A Canticle for Hadiya

Hadiya Pendleton

The story of Hadiya Pendleton is heart rending. The 15-year-old girl was known as a star student, a loving daughter and big sister, and a talented majorette. That latter aptitude resulted in her performing, along with her King College Prep High School team, at President Obama’s inauguration, an honor of which she was deservedly proud.

But several days later, on January 29^th, she was senselessly killed by a purported gang member in a south-side Chicago park. Hadiya and her friends had taken shelter from the rain under a canopy in Harsh Park when Michael Ward, 18, allegedly opened fire on the group in a tragic case of mistaken identity – he thought they were rival gang members when in fact they were just a bunch of kids out celebrating after completing their mid-year exams.

The pathos of Hadiya’s death was overwhelming to her family and the community. President Obama recognized the event in his State of the Union address, remembering Hadiya while calling for stricter gun controls.

But what was it that made Ward, just a few years older than Hadiya, think it was acceptable to indiscriminately spray a group of young people with gunfire? Ward was in the company of one Kenneth Williams, 20, who had been shot in the arm by another gang last year. In his confession, Ward claimed that he was seeking revenge against that gang. What is it that allows young men to shoot each other with impunity in a city that registered over 2400 shootings and nearly 500 homicides in 2012? And this in a city with some of the toughest gun laws on the books?

There is a theory that addresses this and it has to do with “certainty of punishment.”  While it might seem odd, it turns out that criminals are very savvy about applying economic risk/benefit analysis to their decisions. Criminals calculate (intuitively, as their actual math skills are typically lacking) an “expected value” of punishment by applying the probability of being punished to the extent of the actual (not on paper) punishment.

For instance, while the law might call for 5 years in prison for carrying an illegal gun, they observe that the probability of being caught is very low. Hence, they calculate that the “expected value” of the punishment is far less than 5 years.  Further, even if caught, they see that the typical punishment is only a year of probation with no prison time at all. So in spite of the seemingly tough sanction against carrying an illegal gun, the criminal calculates that the “certainty of punishment” is actually very, very low. Hence, in their warped but canny minds, the benefits of carrying a gun far outweigh its costs.

All this is actually going on in Chicago. While having very tough laws on the books, the cops are dismayed to see offenders they manage to apprehend back on the streets within days. Williams, who provided the gun that killed Hadiya, should have been in prison for parole violations following an earlier gun offense. The cops blame prosecutors and judges, but the judges blame state and local budgets that limit available prison beds. So it comes down to a type of “guns vs. butter” argument – social welfare and pension spending vs. cops on the street and prison beds.

In our zeal to pass new gun laws, it might be worthwhile to ponder how effectively existing laws are being enforced, how certain the punishment for violations are, and how severely the actual punishments are adjudicated. Criminals must assess the “certainty of punishment” as being very, very high if we want to change their behavior.

In the case of Hadiya, her assailants’ long criminal records give sad testimony to ineffective execution of the law. Another toothless law on the books would not have helped, no matter how good it made us feel.