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Sender:	Social Determinants of Health <[log in to unmask]>
Subject:	NYT: Violent Crime Is Up
From:	Dennis Raphael <[log in to unmask]>
Date:	Mon, 12 Jun 2006 19:22:09 -0400
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Violent Crime Is Up for First Time in 4 Years

By MARIA NEWMAN
Published: June 12, 2006
Violent crime increased in the United States for the first time in four
years, up 2.5 percent in 2005 from the year before, with the biggest
increases in murder coming in medium-size cities and in the Midwest.

A preliminary 2005 crime report issued by the Federal Bureau of
Investigation shows that the total number of murders in the country went up
4.8 percent from the year before. St. Louis, Houston, Philadelphia and
Milwaukee saw an increase in murders, while cities like New York, Los
Angeles and Miami saw a drop in the total number of murders.

In the violent crime category, only rape saw a decrease, falling by 1.9
percent. Robberies increased overall by 4.5 percent.

Cities with populations of more than 500,000 saw the biggest rise in
violent crime, with an increase of 8.3 percent. In the Midwest, violent
crimes increased by 5.7 percent.

The data released today are considered preliminary until the final
statistics are issued in October.

The increases in violent crime overall come after years of crime reduction
efforts all over the country during the 1990's that are credited with
lowering crime rates almost everywhere, especially in the larger urban
areas. Law enforcement officials and other experts on crime cautioned that
this latest report does not necessarily mean crime will start to run
rampant again.

James Alan Fox, a professor of criminal justice at Northeastern University,
said that after the dramatic decreases during the 1990's, the crime rate
overall from 2000 to 2004 was "essentially flat."

"We squeezed all the air out of the balloon after having seven good years
of crime decline," he said. "That ended when the 1990's ended. Now the
challenge isn't so much to make the crime rate go down more, because that's
not necessarily realistic, but the challenge is to make sure that the small
blip doesn't become a big one."

He pointed out that some of the cities where murders went up in 2005 have
seen small fluctuations in recent years.

Houston, for example, which reported 334 murders for 2005, had 272 in 2004
and 278 the year before.

In Memphis, there were 136 murders in 2005, 107 in 2004 and 126 in 2003.

"I don't think we'd be too obsessed with the day-to-day changes in the
stock market," he said.

So while he said this is not necessarily the beginning of a trend upwards
for everyone, "the potential does exist."

The annual F.B.I. report is drawn from reports gathered by state and local
law enforcement agencies around the country. They measures four violent
offenses (murder, rape, robbery and aggravated assault) and four property
crimes (burglary, larceny, auto theft and arson). It does not measure drug
crimes.

The report showed that cities with populations from 100,000 to 249,999 had
the greatest increase in the number of murders, up 12.5 percent. Cities
with 500,000 to 999,999 inhabitants experienced the greatest increases in
both robbery, 9.9 percent, and aggravated assault, 8.5 percent. The number
of offenses of forcible rape decreased in all city population groups except
in those cities with under 10,000 in population, where the number of
forcible rapes was up 1.5 percent from the 2004 level.

Alfred Blumstein, a criminologist at Carnegie Mellon University in
Pittsburgh, said an increase in crime in the last couple of years in some
places could be the result of police efforts being diverted to fighting
terrorism, budget cuts that have reduced social services and prisons, and
fewer job opportunities for young people in poorer communities.

"I want to be careful to not overstate a one-year trend as the start of
something much bigger, because it could well go in the other direction next
year," he said. "In places that had a good rise in crime, the chances are
good that they could see a good fall next year as they pay more attention
to the issue."