Viewpoint: Can Boston’s inner city be
the next Innovation District?
Mark Culliton is CEO of College Bound Dorchester, a Boston-based nonprofit organization.
By Mark Culliton – CEO, College Bound Dorchester
Mar 19, 2018, 11:07am EDT Updated a day ago
What is innovation? It’s change, and we have created great change in Boston, yet it’s not yet happening everywhere. We are leaders in medicine, education and technology, but not in taking on some of the city’s toughest problems like systemic generational urban poverty.
So let’s change our perception of what innovation is and the see the possibility of what it can be. It isn’t restricted to areas like Boston’s Seaport District and Kendall Square in Cambridge. We are a city that is comfortable with doctors and business leaders and college freshmen dreaming up big ideas to end disease, to protect infrastructure and to transform transportation, so let’s look for innovation from the residents in all of Boston’s neighborhoods.
How do we tap into the innovation happening in our inner-city neighborhoods?
Let’s start by taking a closer look at the residents of these neighborhoods. The vast majority of people in these communities are striving, successful and working hard. But in Boston, 1 percent of youth are involved in street gangs, which translates to about 2,600 people. It’s not a big number. Yet they are responsible for at least 60 percent of the youth homicides in Boston.
What if we saw former gang members as startups? Like a solid startup, former gang members have unlimited growth potential. Their intelligence, charisma and skills have long made them leaders in their neighborhood. If we work with them to set high expectations, support them with peer mentors, and see them as the solution instead of the problem, those qualities can help them earn college degrees. They can thrive at well-paying jobs and encourage others from similar backgrounds to follow their path toward positive behavior.
No startup can thrive without financial investment. If you pay former gang members to pursue college degrees, they can focus on their studies, instead of where the money for their next rent check or utility bill is coming from. Paying them also gives them some skin in the game. They have something to lose if they don’t stick with their studies. More importantly it’s a show of faith (an investment) in their future.
Some may question giving money to former gang members. The reality is, taxpayers are already paying $100,000 per year for them to be behind bars, in court and using social services. That’s more than three times as much as the $32,000 it would cost for them pursue a college degree. Plus the $100,000 taxpayers are paying now offers little hope of them breaking the cycle of going from prison to the corner and back to prison again. If they earn degrees and get jobs, they are far less likely to go back to prison or to need our help moving forward. The financial investment made in them now will add to, not subtract from both the economy and society as a whole in the future.
Their success would also create a windfall for their neighborhood and the city. A 2012 study by the Center for American Progress found that reducing homicide rates by 10 percent would increase Boston metropolitan real estate values by 4.4 billion dollars.
Let’s dare to see former gang members as startups and inner city neighborhoods as innovation districts worthy of our investment and support.
Mark Culliton is CEO of College Bound Dorchester, a Boston-based nonprofit organization.