New Orleans had a crime problem even before Hurricane Katrina ravaged the city--see this AP story from a few days before the storm hit, describing a neighborhood in which police fired 700 blank rounds into the air to see if anyone would report it. No one did.
But if it was bad before, it's worse now--the city endured 161 murders in 2006 (out of a population of around 220,000), and nine people were killed in the first ten days of 2007 alone. Yesterday, residents came out in full force, marching on City Hall to demand that the city government take action to stem the skyrocketing homicide rate. From today's Washington Post:
Thousands marched on City Hall here today, cradling photographs of slain relatives and waving signs demanding better policing and leadership, in a show of anger and anguish over the wave of violent crime that has beset their neighborhoods.
Even in a city long accustomed to violence, the rise that began with the repopulation after Hurricane Katrina and came to a crescendo last week when six people were killed in a 24-hour period has stunned many.
March organizers didn't expect a big turnout, so they were shocked when between 5,000 and 8,000 (depending on whose figures you believe) people showed up, a number that represents about one of every fifty current city residents.
One popular theory as to why crime has risen so dramatically in New Orleans during the city's long, slow repopulation has to do with drug gangs battling over smaller pieces of territory than had existed pre-Katrina:
Exactly why the crime has increased is a matter of dispute, with some pointing to issues of poverty and education. Many blame the criminal justice system, which was troubled even before the storm. Before Katrina, only about half of the city's homicide cases were solved, Radosti said. Of people arrested in murder cases, only about 12 percent were convicted. The last murder conviction was in August.
But Peter Scharf, a criminologist at the University of New Orleans, said that research shows that the spike in killings is probably caused by a small hard-core group of 300 to 500 people in the city who are "undereducated, drug-involved and armed." The drug gangs, he said, are feuding over a city in which the amount of turf has been shrunken by the storm.
"Basically," he said, "the destabilization of drug groups equals death."
What should Mayor Ray Nagin and the city's police department do? Exactly what "crime response policy" should they pursue? Conservatives say "lock 'em up and throw away the key," while liberals advocate policies that stress rehabilitation over incarceration (this may be oversimplifying it a bit, but you get the drift). In their book The Challenge of Crime: Rethinking Our Response, Henry Ruth and Kevin R. Reitz reject partisan approaches and place data ahead of ideology. They note that since the 1970s, the U.S. has pursued a crime policy that leans heavily toward the punitive side:
In stark contrast to this up-and-down picture of crime, the nation’s response to crime has been uniform for nearly thirty years. Indeed, American crime policy has become progressively more severe and at variance with the pre-1970 response.
Ruth and Reitz argue for a policy response that addresses the hard facts of crime in America, rather than one designed to appeal to ideology or sentiment. In a Washington Post review, Katheryn Russell-Brown declared:
The Challenge of Crime is a remarkable book...In essence, [it] is a morality tale. Ruth and Reitz capably highlight many of the wrongs of contemporary crime policies and practices and detail how they can be corrected. Will those invited into the conversation do more than listen?
||| Read an excerpt from The Challenge of Crime: Rethinking Our Response, now available in paperback.
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