There’s a clear line that connects crime, poverty, injustice — and COVID-19 | Opinion

33034.

As a recent Miami Herald story showed, residents of this Zip code not only experience the most extreme forms of poverty in Miami-Dade, they also are bearing the brunt of the COVID-19 pandemic — and that is only among the people who get tested, much less treated.

Yet, as is often the case in most economically disadvantaged communities in the United States, health ills —and the injustices they promulgate — co-exist with a great many other problems, including criminal activity. For residents of this Zip code, they must deal with high amounts of crime and victimization — and not just property crime. The residents experience violent crime at a rate 10 times higher than residents of the state of Florida. And, if you were to look at data compiled by Neighborhood Scout, this Zip code is safer than zero percent of U.S. cities. Think about that.

This tragic state of affairs is not just true for 33034, but also for other historically distressed Zip codes in Miami and many other large urban cities around the country. In fact, the Zip codes, and specific blocks, within them that experience one social ill more often than not experience other social ills. This has been a recurring sociological observation since the pioneering work of Chicago scholars, Shaw and McKay, who first made these observations in the first quarter of the 20th century in Chicago.

Now more than ever, the world is seeing the deadly consequences of social, health and racial injustice as both COVID-19 and long-term systematic racism disproportionately affect Black and brown residents.

What can be done?

First, we need to think about short-term, evidence-based, low-hanging-fruit solutions that can be easily agreed upon and implemented quickly. These include community health centers that are located directly in these communities. They also include outreach efforts to de-stigmatize health problems and justice involvement.

Second, they involve continued implicit-bias training among not just police, but all criminal-justice system officials. The same can be applied to individuals working in the loan and employment industries where years of experimental research shows that minorities are disadvantaged when it comes to fair loan rates, call-backs for jobs and so forth.

Third, there needs to be continued monitoring of these efforts to ensure that they are not just implemented and then people go about their daily lives as usual.

Fourth, in the long term, there needs to be a commitment, one that runs across political lines and terms in office where elected officials want to implement their visions for change and the policies by which they will attain them.

Last, we need to be cognizant that not everyone wants to change — or to change as quickly as everyone wants them to. The United States finds itself in a bit of a crisis where two issues are colliding. The good — if you can call it that — that can and should come out of this is that for once we can stop saying, ‘Let’s have another conversation,’ and instead start saying, ‘Here is our plan, here is what we are doing now, next month, and next year.’

Miami-Dade County, the city of Miami and the state of Florida will be better off if we just get the job done.

Alex R. Piquero is the incoming chair of sociology and Arts & Sciences Distinguished Scholar at The University of Miami.