Living the War on Crime

The traditional left critique is to see the war on crime and governing through crime as exclusively about governing the poor. I've always argued that the real significance of governing through crime is its hold on middle class life.

Thanks to Warren Rosenblum for this dispatch from Nancy Cambria's reporting in the St. Louis Dispatch:

WENTZVILLE — The trampoline outside the model home sits idle without a child in
sight — and so does the patio's kid-sized table scattered with storybooks
including Bambi and The Poky Little Puppy.

From the vantage point of the home's surveillance camera, one might wonder,
Where did the children go? Did the monitor in the kitchen just show a strange
car driving down the street?

In a home with ample views of cows grazing in a nearby farm, child abduction
scenarios might seem like the wrong sales pitch for a new subdivision in
Wentzville — a city where the murder rate last year was zero and violent crime
at the hands of a stranger is nearly nonexistent.

But inside the meticulous model home, real estate agent Joanie Graflage can't
stop talking about kidnappings, break-ins, peeping Toms, petty theft and any of
the other "God forbids" that haunt the hearts of parents.

"It may not all be about child abduction, but someone could break into your
home," she says.

Graflage is selling homes for the Villages of Hampton Grove, a neighborhood
that's being marketed as Missouri's first fully camera-secure subdivision.
Three surveillance cameras resembling tiny, black shower nozzles come standard
on the exterior of every home.