Full Committee: “Crime on the Rise: How Lawlessness is Impacting Main Street America”

Crime is on the rise and that impacts small business and the communities that rely on safe streets to attract shoppers. Commerce and the economy itself is best fostered in pleasant business environments where consumers can have a positive experience that encourages greater economic exchange. [Shopping in dangerous places is generally not on anyone's priority list if they have an online option or can shop in another location. Thus, correcting the crime problem is good for communities and downtowns to improve the positive affect and experience of physical shopping. i.e. increased foot traffic that leads to $$.] 

The video provides an in-depth discussion on these issues and its important to understand the small business environment and the problems such entities face. We have recently seen a rise in "smash and grab crimes" as well as an increase in hate crimes [You may want to read some stats provided by the FBI Stopping Threats]. Such crimes impact small business and communities in ways that we might not yet fully understand nor have fully explored. 

There is also need for new ideas on effective crime management and holding to account hate crimes. As a younger generation comes onto the scene they will bring with them fresh ideas and certain values so we are likely to see an increased pace of pro-social changes that impact how policing and crime management is conducted/managed [Different times and eras have different expectations of institutions.]

Some of those values might include a greater emphasis on small business opportunities as a pathway to success as a hedge to increasing income disparity. They may also desire change to increase the effectiveness of crime management in a way that also develops communities [This is why I support research on policing and community development. I'm working on a cluster theory and effective crime management is considered an underlining influencer to a robust business environment. One within a cluster could rank the quality of services as an influencing factor. Policing is one element but so might be quality of utilities, access to affordable financing, industrial sites, supply chain, etc. Perhaps the theory could rank the quality of these elements from 1-100 to benchmark what characteristics a transactional cluster might have and its potential for future growth.]. 

A thought.....

I wonder if there are studies on the types of crimes that are impacting small business? Pondering this, I would think it moves beyond retail and hate crimes to also include corruption. Corruption is also a crime and depending on the nature of that corruption it could have a major impact on the success of local small business communities. i.e. access to opportunities, information availability, resource allocations, community relations, contracts, etc.