What is striking about the US is the
wide variation in "homicides per Capita" by location.
I did an analysis of Maryland's violent crime a few years back and
observed that Baltimore City and Prince Georges County had 80% of Maryland's
murders and 58% of Maryland's violent crimes but only 28% of Maryland's
population,. By contrast, Montgomery County, Maryland next to PG County and having nearly the same population to
both PG and Baltimore City had 20% of the PG murder rate and 7% of the
Baltimore murder rate.
Don Williams
writes:
All of the above suggests that
targeted job, education, and law enforcement assistance to the hot spots
could reduce deaths greatly and that areas with high gun possession
don't necessarily have high or even moderate homicide
rates.
At least part of this
targeting (the hot spot enforcement part) was tried in Maryland by
Lt. Gov. Townsend (her initiative). It failed because criminals were
smart enough to move their criminal activities away from heavy enforcement
areas. Maryland continues with one of the highest crime rates in the
country (we are number one in robbery and have been so for the last 7
years).
The striking thing in Maryland is how persistent is the criminal
behavior in areas. The PG and Baltimore City crime problems have been
elevated compared to Montgomery County for more than 20 years. All sorts
of gun control measures have been enacted and have had no effect that I can
see. In fact, the it is
striking that legislators continue with the belief that some general regulation applicable
to all of Maryland is the answer, when violence is focused in such a small
geographic area.
