A Soaring Homicide Rate, a Divide in Chicago

[hack89]

The shooting, on Nov. 26, was one more jarring reminder of just how common killings seem to have grown on the streets of Chicago, the nation’s third-largest city, where 506 homicides were reported in 2012, a 16 percent increase over the year before, even as the number of killings remained relatively steady or dropped in some cities, including New York.

But the overall rise in killings here blurs another truth: the homicides, most of which the authorities described as gang-against-gang shootings, have not been spread evenly across this city. Instead, they have mostly taken place in neighborhoods west and south of Chicago’s gleaming downtown towers.

More than 80 percent of the city’s homicides took place last year in only about half of Chicago’s 23 police districts, largely on the city’s South and West Sides. The police district that includes parts of the business district downtown reported no killings at all. And while at least one police district on the city’s northern edge saw a significant increase in the rate of killings, the total number there still was dwarfed by deaths in districts on the other sides of town, and particularly in certain neighborhoods.

Over all, crime in Chicago dropped 9 percent in 2012 from the year before in what city officials say was the largest decrease in 30 years. Among crimes that saw dips last year: rape, robbery and car theft. With the city’s longtime gangs splintering into factions and increasing problems with retaliatory violence, homicides rose suddenly in the first three months of the year — running some 60 percent ahead of the year earlier — creating a pace that slowed significantly as the year went on.

http://www.nytimes.com/2013/01/03/us/a-soaring-homicide-rate-a-divide-in-chicago.html?pagewanted=2&_r=0

We need to decriminalize drugs and empty the prisons of non-violent drug offenders. Take the money saved and spend it on job creation, education and social services. Concurrently, we focus the legal system on violent offenders - use a weapon in commiting a crime and go to prison for a very long time.

[Fumesucker]

1. Decriminalization will do nothing to get criminals out of the drug distribution business

Only out and out legalization and regulation of legitimate distribution methods will do that.

[reteachinwi]

2. As Rahm says

"Those people will never amount to anything anyway. If you don't want to be shot, don't stand in front of a gun."

http://www.chicagonow.com/six-degrees-of-youth/2012/02/emanuel-disavows-25-of-school-kids-is-one-of-them-yours/