We wrote about incarceration rates in our last post, and how the rate for the Memphis MSA is higher than most of the peer cities that we often compare ourselves to. Here are the rates, which represents the number of prisoners per 100,000 in population:
1,422 * — Memphis MSA
467.1 — Detroit
499.9 — Birmingham
795.1 — Saint Louis
859.6 — New York City
897.6 — Baltimore
900.9 — Washington, D.C.
938.3 — Chicago
957.1 — Charlotte
1015.8 — Atlanta
1,131.7 — Los Angeles
1,167.0 — Orlando
1,170.9 — Houston
1,244.6 — Dallas
1,315.8 — Richmond
1,555.7 — San Francisco
1,561.2 — Boston
1,625.8 — Jacksonville
1,693.2 — Philadelphia
1,696.0 — Tampa
* The incarceration rate after we subtracted the number of prisoners in federal and state prisons in Memphis MSA. With these prisoners included, the incarceration is 1,836.
Source: IHS Global Insights, using Bureau of Justice Statistics, Annual Survey of Jails (2011) and Census Bureau, as reported in Urban League’s State of Black America report.
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These stats are shocking, but not surprising. The crime epidemic that has crippled Memphis for years and only gets worse. Not good for the future of Memphis.
Anon,
While the incarceration rate for the metropolitan area is extremely high, your prognostication is not well supported as you completely ignored the fact that the local incarceration rate is exceeded by that found in wealthy, dynamic cities such as Boston, San Francisco and Tampa.
Remember – these are MSA statistics, not city statistics. The Delta predilection to lock ’em up and throw away the key is no solution to crime issues, and that’s the point of the post. The crime rate is actually going down, but that said, it will never go down enough until we deal with causes and not symptoms.
Memphis leaders have always focused on the symptoms, painting over the root causes. King Willie Herenton shoulders a large part of the blame as do his successors.
A.C. Wharton has continued the decades of inaction on crime and has presided over the continued decline of Memphis as a safe place to live and work. Wharton always seems far more interested in his promotional press conferences and trying to lure mediocre chain restaurants like Cheesecake Factory come to Memphis than focusing on core problems like the unacceptably high crime in this city.
Blogger/Blog*Spot feeds shows the most recent (recently updated as the default setting) 25 headlines or what others call as post titles. My question is how can I increase/decrease the number of those headlines because I think they’re too many..