There should be little doubt in anyone’s mind that Wal-Mart is a net positive for communities, offering valuable goods and services at low prices. Unfortunately, those progressive socialist democrats who desperately want to unionize Wal-Mart to bolster the unions who exclusively support progressive socialist democrat causes, apparently will do anything in their power to demonize those big-box stores that resist unions. Even though they bring jobs and tax revenues to disadvantaged areas along with increasing the availability of lower cost goods and services to the community.

In many cases, progressive socialist democrats and their cadre of race-baiters and poverty primps organize and agitate against these non-union entities. Read the Oregon kerfuffle over Trader Joe’s: OREGON: COMMUNITY LAID LOW BY POVERTY PIMPS AND RACE-BAITERS. 

Now comes the worthless pseudo-scientific studies claiming that Wal-Mart can be related to criminal activities … [My comments in blue italic]

Study Shows Drop in Crime Rates Are Less Where Wal-Mart Builds

Communities across the United States experienced an unprecedented decline in crime in the 1990s. But for counties where Wal-Mart built stores, the decline wasn’t nearly as dramatic.

“The crime decline was stunted in counties where Wal-Mart expanded in the 1990s,” says Scott Wolfe, assistant professor of criminology and criminal justice at the University of South Carolina and lead author of a new study. “If the corporation built a new store, there were 17 additional property crimes and 2 additional violent crimes for every 10,000 persons in a county.”

[The geographical size of a county and the number of factors that could influence increased crime makes this study virtually worthless. Also, considering that the store may attract a large traffic component to the area surrounding the store is also a factor. Crime is committed by individuals and not stores. This is the same argument that can be used to refute most gun control studies: people use guns in criminal activities. And, like the gun control argument, these so-called scientific studies rarely investigate the overwhelming good of box stores or the increased ability for individuals to protect themselves against crazies and criminals.]

The study, titled “Rolling back prices and raising crime rates? The Wal-Mart effect on crime in the United States,” released last month in the British Journal of Criminology, was co-authored with David Pyrooz, assistant professor of criminal justice and criminology at Sam Houston State University.

[I think a more compelling study regarding overall crime in the inner cities and its correlation with the corruption of the progressive socialist democrats who govern these areas would be more useful than denigrating non-unionized large-scale stores.]

Wolfe says the commonly known “Wal-Mart effect” is the company’s overwhelming influence on numerous economic and social factors in communities, including jobs, poverty rates and retail prices.

[Would the community be better off without a Wal-Mart is a very real issue. Are the residents more or less economically disadvantaged by higher prices, fewer selections, and less uniformity of access.]

The study was not intended to criticize Wal-Mart, he says. Instead, it attempted to answer the unexplored question of whether Wal-Mart could equate with either more or less crime.

[Yeah right! It just happens to be that this study attacks a non-union operation and involves a core constituency of progressive socialist democrats.] 

“There have been dozens of studies on the ‘Wal-Mart effect’ showing the company impacts numerous outcomes closely related to crime. Our objective was to determine if the Wal-Mart effect extended to understanding crime rates during arguably one of the most pivotal historical periods in the study of crime,” Wolfe says.

Wolfe and Pyrooz based the study on 3,109 U.S. counties. They focused on Wal-Mart’s expansion in the 1990s, a time of dynamic growth for the company and falling crime rates nationally. During that decade Wal-Mart expanded in 767 of those counties.

“There are reasons why Wal-Mart ranks among the most successful commercial enterprises in U.S. history,” Wolfe says. “They are very strategic about where they build stores.”

The researchers matched the counties where Wal-Mart expanded with counties similar in where Wal-Mart avoided. They tracked the crime rates in those counties over time.

“There is something unique about the counties that Wal-Mart selects,” Wolfe says. “Wal-Mart tended to expand in counties with higher than average crime rates. These counties were more likely see Wal-Mart build even after accounting for crime-related predicators, such as poverty, unemployment, immigration, population structure and residential turnover.

[Perhaps because Wal-Mart’s demographic is not the affluent shopper buying gourmet products at upscale shops, but the mass audience found in the lower and middle class. Hence, the stores are located in proximity to the target audience.]

