The United States witnessed an increase in murders by roughly 9% last year, and more than one-third of that increase came from neighborhoods in Chicago where just one-third of the city’s residents live, according to an analysis by The Wall Street Journal.
Chicago and Baltimore have seen violence rise to or near 1990s levels in the last two years, whereas other cities have seen a drop.
In contrast, areas in Los Angeles have experienced a dramatic drop in violence. Areas with 30% of the metropolis’s population are responsible for one-quarter of the 13% drop in the nation’s murder rate from 2002 to 2014. The nation’s capital has also seen a decrease of murder, which the authors attribute to gentrification and new gang initiation and community policing efforts.
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TheWSJ’s analysis shows that murders have been taking place in sections of Chicago or Baltimore where poverty has worsened, as well as areas with less of a police presence than in the past.
A George Mason University criminologist’s research, cited by TheWSJ’s authors, showed “that about 1% of city streets produce 25% of a city’s crime, and 5% of the streets produce half the crime.”
Chicago has seen an explosion in violence, with the city seeing 771 murders, an increase of 57% from 2015. The city has had more murders than New York and Los Angeles combined.
President Donald Trump has frequently criticized Chicago for its plague of violence, calling the city a “total disaster” in November 2017.
This report, by Joe Simonson, was cross posted by arrangement with the Daily Caller News Foundation.
