A protester walks past a line of police officers standing guard in front of the District 1 police headquarters in Chicago, Illinois November 24, 2015. Photo by REUTERS/Frank Polich
A January 2016 UIC Great Cities Institute report on youth joblessness in Chicago is cited in a PBS NewsHour online story about homicides in the city.
Lance Williams is an associate professor of urban affairs at Northeastern Illinois University and a youth advocate. He says Chicago’s latest violent trends also stem from poverty and unemployment. The two combine to leave Chicago’s young black men feeling penned in, he said. Nearly half of Chicago’s black men age 20 to 24 are unemployed, according to a report from the University of Illinois at Chicago’s Great Cities Institute.
“You can hire all of the police that you want, you’re not going to solve this problem because these young men are acting in alignment with their cultural value system,” Williams told the NewsHour in a report that will air Wednesday.
