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April 26, 2006
City Journal Examines Houston, New Orleans And Impact Of Katrina
Nicole Gelinas has an article in the current City Journal on how Houston has responded to the challenge of dealing with the thousands of New Orleans residents fleeing hurricane Katrina--residents who arrived here literally overnight in late August of last year. (Hat tip to The American Thinker.)
As you would expect from City Journal, the piece is a comprehensive examination of the multi-faceted problem that confronted the greater Houston area, and one area really caught my eye: the influence of Katrina victims upon the Houston crime rate.
I recently had a conversation with a liberal friend who was skeptical of any "Katrina effect" on the crime rate here. At that time I couldn't make a definitive reply, because even though I knew that the homicide count had increased, I didn't know if the homicide rate had gone up. Ms. Gelinas answers the question, and then some:
In fact, as Houston has slowly acknowledged, Katrina evacuees pushed up Houston’s rates for some crimes, particularly homicide, not just the raw number of offenses. Houston’s post-Katrina crime surge is an extension of the pre-Katrina violence of New Orleans’s criminal underclass. Before Katrina, New Orleans had the highest murder rate of any big U.S. city, almost four times Houston’s, with 58 people killed per year for every 100,000 citizens. The murder numbers Houston has racked up since Katrina prove that violent New Orleanians haven’t changed their ways, but only their scenery.Since Katrina, Houston police have identified New Orleans evacuees as either suspects or victims (or often both) in more than 30 Houston-area homicides. Of an evacuee population of 175,000, this works out to a per-capita annual murder rate of about 34 per 100,000, well above Houston’s pre-Katrina rate.
That's not good news, but it's by no means the scariest part of the article. What is truly chilling is further confirmation of the epic dysfunction of the New Orleans and Louisiana governments--in particular the criminal justice system:
How much more effective is Houston’s criminal-justice system than New Orleans’s? In New Orleans, according to its nonprofit Metropolitan Crime Commission, 7 percent of those arrested for a crime ultimately served prison time, compared with 58 percent in Houston. In New Orleans, only 12 percent of those arrested for homicide are ultimately incarcerated for that crime; in Houston, it’s 47 percent. In New Orleans, 18 percent of robbery and 12 percent of drug-distribution arrestees ultimately serve prison time; Houston’s numbers are 60 and 71 percent. Compared with national averages, Houston’s results aren’t stellar, but the city’s obvious superiority to New Orleans demonstrates how poor policing, poor prosecution, and poor sentencing nurtured the Big Easy’s criminal underclass.
Emphases are mine. And note that Gelinas is careful to point out that Houston's record is merely average, which amplifies the stupendous dysfunction of New Orleans' system.
Nicole Gelinas hits on much more than the snippet I've included here--see particularly here comparison of the Houston Independent School District and its corresponding district in New Orleans.
Highly recommended.
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