Violent crime stayed essentially flat last year, according to statistics just released by the FBI. Those crimes were down by 0.2 percent last year, after a sharp increase of more than 5 percent the year before.
That means violent crime has essentially plateaued at a level higher than the lows of a few years ago — but is still substantially lower than the high rates of the 1980s and 1990s.
As always, there’s great regional variability in violent crimes, even within metro areas. The overall uptick of the last few years has been driven in large part by a handful of cities that are suffering through waves of homicide reminiscent of the crack epidemic. Chicago has dominated the headlines in recent years, but things are even worse in St. Louis and Baltimore, where murder rates were on the order of 10 times the national average.
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