“Black on Black” Crime in Black and White

Someone I like made a comment recently about how all the crime seems to be “black on black,” and even though Little Rock is one of the most crime-ridden cities in the country, we who live in good neighborhoods are really safe from all that for the most part.

I still have PTSD from my little adventure last year, so I’m possibly not the most unbiased person out there, but I feel prickly about this.

Crime bleeds just as red in lily-white neighborhoods, regardless of whether the criminals are socioeconomically disadvantaged or just plain sociopathic individuals. My neighborhood, Hillcrest (“Pulaski Heights” on the neighborhood map), is not the safest neighborhood in town despite the low melanin content of most residents’ skin and what we have to pay for our homes here.

From the 1980s, when Little Rock had one of the worst gang problems in the country, until now, when we still have one of the highest rates of crime per capita, no matter how we massage the statistics, Little Rock has a serious problem with crime. The high incidence of “black on black” crime tells me that there is a significant section of our population that has basic issues with safety, security, opportunity, and economic comfort.

I think these factors are a significant part of the reason that “black on black” crime happens so frequently, and a reason that we end up incarcerating this demographic of young black men, ultimately for their entire lives since they re-offend once they are released from prison. Criminals don’t tend to range far from home to do their damage. Hillcrest is not all that far from the worst neighborhoods in town.

We must throw more money, community centers, affordable rehab programs, and social workers at those problems. Perhaps most importantly, we need to ensure that socioeconomically disadvantaged people are educated and provided opportunities for employment at a wage that will support them and their families.

We desperately need to make a concerted effort to rehabilitate, educate, and provide some kind of hope for life after prison to that demographic we’ve decided to incarcerate for longer and longer periods of time. Shorter prison sentences, more therapy, more education, more job training, and humane treatment will go a long way to reducing recidivism rates, and, ultimately, reducing crime.

Norway tried it. It worked.

Little Rock was the 6th worst city nationally for violent crime in 2011, and in the top 15 overall, behind Detroit, St. Louis, New Orleans, Baltimore, Pine Bluff, Memphis, and other notorious criminal hot spots. Despite what Hollywood presents, places like New York and L.A. have dramatically better per capita crime statistics than we do. They put a lot more law enforcement officers on the street, and they pay them more. Detroit, which has had to make deep cuts in its police force since going into receivership, has suffered a corresponding increase in crime. It holds out as #1 in the country for crime and regularly finds itself on lists of the worst crime spots around the globe.

As a state, and as a metropolitan area, we have fewer police per capita on the streets, and we pay them less; we also, as a state, offer less in the way of rehabilitation for criminals. Our population is less educated, so there are fewer opportunities for young people that pay a living wage. All of these figure into why we have such bad numbers.

See the full report from the FBI.

For customizable annual data going back to 1960, access the FBI’s Uniform Crime Statistics Tool. Depending on how you sort the statistics, your results may vary.

Last Updated on December 29, 2023 by