Thursday, April 14, 2022
PMT: Death in a red state
If your only source of news is a right-wing outlet, you might be convinced that the most dangerous places in the United States are cities like San Francisco or New York, but that is just not true-- and it's not even close. Violent crime rates in cities like Memphis, Indianapolis, and St. Louis are far higher.
Consistent with recent history, the most dangerous states to be in are in the deep south-- Louisiana, Mississippi, Arkansas, and Alabama, at least in terms of homicide per capita (which is the measure that really matters if you care about personal safety. The map above reflects CDC data from 2020 for homicides.
What really correlates with homicide-- whether we are looking at cities, states, or within a political entity right down to neighborhoods-- is poverty. Regardless of race, it is poor people who most often end up the victims of (and perpetrators of) violent crime.
Fix poverty, and you go a long way to fixing violent crime. Nearly all of us who work in the field know this.
But you don't hear much talk about that when we talk about violent crime.
Of course, the other thing that would help, anyplace, would be solving more homicides. Over time, even with the advantage of DNA and increased budgets, police have gotten worse at that:
