They’re misquoting their favorite “source”. They do it every day.

The study was not testing for poverty as a root cause of violence, poverty was a variable that they considered in relation to what they were actually testing.

The source did say that exposure to violence is a strong predictor for violent offending which is common knowledge. It did not say that being tougher on crime is a solution at all.

Honestly even the source identified in their results the effects of poverty/neighborhood disarray on violent offending and said this:

“As expected, youth who reported higher levels of ETV (exposure to violence) and more perceptions of police bias also reported higher levels of CoS (code of the street/something that they said mediates the relationship between ETV and violent offending). In addition, youth who lived in neighbor- hoods with higher levels of disorder and in counties with more poverty reported higher CoS.”

The article ends by saying we can’t just solve this issue by reacting to exposure to violence after the fact, we have to prevent the violence from happening overall.

The don’t say how in the article, but as arresting/jailing people/reinstating cash bail are all reactions to exposure to violence, I’d bet money that’s making sure there’s a social safety net to help BEFORE a crime is committed is a much better option.