Monday, June 09, 2008

Where is the crime? Where are the votes? Where are the ads?

Paul Krugman writes June 9 that Senator Obama's nomination indicates that America has changed enormously. In 1966 and 1968, fear about crime -- and "the associated fear that fair housing laws would let dangerous blacks move into white neighborhoods," says Krugman -- was a winning issue for the Republicans. Krugman adds, " I don’t think a politician today could get away with running the infamous 1988 Willie Horton ad."

Krugman may be just too optimistic:
A conservative activist is attacking Obama as soft on crime, reports Richard B. Schmitt of the Los Angeles Times. Floyd Brown, the creator of the Willie Horton ad of 1988, has created exposeobama.com.

On June 9, the FBI released preliminary Uniform Crime Reports for 2007 that show violent crime was down 1.4 percent overall. But murder is up in small and mid-sized cities.

Some very disturbing research in Memphis, TN suggests that the strategy to free poor Blacks from the crime and dysfunction of housing projects is spreading crime to the formerly safe neighborhoods to which they move, according to reporting by Hannah Rosin in The Atlantic Monthly for July-August.

Ted Gest at Criminal Justice Journalists reports on the June 9 FBI release.

Violent, Property Crimes Down In 2007: FBI Preliminary Totals
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Reports of both violent and property crimes in the U.S. declined in 2007 from the previous year, the FBI said today. In a preliminary report, the bureau said the number of violent crimes declined by 1.4 percent from 2006, reversing two years of rising violent crime numbers. Property crimes were down 2.1 percent last year from the previous year. The largest declines were in vehicle theft, down 8.9 percent and in rape, down 4.3 percent and murder, down 2.7 percent, the Associated Press reports.

Murders were down in cities of more than 250,000, including a sharp 9.8 percent drop in cities of more than a million residents. Murders were up 3.7 percent in cities of 50,000 to 100,000, up 1.9 percent in cities of 100,000 to 250,000, and up 1.8 percent in cities under 10,000. Historically, murder trends began in the largest cities and moved over several years to smaller ones.

Federal Bureau of Investigation

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