One of the late President Reagan’s famous wisecracks was that when your neighbor is out of a job, it’s a recession and when you’re out of a job, it’s a depression. I think that something similar can be said about crime waves. That’s what occurred to me when I read Arthur Rizer’s claim at R Street:
Is the increase of a few violent crime categories in a few neighborhoods of a few cities tragic? Yes. Is it a crime wave? No.
My researches tell me that Mr. Rizer lives in suburban Washington, DC. I have little doubt that in his in all likelihood lily-white neighborhood there is little crime. However, in my more diverse neighborhood on the Northwest side of Chicago, people are being robbed at gunpoint within blocks of where I’m sitting for the first time in living memory. Houses in my neighborhood are being broken into in broad daylight. And the city of Chicago’s homicide rate is the highest it’s been in a generation.
I think the FBI’s annual crime report tells a different story than the one that Mr. Rizer sees. I think the story is that the long drop in urban crime rates has ended, that urban crime rates are now rising, and that, rather than just rising in a few cities, the rate of violent crime is rising in most large cities. What Mr. Rizer is seeing is that an increasing percentage of Americans are living in the suburbs (and even more want to).
The variant of Reagan’s wisecrack with respect to crime might be that, when there’s more crime in the city where you live, there’s a crime wave and when it’s in your neighborhood, it’s a crisis.
“While that was an increase from 2014 figures, the 2015 violent crime total was 0.7 percent lower than the 2011 level and 16.5 percent below the 2006 level.”
Steve