The Final Call

Hard times, violent crime? Offenses are up, says report

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St. Louis, Mo., took over the top spot as America's “most violent city” in 2009.

According to the Morgan Quitno Press, a private research and publishing company based in Lawrence, Kan., the Midwestern urban center leads in violent crime. For the past several years , the company has released “City Crime Rankings” to the media. The publishing house also compiles books with statistics on overall crime rates, health care and education.

The report analyzes crime data provided by the Federal Bureau of Investigation. Though the FBI has cautioned against using its data to rank cities, news outlets often quote FBI findings in their coverage of national crime trends, despite objections from some criminologists who question the FBI's methodology used to rank cities.

St. Louis was followed by Camden, N.J., with Michigan cities Detroit and Flint coming next and California cities Compton and Oakland gaining the dubious distinction of rounding out the top six cities for violent crime.

A spokesperson for the mayor of St. Louis told the media the city's crime rate was down 7.2 percent. But the FBI reported the murder rate in St. Louis jumped 16 percent, compared to the national murder rate increase of four percent.

In a regional breakdown, the FBI reported a 5.7 percent rise in violent crime in 12 Midwestern states, which was three times higher than other regions.

The numbers also reignited debate about the cause of violent crime. The study ranked cities based on more than just violent crime rates. It considered crimes like rape and burglary which are measured separately and compared the findings to national averages, with crime rankings weighted based on danger to people.

There was argument about whether the crime increase was connected to the economic downturn.

The FBI reported that 15 percent of Americans are officially poor, but violent crime/property crime such as murder, carjacking and purse-snatching declined in 2009. Conservative think tanks, like the Manhattan Institute, argue that there is enough evidence to prove no correlation or a very small correlation between poverty and crime statistics.

Conservative critics say sociologists saw lawlessness as a form of social criticism and supported the 1960s “Great Society” welfare programs and social justice work as ways to reduce crime—but neither worked.

But some Stop The Violence advocates are calling for reinvestment in crime prevention efforts as a means to reach increasing numbers of at risk youth.

“Inner city crime? There's a litany of reasons for it,” argued Bashir Akinyele, a Newark public school teacher, a New Black Panther Party member and an organizer for the Newark Anti-Violence Coalition, which for the past 70 weeks has held street demonstrations.

“For sure poverty is one of the causes; as is joblessness and self-hatred, which was created out of our legacy of slavery,” Mr. Akinyele told The Final Call. Mr. Akinyele argued widespread discussions about Black self-hatred have been missing “since the fall of the Black liberation movement.”

Politicians no longer talk about dealing with urban issues such as an educational system that does not teach the “cultural history of Blacks, Latinos, Native Americans and other people of color” to instill a sense of pride and purpose, he said.

Rev. Bob Moore, of the Princeton, N.J.-based Coalition for Peace Action, said that there must be a more concentrated effort in New Jersey to do away with guns.

“We need a national solution to this problem,” he told The Final Call.

“While we understand that crime is definitely tied to poverty, hopelessness and racism, we are fighting to stop the flow of guns into our state,” Rev. Moore said. “We wish we could address the whole picture, but for now our priority is to stop the easy access to guns.”

Zaki Baruti of the Universal African Peoples Organization in St. Louis agreed with Mr. Akinyele's analysis: What is lacking in Black communities is the “teaching of the works of our past heroes,” he said.

“The fact that some conservative think tanks believe there is no correlation between poverty and crime is absurd and insane,” said Mr. Baruti.

“There is a direct correlation between the high rate of unemployment in Black communities—in some places at 40 percent—and the projection of consumerism, the projection of goods, that drives our youth to commit crimes,” Mr. Baruti said.

St. Louis is not by itself, he warned. “The statistics should sound an alarm across the country in all Black communities. We must come together to address the issues in our communities. Organizations must try to ‘adopt a block' to spread the message of peace,” Mr. Baruti said.

Joe E. Benton, president of the National Association of Black Social Workers, in an email message to The Final Call stressed the need to understand the meaning of crime statistics.

“Crime statistics in the U.S. are sometimes a little misleading due to what is defined as crime; when talking about violent crimes, we are talking about the smallest potion of crime statistics,” Mr. Benton wrote.

“In most areas, violent crimes amount to three to five percent of all crimes committed. In a country known for high levels of mental and emotional illness, coupled with dependent personalities (alcohol and drug abuse) and easy access to firearms, it is no wonder our ratios are high,” said Mr. Benton.

Annually more people are harmed by defective products rushed to market by “greedy industrialists than die or are harmed by criminals,” he argued.

“Finally there is a glaring disproportionate response to Blacks, Latinos and the poor by the juvenile criminal justice systems. These crimes committed mostly by these groups tend to be prosecuted, convicted and confined the most. However, because they are processed through the system, does not mean they commit the most violent crimes,” Mr. Benton noted.

White men are seven times more likely to use abuse and distribute drugs, than Black men; yet Black men are three times more likely to go to prison, he said. “Somewhere in the system, there is an escape route not accessible to Black men,” he said.