Criminal justice watch - death of children in America

We feel deep empathy, compassion, and sadness for families and victims in Newtown. We talk about the victims here as innocent children who met a horrible death completely out of their hands. We wonder how the families and friends of victims will cope with such a loss. 

 But, the same kinds of sympathy and compassion are often not extended to families who lose their children in street shootings every day. These situations are treated very differently by the media, by our leaders, and by many of us. We see these shootings as events that only happen to people who are caught up in the wrong crowd. We assume that these victims — who are often children — must have been dealing drugs, in a gang, or doing something to meet such a horrible end. Everyday violence in our inner-cities helps us hold onto a precious myth: Fatal violence only happens to people who bring it on themselves. If we can believe this, or at least think it might be true, we can feel safe again. How do we reconcile these conflicting responses to tragedy?

Jooyoung Lee. For more click here.

Editor's note: There have been 42 homicides in Monroe County so far this year one in Brockport. The ones in the suburbs like 18 year old white college student, Alexandra Kogut, have received a lot of attention, but most, inner city people of color are given a quick once over and forgotten.

Of the 211 child passengers ages 14 and younger who died in alcohol-impaired driving crashes in 2010, over half (131) were riding in the vehicle with the alcohol-impaired driver. My two children, Ryan aged 8, and Brigid aged 5, were killed by a 3 time drunk driver on Rt. 31 in Ogden in 1993.

Grief for murdered children is heavily influence by social class in our society. By all means grieve for the children killed at Sandy Hook and support their parents, but lets not forget the families just as devastated in the United States by the death of their children in our inner cities in America and on our nation's highways.

Criminal justice watch is a regular feature of the Brockporter Online News Magazine which appears most Wednesdays.