The Crime Report (https://thecrimereport.org/category/violence/)
Slightly over half of U.S. violent victimizations between 2012 and 2015 involved people of the same race, or both were Hispanic, says the U.S. Bureau of Justice Statistics. Among black victims, 11 percent of violent incidents were committed by whites; among whites, 15 percent were committed by blacks.
Alaska has the highest rate of femicide by men, followed by Nevada, Louisiana, and Tennessee, according to the annual report of the Violence Policy Center (VPI). Black women are more than twice as likely to be killed by men than their white counterparts.
A 90-page “blueprint for peace” is centered on six goals, including support for families, promotion of economic opportunity, neighborhood safety and coordination of anti-violence efforts.
Minneapolis Mayor Betsy Hodges hosted a national conference on combating youth violence and fielded questions about a recent spate of shootings in her own downtown entertainment district. “It’s wrong, it’s bad, it should not happen in our city,” she said. “It did happen in our city. And we are doing everything we can to find whatever strategies we can to end that violence.”
A new study led by economists at the University of Illinois found that access to video gambling caused an increase in violent crime and property crime in Chicago.
Campuses are becoming battlegrounds for society’s violent fringes. Two universities are denying requests to speak from white nationalist Richard Spencer, a lead speaker in Charlottesville.
Militias have made public statements of neutrality but they are growing increasingly close to a segment of the right. Va. Gov. Terry McAuliffe complains that “they had better equipment than the State Police.”
The rate of hospital employees intentionally injured on the job at the hands of another person is significantly higher than the rate across all private industries. “Just going into work is a high-risk endeavor,” said Lisa Wolf of the Emergency Nurses Association.
Still, the outlook is grim. Rioters in 2015 targeted pharmacies, whose copious supply of opiates flooded the market, fueling competition among vicious gangs that vie for control of the business and have no compunction about settling turf wars with bullets.
Murder in New Orleans is worse per capita than it is in Chicago, and statistics from the first two months of the year suggest 2017 will be bloodier than 2016. Crime expert Jeff Asher offers some remedies.