The Atlantic: Falling crime rates have been one of the great American successstories of the past 15 years. New York and Los Angeles, once the twincapitals of violent crime, have calmed down significantly, as have mostother big cities. Criminologists still debate why: the crack warpetered out, new policing tactics worked, the economy improved for along spell. Whatever the alchemy, crime in New York, for instance, isnow so low that local prison guards are worried about unemployment.
Lately, though, a new and unexpected pattern has emerged, takingcriminologists by surprise. While crime rates in large cities stayedflat, homicide rates in many midsize cities (with populations ofbetween 500,000 and 1 million) began increasing, sometimes by as muchas 20percent a year. In 2006, the Police Executive Research Forum, anational police group surveying cities from coast to coast, concludedin a report called “A Gathering Storm” that this might represent “thefront end … of an epidemic of violence not seen for years.” The leadersof the group, which is made up of police chiefs and sheriffs, theorizedabout what might be spurring the latest crime wave: the spread ofgangs, the masses of offenders coming out of prison, methamphetamines.But mostly they puzzled over the bleak new landscape. According to FBIdata, America’s most dangerous spots are now places where MartinScorsese would never think of staging a shoot-out—Florence, SouthCarolina; Charlotte-Mecklenburg, North Carolina; Kansas City, Missouri;Reading, Pennsylvania; Orlando, Florida; Memphis, Tennessee.
Read the full article here. [Brooks Holland]