Winter 2010

Crime's Great Convergence

THE SOURCE: “Crime and U.S. Cities: Recent Patterns and Implications” by Ingrid Gould Ellen and Katherine O’Regan, in The Annals of the AmericanThe Annals of the Academy of Political and Social Science, Nov. 2009.

From the early 1990s to 2005, crime rates in America plunged by a third. But the overall national trend obscures other important developments, including the much bigger strides that have been made in reducing the victimization of minoritygroups.

In a study of 278 cities, New York University public policy professors Ingrid Gould Ellen and Katherine O’Regan describe drastic changes in the period between 1992 and 2005. Property crime decreased by 38 percent and violent crime by nearly half. In 2005, one-quarter of cities were safer than their surrounding suburbs had been in1992.

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Crime's Great Convergence

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