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Posted Jul 16, 2014, 6:47 PM
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Join Date: Aug 2002
Location: Toronto
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The Little-Studied Link Between So-Called 'Murder Capitals' and Population Decline
The Little-Studied Link Between So-Called 'Murder Capitals' and Population Decline
July 16th, 2014
By KRISTON CAPPS
Read More: http://www.citylab.com/crime/2014/07...ecline/374484/
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Crowning a "murder capital" puts eyeball-grabbing numbers before more meaningful statistics. It also elides the complex demographic factors shared by cities with high homicide rates, like Detroit and Baltimore but also St. Louis and Birmingham. One such factor: These cities tend to have shrinking populations.
- Consider the six U.S. cities that have earned the dubious distinction of official "murder capital" over the last 30 years. (Specifically, these are the cities with the highest per capita homicide rates since 1985.) Of these cities—Flint, Detroit, New Orleans, Birmingham, Richmond, and Washington, D.C.—four were undergoing severe depopulation. One is holding steady. Only the population of D.C. has truly grown.
- Of these six cities, D.C. is the only one whose murder rate has dropped significantly—well below 20 per 100,000 residents, in fact. In Washington, and to a lesser extent, in Richmond, the increase in population has corresponded roughly with a decrease in crime. Richmond's 20.2 murders per 100,000 residents in 2012 is well below that of Birmingham (31.4), New Orleans (53.2), Detroit (54.6), or poor Flint (62.0)—all cities suffering decline. The figures come from the FBI's crime data for 2012, and while caveats abound, the general trend is plain.
- Large cities with high homicide rates that are also losing ground demographically include St. Louis, Montgomery, and Jackson. (All of which have higher homicide rates than Chicago, by the way). There are a few suffering cities whose populations are growing, such as Memphis and Newark. But by and large, the cities with the highest homicide rates are shedding residents.
- Nationwide, violent crime has dropped in two waves. Violence fell just about everywhere in the 1990s, with rates leveling off in the 2000s. Then, around 2007, violent crime dropped again—hugely—in several cities, among them D.C., New York, Dallas, and San Diego. What's working for these cities? Immigration. It's immigration, desegregation, and gentrification.
- If you look at the economic status of immigrant communities, and this is true almost everywhere, the amount of violence is far lower than you would expect given the poverty there," he says. "Immigration and desegregation make poor places less violent. All of a sudden, they look really attractive to gentrifiers.
- Chicago's plenty diverse, but the city's homicide rate remains high (18.5 murders per 100,000 residents). As it happens, Chicago is a demographic outlier in a lot of ways. It's the only major U.S. city that lost residents between 2000 and 2010, and did it ever: nearly 7 percent of its population left. Still, foreign-born residents make up 21 percent of the population. But at the neighborhood level, Chicago communities are highly segregated. According to the Center for Healthcare Equity at Northwestern University, in 68 of 77 Chicago communities, "50 percent of the population identifies with a single racial/ethnic group."
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