Increase in Boston's homicide rate

Editor's note: In June, Universal Hub readers selected selected five questions for Suffolk County District Attorney Dan Conley. Here is his answer to one of them:

What do you feel is the major reason behind the increase of this city's homicide rate?

More than 80% of this year's homicides were committed with handguns, and the people who committed them were not law-abiding gun owners. Clearly, the ready availability of illegal firearms contributes to the homicide rate here and in cities up and down the "Iron Pipeline" that carries illicit weapons between New England and the southeastern states. This is an issue that my office, in cooperation with city, state, federal, and non-profit agencies, is tackling on a daily basis. Taking illegal guns off the streets is and must remain a top priority - not just for public safety agencies but for everyone who wants to keep guns away from those who would use them in violent crime.

Unfortunately, guns alone are not the sole factor in our homicide rate - or any other city's, for that matter. There are a wealth of social factors as well: drug and alcohol addiction; population and employment trends; a culture that sends mixed messages about violence; a culture that eschews restraint and glorifies immediate, personal gratification; widespread and deeply misguided ideas about respect and how to attain it; too many young men not accepting their responsibilities to their children and to the mothers of their children; too many young mothers unprepared for the challenges and responsibilities of raising a child, especially alone; young people beset by low expectations and a power structure that doesn't demand more of them or provide more for them; a rising number of homes in which poverty, abuse, dysfunction, and crime have become generational; and the fact that many people, young and old alike, simply don't think about the consequences of their actions - for themselves or those around them. Each of these, I believe, plays some role in the number and rate of homicides, in Boston and elsewhere.

At the end of the day, though, no reason or even combination of reasons fully answers the question or satisfies those of us who ask it. A few weeks ago, a jury convicted a young man of first-degree murder for shooting a 14-year-old boy in the head in a running dispute over a baseball cap. A few days earlier, another jury convicted another man of the same offense for pulling a gun during an argument over an empty beer can thrown at an empty car, then firing shots that killed an innocent man with no connection to the underlying altercation. I think we can agree that these murders were senseless - but would they have made more sense if they'd been committed with the nominal rationales of jealousy or greed or revenge?

As a prosecutor, I must view each case individually, and I've yet to come across a single murder that ever really made sense. I think most people will come to the same conclusion.

Next: Juries and evidence.