Customize Consent Preferences

We use cookies to help you navigate efficiently and perform certain functions. You will find detailed information about all cookies under each consent category below.

The cookies that are categorized as "Necessary" are stored on your browser as they are essential for enabling the basic functionalities of the site. ... 

Always Active

Necessary cookies are required to enable the basic features of this site, such as providing secure log-in or adjusting your consent preferences. These cookies do not store any personally identifiable data.

No cookies to display.

Functional cookies help perform certain functionalities like sharing the content of the website on social media platforms, collecting feedback, and other third-party features.

No cookies to display.

Analytical cookies are used to understand how visitors interact with the website. These cookies help provide information on metrics such as the number of visitors, bounce rate, traffic source, etc.

No cookies to display.

Performance cookies are used to understand and analyze the key performance indexes of the website which helps in delivering a better user experience for the visitors.

No cookies to display.

Advertisement cookies are used to provide visitors with customized advertisements based on the pages you visited previously and to analyze the effectiveness of the ad campaigns.

No cookies to display.

Swope Health

One-on-one with Swope Health: Johnny Waller Jr.

Swope Health announces a new edition of its podcast, One on One with Swope Health, featuring a second conversation with Johnny Waller Jr., a community activist.

Eric Wesson, founder and publisher of The Next Page KC, a newspaper focused on the Black community, hosts the show’s conversations with Kansas Citians about issues of importance to the community’s health and wellbeing.

In this episode, Wesson and Waller call out poverty and unemployment as the forces creating crime and violence in Kansas City.

Waller runs an expungement clinic, and he also serves on several charitable organizations’ boards in the area. He recently challenged the organizers of a public safety forum, frustrated by yet another symposium asking for public input to identify problems.

“We actually know what the problem is; we’ve been talking about the problem for 17, 20, 30, 40 years,” he said. “So why are we still talking about what the problems are?”

The problems, he said, are poverty, unemployment, and lack of education. Waller noted that 49 percent of the prison population comes from poverty or extreme poverty; there are households on the East side that make less than $16,000; unemployment is worse in Blue Hills than in Overland Park – all factors pointing to a poverty and unemployment problem. The by-product of this problem is crime and violence.

So how better to address the issues? “Let’s be intentional,” he said. “We seem not to do that.”

As an example, he noted that crime prevention organizations work in silos rather than in a collective effort. He suggested more accountability and more reporting on outcomes – and organizations that don’t produce might not see repeated funding.

The city, foundations, and other funding organizations should examine how they are awarding funding and measuring impact, Waller said. The community, he said, should also start asking for that since some of the funding comes from our tax dollars. Organizations who receive funding should take it upon themselves to measure their outcomes and explain what they’ve accomplished.

Another example: Waller noted that the state of Missouri spends more than $947 million annually on corrections, but just a tiny fraction on education for prisoners. “Do we really want to help people reintegrate successfully into society? What are we really trying to do?,” he asked.

He noted that the corrections industry is highly profitable, even though studies have found no correlation between correlation between mass incarceration and crime reduction. “Yet we invest in incarceration. For what? Why not spend on things that work – housing, education, mental health, substance abuse,” he said.  

“Do we really want to solve crime and violence? What are we doing?”

Listen to the conversation for more, including Waller’s proposed priorities for addressing the issues.

Share

Latest

categories

Newsletter

Fill your email below to subscribe to our newsletter