New and improved worsenings

I don’t know whether to call it an improvement or not, but Detroit seems to be slipping in the rankings again. This time, it’s fallen to third place in the Most Dangerous Cities in America category:

CQ Press has released its annual list of the most dangerous cities in America. According to the independent publishing company, St. Louis, Mo. is the most dangerous city in America, followed by Camden, NJ, and Detroit MI. A press release states that the rankings are based on “total crime, violent crime, murder, rape, robbery, aggravated assault, property crime, burglary, larceny-theft, and motor vehicle theft…”.

I don’t know whether the study took into account the fact that in Detroit the police don’t come when they are called, crimes such as burglaries are considered “low priority,” so of course many crimes simply go unreported, and of course unprosecuted.
Another problem with any statistical analysis is that while the focus is on the crimes that matter to ordinary people (“violent crime, murder, rape, robbery, aggravated assault, property crime, burglary, larceny-theft, and motor vehicle theft”), the police, prosecutors and prisons devote huge amounts of time to drug offenses. While the latter are not counted in the official crime rate, the endless attempts to police a huge, uncontrollable market demands a disproportionate amount of police time, which helps raise the crime rate — and that’s in addition to the crimes committed by those who cannot afford the artificially inflated street prices for drugs.
Not to worry. Things could always be worse, and probably will.