News > Politics > Crime is Back

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WEDNESDAY DECEMBER 20 2006 9:00 PM

Crime is Back

Submitted by legionnaire

Tags: crime, cities, increase

The late 1990s saw the beginning of a reversal of a trend that had been obsessing the media for years. Violent crime started to decrease. The trend continued unabated until last year. Despite the wealth of highly publicized school shootings or , violent crime took a nose dive that hasn't stopped. Until now, at least in one area. New statistics show that robberies are up almost 10% from 2005, the first time there has been an increase since 1991, and some are blaming poverty as the cause.

Possible explanations abound for the soaring robbery rate - 9.7 percent nationwide in the first half of 2006, according to federal crime statistics released this week. But a lead suspect in that troubling trend, say some criminologists, is added economic stress.

Small- to medium-size cities are the ones that saw the largest spikes in reported violent crime, especially robbery. In some of those, the poverty rate has also been climbing faster than the national average.

"It strikes me that many of the cities that have experienced increases in poverty and child poverty [in recent years] are the very same places experiencing increases in robbery right now," says Richard Rosenfeld, a criminologist at the University of Missouri.

The Rust Belt has seen large rises in poverty rates between 1999 and 2005, according to a report this month by the Brookings Institution in Washington - and many of the region's cities turn out to have seen sharp increases in robberies this year. In Lansing, Mich., reported robberies rose 34 percent through June 2006, after its poverty rate climbed 7.5 percentage points over the previous six years. In Cleveland, the robbery rate rose 13.1 percent, and the incidence of poverty went up 6.1 points. In Rochester, N.Y.: robbery is up 49.8 percent, and poverty 4.1 points.

But many cities show no such correlation, meaning the root of the problem is more complex than simple economics. In the West, for instance, some places report flat poverty rates and more robberies.

It's too early to pinpoint the causes of the jump in violent crime, caution Mr. Rosenfeld and others. The FBI report this week showed violent crime overall climbing for the second straight year, after more than a decade of declines.

Economist Steven Levitt posited that the decreasing crime trend was a result of legalized abortion eliminating future criminals. If his theory is true then 2005 marked 19 years since the establishment of Operation Rescue, one of the largest and most motivated anti-abortion groups in the US, and the real mobilization of the anti-abortion movement. Individuals aged 18-24 are most likely to commit violent crimes and be arrested, so it's an interesting correlation, though not definitely causative, to suggest that decreasing the abortion rate caused an increase in the birth of criminals. Many believe that poverty is a root cause of violent crime, but the recession in the early part of this decade did not produce a concomitant increase in criminal behavior, at least not until 2005, and as the article points out, the rash of increases in robberies occurred in some areas where no discernible changes in the poverty level had been observed. PBS's Frontline had an expose on the Methamphetamine "epidemic," suggesting that increases in robbery rates are related to use of the drug. But while a quick look at estimates of meth usage might explain changes in crime patterns in Western states, great lakes states like Michigan have negligible concentrations of methamphetamine users while still seeing a large increase in robberies.

Likely the answer isn't "yes" to any of those single possibilities being a global cause of the increasing crime rate, but rather yes to all of them contributing in various fashions. Unfortunately politicians won't enjoy having to confront this problem from multiple angles, but it's likely that will be the only way it can be fixed.

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Comments

RandomNerd

I'm lost

January 2005

DEC 20, 2006 09:12 PM

Hmph. Who hasn't wanted to rob a bank after looking at their credit card statement?

Pirate_Romeo

Oklahoma City, OK

November 2004

DEC 20, 2006 09:14 PM

Pshaw. Everybody knows all those uber-violent video games are to blame.

Vestril

Coronado, CA

February 2003

DEC 20, 2006 09:18 PM

arariel said:
Pshaw. Everybody knows all those uber-violent video games are to blame.

Exactly, so don't fuck with gamers, or we'll bust caps in your asses. You SOBs want to take our games away? Try it--we'll come for you. Right after this turn...