{"id":80345,"date":"2022-04-23T14:07:21","date_gmt":"2022-04-23T19:07:21","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/milesfortis.com\/?p=80345"},"modified":"2022-04-23T14:08:44","modified_gmt":"2022-04-23T19:08:44","slug":"80345","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/milesfortis.com\/?p=80345","title":{"rendered":""},"content":{"rendered":"

Duh.. Violent crime increasing the most in high crime neighborhoods<\/p>\n

\n

Mapping gun violence: A closer look at the intersection between place and gun homicides in four cities<\/a><\/p>\n

The\u202f<\/span>rise in gun homicides<\/span><\/a>\u202fin the United States is having reverberating political ramifications at the\u00a0<\/span>federal<\/span><\/a>,\u00a0<\/span>state<\/span><\/a>, and\u00a0<\/span>local<\/span><\/a>\u00a0levels, with many elected officials falling back into \u201ctough on crime\u201d policies to curb the violence. This punitive turn can be seen in President Joe Biden\u2019s proposed federal budget, in which\u00a0<\/span>he calls for<\/span><\/a>\u00a0\u201cmore police officers on the beat\u201d and allocates an additional $30 billion\u202ffor state and local governments to support law enforcement. Many local leaders are\u00a0<\/span>mirroring this approach<\/span><\/a>, centering their gun violence prevention strategies on increasing funding for police and rolling back criminal justice reforms.\u00a0<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

What these enforcement-based approaches fail to recognize is that the recent rise in homicides is\u00a0<\/span>more nuanced<\/span><\/a>\u00a0than it appears. Rather than a widespread dispersal of gun violence within cities, the increases in gun homicides are largely concentrated in disinvested and structurally disadvantaged neighborhoods\u202fthat had high rates of gun violence to begin with.<\/strong> This geographic concentration is\u00a0<\/span>a persistent challenge<\/span><\/a>, not a new one\u2014and it requires targeted solutions to improve outcomes in disinvested places rather than reverting to the old \u201ctough on crime\u201d playbook.<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

This piece takes a deeper look at patterns of gun violence in four cities\u2014Chicago, Nashville, Kansas City, Mo. and Baltimore\u2014and finds that each city\u2019s gun homicide increases were driven predominantly by increases in neighborhoods where gun violence has long been a persistent fixture of daily life,<\/strong> alongside systemic disinvestment, segregation, and economic inequality. These patterns point to the longer-term need to address the place-based factors that influence violence and invest in the critical community infrastructure that has not only been proven to make communities safer, but can also help them thrive.<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n


\nBetween 2019 and 2020, a very specific phenomenon occurred. While homicides <\/span>rose nearly 30%<\/span><\/a>\u00a0(driven by gun homicides), overall crime rates declined by 5%. This divergence matters, as\u00a0<\/span>experts contend<\/span><\/a>, because homicides and crime\u00a0<\/span>usually rise or decline together<\/span><\/a>\u00a0and, importantly, homicides require different kinds of interventions than other crimes. It is therefore not only\u00a0<\/span>incorrect<\/span><\/a>\u00a0to say we\u2019re in a \u201ccrime wave,\u201d but it also obscures the specific challenge at hand: gun homicides.\u00a0\u00a0<\/span>\u00a0<\/span>National data doesn\u2019t tell the full story about the increase in gun homicides<\/span><\/b>\u00a0<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Moreover, unlike the last major uptick of homicides\u00a0<\/span>in 2015<\/span><\/a>\u00a0(which was\u00a0<\/span>heavily concentrated<\/span><\/a>\u00a0in a small set of big cities, including Baltimore, Chicago, and Washington, D.C.), this rise is more widespread, affecting small and large cities and\u00a0<\/span>blue and red cities and states<\/span><\/a>\u00a0alike. The seemingly dispersed nature of this rise is fueling fear nationwide, with as many as\u00a0<\/span>eight in 10 Americans<\/span><\/a>\u00a0saying crime is a major problem, ranking it ahead of health care and poverty.\u00a0<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

To better understand patterns of rising gun homicides and who this rise primarily impacts, as well as to suggest potential solutions, we selected four cities with varying population sizes, demographics, and murder rates. We then plotted the locations of all gun homicides on a map showing the percentage of households in poverty at the block group level, using data from the 2019 American Community Survey five-year estimates.<\/span>\u00a0<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Recent increases in gun homicides are highly localized in disinvested areas\u2014as are their cumulative impacts<\/span><\/b>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

When we looked more granularly at gun homicides within these cities,\u00a0<\/span>we found that the burden of gun violence is unequally shared. Some communities are relatively untouched, while others live under the threat of gun violence on a regular basis, alongside systemic disinvestment, segregation, and economic inequity. Notably, poverty alone was not a predictive factor for high rates of gun homicides, but rather the intersection between poverty,\u00a0<\/span>racial segregation<\/span><\/a>, and\u00a0<\/span>systemic disinvestment<\/span><\/a>.<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

