Understanding Violent Crime

A possible response to recent tragic killings

I have absolutely no inside information about last week’s tragic killings of two children in Lakewood at the hands of their mother. And I have no interest in speculating about any unknown background details that could possibly make the events more intelligible.

But I would like to make one or two broad general points that might have value.

First off, though, I should add some important context. Since the population of Lakewood itself (08701) is so overwhelmingly Jewish (As we’ve seen previously, nearly 90% of the area’s school-aged children do not attend public schools), we can learn a lot about it from big-picture population demographics.

With that in mind, I spent some time with New Jersey State Police crime data. Using the total 2020 State population of 9,288,994, here are the official crime rates (per 100,000 people) from that year comparing Lakewood to the State average:

| Crime     | Lakewood Rate/100k | NJ rate/100k |
|-----------|--------------------|--------------|
| Murder    | 1.9                | 3.55         |
| Rape      | 3.9                | 13.75        |
| Robbery   | 29.2               | 47.22        |
| Assault   | 92.3               | 603.58       |
| Burglary  | 173                | 139.77       |
| Larceny   | 647.1              | 857.43       |
| Auto Theft| 26.2               | 110.66       |

Clearly, Lakewood is an extraordinarily safe place to live and work. And it’s reasonable to assume that the Jewish populations of other communities enjoy similarly low crime levels. But crime does exist. And, as with all population groups, frum Jews are sometimes responsible.

Now let’s take an uncomfortable look at children as victims of homicide. A few years’ back, the CDC reported:

A total of 1,067 homicides occurred among infants in the United States from 2017 through 2020, an average of 267 per year.

“Infants,” here, describes only children below the age of one (whereas the Lakewood victims were both older). And those numbers are almost certainly artificially low, since it’s widely accepted that many incidents of infanticide are incorrectly attributed to natural deaths. So the actual numbers relevant to our discussion are certainly far higher.

Who is responsible for these crimes? Professor Janice Fiamengo recently identified the most accurate data available:

“Two-thirds of infanticides [in the United States] are perpetrated by women” and “Eighty percent of homicides where the victim is under one year old are perpetrated by female killers”

Such murders are certainly not common - in any community - but they do happen. And the killers are, more likely than not, going to be women. It’s sadly predictable that, in many of those incidents, the victim’s mother will be the killer.

Why do they do it? These certainly aren’t cold-blooded gangland-style assassinations. Instead, they’re far more likely to be the product of mental illness. But it’s important to remember that many people suffer from mood disorders and other illnesses without ever hurting anyone. In fact, very few disorders are severe enough to absolve a person of criminal responsibility. Only one percent of US-based criminal cases involve an insanity defense. And of those, less than one in four such defenses is successful.

Common motivations for killing include:

• A twisted desire for revenge - often directed towards a victim’s father during custody battles or conflicts

• An (equally twisted) desire for attention and sympathy can express itself as what’s known as Munchausen Syndrome by Proxy (MSBP)

• Women genuinely suffering from abuse or poverty might feel led to desperation through lack of options and support

Why is all this relevant to us? Because human nature is human nature. And trends impacting one community are, more often than not, going to show up everywhere.

It’s possible that this particular tragedy wasn’t the result of anything the Jewish community could have done better in the area of mental health services - although those services probably could use greater support. It’s more likely that, even if this could have been predicted, therapy would simply not have helped.

Perhaps we should take Prof. Fiemengo’s advice to emphasize how all human beings are responsible for their actions. Spreading that attitude widely might make it harder for anyone - man or woman - to use internal emotional stress as a rationalization for violence.