By Chris Powell
Holy cow! A few people in Connecticut are starting to notice the long failure of social policy and, more remarkably, finding the courage to discuss it.
The revelation came in a recent report by investigative reporter Bill Cummings of Connecticut’s Hearst newspapers quoting some worthies in the Bridgeport area. Cummings wrote that “the number of homicides in Bridgeport, Hartford, and New Haven has remained consistent over the last decade, raising questions about whether policing and social programs — and the hundreds of millions of dollars spent on them — are making a difference.”
The report noted that for many years murder victims in the cities have been mostly young Black males from their teens to their 30s.
Bridgeport state Sen. Margaret Moore, a Democrat, said she was shocked by the Hearst report. “It seems like we have not learned anything,” Moore said, “and our values have not improved.” By that she meant that there has been no general [ITALICS] recognition [END ITALICS] and [ITALICS] acknowledgment [END ITALICS] of failure. “What we have done has not worked,” she said.
The president of the Bridgeport chapter of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, D. Stanley Lord, expressed skepticism of “program after program after program,” doubting that young people are really being reached.
Indeed, if “Black lives matter” was more than a slogan for using social disintegration to gain political patronage, the self-slaughter of young Black men and boys in Connecticut would have let up a bit by now.
Unfortunately the Hearst report found no one proposing alternatives to “program after program after program.” There was the usual prattle about the need for more “job training,” but most city children never master ordinary elementary and high school subjects, prerequisites for any job beyond the menial minimum-wage work that often causes those stuck in it to try the drug trade instead.
Connecticut congratulates itself for a rising high school graduation rate even as chronic absenteeism is overwhelming in city schools, students advance entirely by social promotion, and even illiterates are given diplomas lest they lose self-esteem.
One observer quoted in the Hearst report, Jessica Pizzano of Survivors of Homicide, may have gotten closest to the underlying problem. “Kids don’t go to the street because they are bad,” Pizzano said. “They are looking for love and affection. Gangs are families — not great families, but for some that is the only structure they know, anyone showing you kindness.”
No one quoted in the Hearst report spoke the words “parents” or “fathers” and the report did not include them anywhere. But the report’s acknowledgment of the failure of Connecticut’s social policy may embolden others to make similar acknowledgments, and more acknowledgments might assist the realization that programs and policies that don’t achieve their nominal objectives are continued anyway because perpetuating them and the employment they provide now substitutes as their highest objective.
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Most news reporting last week about the appointment of the new president of the University of Connecticut, Radenka Maric, by the university’s Board of Trustees was not interested in the terms of her new contract, despite the financial excesses granted to two of her three most recent predecessors.
Maric, who joined the university as a professor in 2010 and served as vice president for five years before being named interim president in February, is expected to be given a five-year contract. It has not been finalized but is expected to provide a salary of $610,000 with the incentive for “performance bonuses” and the usual presidential perks of housing and a car allowance — not too shabby.
But will Maric’s contract also contain a “golden parachute” provision like the one invoked by UConn President Thomas C. Katsouleas when he resigned in July 2021 after only two years on the job amid conflict with the trustees? Katsouleas was guaranteed a tenured professorship with UConn’s highest professor pay, then $330,000, and so may be around forever. Such guarantees are powerful disincentives to performance.
Last week the “golden parachute” issue had not yet been settled. So Connecticut will have to wait a while to see if UConn’s trustees have learned anything.
Chris Powell has written about Connecticut government and politics for many years.
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Chris Powell column 