The researchers speculate that much of this relationship occurred because Wal-Mart finds better success building in communities that are less likely to protest the company’s arrival.

“Counties with more social capital—citizens able and willing to speak up about the best interests of the community—tend to have lower crime rates,” Pyrooz says. “Counties with more crime may have less social capital and, therefore, less ability to prevent Wal-Mart from building.”

[This is demonstrably untrue if you consider that the inner cities – with their vocal race-baiters and poverty-pimps – are vocal, but ignored by the progressive socialist democrats who mostly govern these areas for their own self-serving benefit. As for not building in so-called protest areas – who needs the added expenses of legal and political donations when other, and more willing, target areas can be found. Sometimes the political cost is just too high to continue to build where you are not wanted by the vocal race-baiters and poverty pimps.]

Once Wal-Mart counties were matched with non-Wal-Mart counties based on crime rates and economic and demographic factors, the researchers found that the retailer’s growth stunted what otherwise could have been greater drops in crime.

Wolfe and Pyrooz say the reason why Wal-Mart lessens a decline in crime is a complex question not easily answered by data typically available. Their findings didn’t reveal that Wal-Mart growth corresponded with increases in poverty, economic disadvantage or other factors associated with crime.

“More research is needed to uncover why the Wal-Mart effect extends to crime,” Wolfe says. “Does it reduce community social cohesion or simply increase opportunities for theft and other crimes in specific store locations that are great enough to influence county crime rates? These are questions that remain.”

[Why am I not surprised that the real conclusion of the study is that more money is needed for more studies? Perhaps, funded by the very corporation that is being used in an unfair and unjust manner?]

Wolfe says it is important to note that study stresses that Wal-Mart does not have a detrimental impact on all counties. In fact, Wal-Mart growth can be beneficial in some communities, particularly those in economic distress, he says. “The problem, however, is that Wal-Mart is less likely to grow in communities with depressed economic conditions,” Wolfe says.

Source: Study Shows Drop in Crime Rates Are Less Where Wal-Mart Builds

This appears to be more of the disparate impact bullshit, where statistics are used to indicate disadvantage to the poor and minority communities without ever digging deeper into the true facts of individual cases. In essence, forcing our legal system topsy turvy – where companies must prove themselves innocent rather than the state prove them guilty. In many instances, this type of statistical analysis is little more than support for a shake-down by race-baiters and poverty pimps.

The statistics in this report are meaningless in terms of actionable intelligence. Does anyone want to believe that Wal-Mart should be denied the right to built a store in an area because the crime rate might increase? Is anyone that idiotic to believe that a correlation cannot be found between a neighborhood liquor store and the crime rate? Or a correlation cannot be found linking gangs to crime? I find this report to be totally and completely worthless. Another waste of time, effort, and money on something that does not add to the sum total of man’s knowledge and understanding of their community dynamics.

Bottom line …

This is the type of worthless study that proves nothing other than to provide fodder for the “publish or perish” academics that want to justify their role in the educational process.

Consider for a moment, the number of ordinary law-abiding residents that find value in a Wal-Mart. These individuals, not measured in this study, far outweigh the number of individuals disadvantaged by crime – mostly gang-related and drug-related activities. Might not a properly controlled study show that criminal activity rises in times of greater unemployment, especially in the inner cities that can overwhelmingly benefit from a Wal-Mart?

Perhaps one should conduct a study showing the impact of unionized Wal-Mart on a county? Where rising costs of salaries and benefits are not met by increases in productivity? Where union work rules demand that two or more people perform a job that can be performed by a single person – with financial penalties and an onerous grievance process involved? Or, where the crime rate goes up in union-related areas of shipping, distribution, and other “hard to fire” areas?

Wal-Mart is not the enemy. The enemy is the progressive socialist democrats, their special interest unions, and the progressive academics who try to bend science and statistics into promoting a socialist political agenda. In the final analysis, is your community better off by removing corrupt progressive socialist democrats or Wal-Mart? I say remove the progressive socialist democrats and leave me alone to shop in peace at my local Wal-Mart.

-- steve