As if these times weren't already filled with enough white knuckle issues, from the cataclysmic Iraq to the flagging economy, the FBI tells us that violent crime continues to rise in the United States. Blood is trickling down the cracked sidewalks tucked between abandoned homes of our cities, those foundations of America. Noteworthy was the escalation in robbery, which exploded 7% in 2006, helped by a dramatic rise in street and bank robberies.
The question that bears down so often on the issue of security is "Are you safer now than you were on 9/11?" It is becoming cliché, not to mention hyperbolized. If we use 9/11 as a unit to measure the number killed in America's deadly streets, we had roughly 5 9/11's in 2006. Far more Americans are killed by fellow Americans than by any other group of people in any given year. Since 2001, 80,000 fewer people are alive because of violence in America.
In a tragic twist, America's cities are revsersing what progress they made in the 1990s. As non-metropolitan areas have disproportionately lower levels of crime compared to cities, it is no surprise then that the fastest rate of change was in cities like Philadelphia, Detroit, Washington, and so on. The two most cited categories of crime used in studies on income inequality are robbery and murder. Morgan Kelly's "Inequality and Crime" study in 2000 suggested a strong link between the violent crime rate of a community and its level of income inequality. Other inequality studies make this link, such as a 2004 study associating high levels of lead with aggression and mental disorders. Environmental racism policies in the 1980s and 1990s aiming to plant incineration plants and coal-fire plants behind the shadows of poor, neglected neighborhoods made a strong impact on keeping violent areas violent. If 2006 is any symptom of what has been happening, note that murder and robbery, indeed, were the two fastest growing crimes. The same was true in 2005 as well. The most chilling aspect may be considering the juxtaposition of luxury condominium developments and homelessness, displacing the poor via gentrification and alienating the middle-class due to joblessness and compromising affordability with desirability to live in an area. With the housing bust in full-swing, new condomiums lay vacant, failing to replace the previous lot of vacancy. In the meantime, a sign that times ahead are not going to get better stems from a decline in city revenues that were heavily dependent on the housing boom that went bust. The struggling school systems of our cities are now at risk of a fiscal avalanche that will inflict serious damage. This puts children most at risk of using crime to beat a winless game. This trend also comes prior to the foreclosure spike of late 2006 and 2007, which has the potential to lift violent crime rates up to 7%.
The details:
•Robbery surged 7.2%, compared with an earlier estimate of a rise of 6.0%. Robbery grew at its fastest pace in 2006 since 1990. This was easily the most disturbing part of the FBI report as it continues a steep ascent that began in 2005. Bank robbery and street robbery (or "mugging") grew the fastest, at nearly an 11% rate each.
•Over 17,000 people were murdered last year, the highest since 1997.
•Murder rose 1.8% in 2006
•Forcible rape fell 2.0%
•Aggravated assault fell 0.2%
•Burglary (a property crime) rose 1.3%
A. Robbery Rate (per 100,000)
Perhaps the only real bit of good news was that aggravated assault, only a step below murder in terms of seriousness, fell slightly. Otherwise, this was a pretty downbeat report.
B. Violent Crime Rate (per 100,000)
To reveal this clear trend between inequality and violent crime, take a look at graph C below. The measurement for inequality is the Gini index. As shown, inequality began to trend sharply upwards beginning in 1969 and continues its ascent. But after societal and economic ills reached a dramatic climax in the early 1990s, attention to reversing the course of crime came with tougher prison sentences and higher incarceration rates. This didn't work well in the long run, as crime stopped declining, indeed still at their highest levels since the 1970s, during a time when crime was ascending in decaying cities. The overall health of society by the time Bush II took office had generally remained constant, and in some cases worsened in a world where over 30 million were still living in poverty, manufacturing jobs continued to vanish, and the polarization of suburbs and cities worsened. The policies of the 1990s aiming to minimize poverty helped, but this was of course short-term and countered by the inevitables of globalization and income inequality.
Back in the 1980s (especially between 1985 and 1991), while gunshot wounds competed with other emergencies at terrifying rates in hospitals, the federal government initiated an intense anti-drug campaign. In general, the policies of Reagan and Bush I adopted a non-chalant attitude toward urban ills only until their fatal outcomes ensued. They figured it was the drug wave to blame and not merely a symptom of inequality and ignored poverty. The desperate motion to arrest drug dealers failed to acknowledge future drug dealers that were being created, many of whom were children. This was a time when children, so one social worker said, "[didn't] see a future" and so they found company in the material world and relating with the other alienated people of the city (and this is still the case in many areas.) Violent crime was only further aggravated, galvanizing a corybantic upsurge of violence. This is quite evident in the years 1986 and 1990. When you feel like you're "not gonna be around" on Earth for very long, it has its toll on who you are. The number of murder offenders who were children soared 18%. Children as victims of murder rose 6%.
C. Change in Violent Crime Rate and Gini Index since 1967
It would be very superficial to take this report for face value. As I mentioned, various cities have been mired in an unapologetic surge of violence, reaching levels not seen since the dark days of the 1980s and early 1990s. To demonstrate this, I've compiled a graph of some of the largest cities in America and the number of murders they experienced from 2001 to 2006. All cities saw increases in murder.
Philadelphia is an example of a city that is enduring this reversion to violence, after making a brief recovery.
Philadelphia Murders (2007 is as of 9/22)
2007 is shaping up to be Philadelphia's worst year since 1996, now that murders per day continue to rise.
For millions living in America, they are not safer now than they were before 9/11.