Murders Are Rising the Most in a Few Isolated Precincts of Major Cities

Jon Hilsenrath and Joe Barrett have this article in WSJ, with the subhead “A handful of neighborhoods with histories of violence are the primary source of a recent surge in killings in Chicago, New York and elsewhere.”

As always with crime, there are multiple factors, but what factors are specific to the neighborhoods with the extreme murder rates?

“Researchers have shown the economic and social fabric of neighborhoods is central to crime.” Crime creates a vicious cycle on both the economic and social fronts. When crime is high, businesses leave, taking jobs with them. Law-abiding people who can afford to do so also leave, weakening the social checks against criminality and lesser forms of misbehavior.

One constant among all the factors is that the policies favored by the soft-on-crime crowd will exacerbate the problems across the board. More criminals on the street committing more crimes will hasten the exit of businesses and of people with pro-social attitudes. The criminals will furnish the wrong kinds of role models to young people in the neighborhood. Tolerance of street drugs will mean greater availability and more destroyed lives.

If a malevolent person deliberately set out to make life hellish for the good people who can’t escape these neighborhoods, he could scarcely do better than the “woke” agenda. Yet the people pushing it claim to care about the mostly poor and mostly minority people who live there. They accuse those who favor policies that will actually help of being racist.

The crime drop of the 1990’s and 2000’s made life better for law-abiding people in America’s poorest urban neighborhoods. Effective law enforcement was a substantial part of that. Remove it, and things go downhill in a hurry.