor charges, “diverted” from the system through conditional dismissals, such as when a case is “adjourned in contemplation of dismissal (ACD),” meaning that if, after a prescribed time period, the defendant has not reoffended, the charges will be dismissed; often during the prescribed time, mental health, drug treatment, anger management or other services are also mandated.

In Columbia County roughly 20% of those convicted of felonies and 3% of those convicted of misdemeanors are incarcerated. In Greene County, about 22% of felony convictions and 1.6% of misdemeanor convictions result in incarceration.

Future articles will look at some of the “problem-solving” courts at work in the area, such as the “mental health court” and “drug treatment court” that seek to address the causes of some crimes, in appropriate cases, through treatment in lieu of punishment; the ways in which law enforcement, the judiciary and service providers work both to prevent involvement in the criminal justice system and to assist those who have been impacted – both offenders and their families; and some of the key players involved.

EDITORIAL: Can we talk?

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