Concern About Crime Is Not Media Hype

Today is Election Day in Chicago. We will elect the next mayor, choosing between Paul Vallas and Brandon Johnson.

The main topic of the election has been crime. Some, particularly those who don’t live here, are saying that the concern about crime is all because of media hype. I’m going to suggest some reasons they are wrong. My focus will be on Chicago.

1. In the summer of 2020 downtown Chicago was sacked for the first time in the city’s history. That didn’t happen in the aftermath of the Chicago Fire 150 years ago. It didn’t happen during the Democratic Convention riot of 1968. Systematic looting of downtown stores has continued since then with some stores having been looted multiple times.
2. Since Mayor Lightfoot was elected the number of homicides in Chicago has been worse than at any time in 30 years.
3. The crime isn’t isolated to downtown or to the South Side. Here in my Northwest Side neighborhood there have been three carjackings at gunpoint over the last couple of months within two blocks of where I’m sitting. That has never happened before.
4. On a near nightly basis kids are racing each other at high speed on Peterson Avenue a half block north of me, firing guns at each other. That has never happened before. That’s why there are gunshot microphones everywhere.
5. In trendy Lincoln Park gangs of young men have been riding up and down the streets, conducting carjackings and robbing people of their possessions. That has never happened before.
6. In the last two weeks alone ten 7-Eleven stores on the North and West sides have been robbed at gunpoint. That kind of spree has never happened before.

Yesterday in comments this post at Brookings by Hanna Love and Tracy Hadden Loh was brought to my attention. The article’s focus is on downtown business districts. If only the increase in crime were limited to the downtown business areas! There are lots of statistics in the piece but this passage caught my eye:

People deserve to feel—and actually be—safe regardless of where they live and work. Downtowns have experienced significant disruptions since the pandemic that have made workers, visitors, and residents feel uneasy. In particular, our interviews revealed that increased visibility of public drug use, high-profile violent crimes, vacant storefronts, emptier streets, and harassment are making residents feel as though their city is in disarray, and that the government isn’t doing much about it.

Pointing to the mismatch between where crime predominantly clusters and residents’ perceptions is not designed to delegitimize their concerns or deny the impact that crime in other parts of the city can have on perceptions of downtown. Rather, it is to demonstrate that the spatial distribution of crime has real implications for how local leaders can address it.

They’re oversimplifying. Focusing on the downtown shopping areas, at least in Chicago, is misdirection.

They propose several measures for improving the situation. Conspicuously absent from their list is enforcing the law. As long as crime is a viable way of making cash with entry requirements that any high school dropout can meet, the problems presented by crime will continue to fester.