In Chicago, for instance, gun homicides in 2019 and 2020 were concentrated in neighborhoods far from the city center that have long suffered from severe disinvestment as a result of white flight, and are now centers of concentrated poverty with predominantly Black residents. As Figure 1 shows, these include neighborhoods in the West Side (including Humboldt Park, Austin, West and East Garfield Park, and North Lawndale areas) along with the South and Southwest Sides. So as Chicago\u2019s murder rate increased by 53% from 2019 to 2020 (from 18.9 homicides per 100,000 residents to 28.9), residents in disinvested areas bore the brunt of this burden, while more affluent areas had\u00a0<\/span>near-record low levels of murder<\/span><\/a>.\u00a0<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

\"figure<\/p>\n

Similar trends emerged in Kansas City, which saw its murder rate increase 16% from 2019 to 2020. Our analysis (Figure 2) found that in both years, gun homicides were concentrated in neighborhoods with high levels of concentrated poverty and\u00a0<\/span>a history of racist housing policies<\/span><\/a>\u00a0just east of downtown (Parkview and Lykins), along with a strip of relatively high-poverty neighborhoods (particularly Oak Park and Swope Park) along the US-71 freeway south of downtown.<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

A\u00a0<\/span>local analysis by the Missouri Independent<\/span><\/a>\u00a0found a correlation between high rates of gun violence in these neighborhoods and higher than average eviction rates, which they contend contributed to the increase in murder rates, alongside economic injustice and lack of access to critical community amenities such as food and quality education. As in Chicago, Kansas City had a high murder rate in 2020\u201430.9 homicides per 100,000 residents\u2014but more affluent areas within the city were largely untouched by gun homicides.\u00a0<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

\"figure<\/p>\n

Baltimore, a city with historically high rates of gun violence, saw its murder rate decline by 3% between 2019 and 2020, from 58.8 homicides per 100,000 residents to 57.3. It was\u00a0<\/span>one of 10 majority-Black cities<\/span><\/a>\u00a0that saw violent crime decline during that period. Even with this decline, however, the pattern of gun violence concentrating in historically disinvested communities holds.<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

As Figure 3 reveals, homicides in both years were most concentrated on the city\u2019s West Side, along the Fulton Avenue corridor\u2014one of the city\u2019s poorest areas, which has been impacted by\u00a0<\/span>segregation and systemic disinvestment<\/span><\/a>. Rates were also generally high in other pockets of poverty, such as north of Patterson Park on the East Side, Central Park Heights on the West Side, and the Winston-Govans neighborhood on the city\u2019s northern edge. These areas map on to the city\u2019s well-known\u00a0<\/span>\u201cBlack Butterfly\u201d<\/span><\/a>\u00a0of low-income, highly segregated majority-Black neighborhoods on the East and West sides.<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

\"figure<\/p>\n

Nashville saw a 36% increase in its murder rate, from 12.5 homicides per 100,000 residents in 2019 to 16.5 in 2020. Our analysis (Figure 4) found that the highest concentrations of gun violence in both years were in high-poverty areas just outside the city\u2019s downtown core: North Nashville and the East Bank, which was the heart of Black Nashville before urban renewal and freeway construction destroyed it.\u202fIn contrast to these highly segregated neighborhoods with generational poverty, gun homicides are not elevated in the Nolensville Pike neighborhood\u2014which has a high poverty rate but much more economic and racial diversity, with a large population of middle-class immigrants. These trends reflect the enduring relationship between\u00a0<\/span>racial segregation and higher rates of violence<\/span><\/a>.<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

\"figure<\/p>\n

To combat gun violence, invest in the community infrastructure that keeps neighborhoods safe<\/span><\/b>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Even amid yearly fluctuations in crime rates, the intersection between gun violence and systemic disinvestment is clear and persistent. So too is the status quo governmental response of relying on policing to respond to it; as Georgetown University law professor and author Sheryll Cashin\u00a0<\/span>aptly put it<\/span><\/a>: \u201cGovernment does overinvest in Black neighborhoods in one area: punitive practices such as policing, law enforcement and incarceration.\u201d\u00a0<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

These reactive approaches for policing the symptoms of segregation and disinvestment distract from the deeply rooted need to invest in the\u00a0<\/span>community infrastructure that keeps neighborhoods safe<\/span><\/a>, such as quality housing, youth workforce development and employment programs, green space, and civic and community-based organizations. Luckily, the influx of federal resources flowing into communities from the American Rescue Plan Act and the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act offers an\u00a0<\/span>unprecedent opportunity<\/span><\/a>\u00a0to properly invest in disinvested communities and advance the\u00a0<\/span>community-based safety alternatives<\/span><\/a>\u00a0proven to promote a more holistic, life-affirming vision of safety.\u00a0<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Duh.. Violent crime increasing the most in high crime neighborhoods Mapping gun violence: A closer look at the intersection between place and gun homicides in four cities The\u202frise in gun homicides\u202fin the United States is having reverberating political ramifications at the\u00a0federal,\u00a0state, and\u00a0local\u00a0levels, with many elected officials falling back into \u201ctough on crime\u201d policies to curb … Continue reading “”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[48,13,29],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-80345","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-crime","category-law-order","category-safety"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/milesfortis.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/80345","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/milesfortis.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/milesfortis.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/milesfortis.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/milesfortis.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=80345"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/milesfortis.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/80345\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":80348,"href":"https:\/\/milesfortis.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/80345\/revisions\/80348"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/milesfortis.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=80345"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/milesfortis.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=80345"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/milesfortis.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=80345"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}