By CHRIS POWELL
As most drivers in Connecticut have noticed, for a few years now the state’s highways have seemed full of homicidal maniacs, like the one who was arrested last week by a state trooper for going 127 miles per hour on the limited-access portion of Route 6 in Mansfield, nearly double the speed limit there.
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Apologists for government like to attribute this kind of stuff to the Covid-19 virus epidemic, just as educators like to blame the epidemic for the persistence of chronic absenteeism in schools. At least they’re not blaming it on Donald Trump yet.
More likely the increase in misconduct like this is being caused by society’s failure to impose adequate penalties for it. Hardly anyone is sent to prison for anything anymore so the governor and state legislators can boast about a falling prison population, and neither students nor parents are penalized for chronic absenteeism from school, unless a visit from a plaintive social worker can be considered punishment.
But police traffic data from bucolic East Lyme may suggest that between a quarter and a third of the people in town may be trying to kill someone, since they are exceeding speed limits on local roads by 10 mph or more, even near schools. East Lyme’s police chief last week told The Day of New London that if the traffic-ticketing cameras that have been proposed for the town had been in place during a recent week and a $50 fine had been levied for driving 10 mph or more over the limit, the town would have been owed $1.3 million.
More likely the problem in East Lyme and elsewhere is that speed limits are set too low in ordinary settings — judging by the fudge factor East Lyme’s chief was using, at least 10 mph too low. As numerous as homicidal maniacs seem to be these days, they surely don’t yet constitute between a quarter and a third of the population. Most people driving 10 or 15 mph above the speed limit are doing so in their own neighborhoods, for which they may be presumed to have some respect, and they think their speed is safe.
The danger with adjusting to common practice is that if 30-mph limits are raised to a more realistic 40 mph, people may take it as license to drive 50.
So maybe the most practical solution would be to raise most speed limits by 10 mph but also enforce the higher limits rigorously with traffic cameras everywhere.
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A week ago Connecticut’s Hearst newspapers thought it was big news that there are racial disparities in suspensions of students in the state’s public schools. That is, Black and Hispanic students are suspended more often relative to their numbers than white students are — Blacks three times as often, Hispanics twice as often. “Special education” students are also suspended far out of proportion to their numbers.
There’s a whole industry devoted to attributing these disparities to incompetent or racist teachers and administrators or a lack of programs for troublesome or handicapped children. But there is far more likely explanation.
For poverty and fatherlessness are racially disproportionate as well, and children who live in more prosperous homes and get more parenting tend to behave and perform much better in school, regardless of the quality of their teachers and administrators and the programs available to them.
Indeed, a study assembled this year by the University of Virginia found that the achievement and behavior gaps between Black and white students, gaps that long have been especially disgraceful in Connecticut, close completely for children who are raised in intact families or whose fathers are at least heavily involved in their lives.
That is, the achievement and behavior gaps are not about race at all but about parenting, the structure and stability of the family, an issue that, because of its political incorrectness, cannot be discussed in polite company in Connecticut, and especially not in education, where it might overthrow everything.
Chris Powell has written about Connecticut government and politics for many years. (CPowell@cox.net)
Chris Powell column 
Amen!
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