[jernfrost]

It is like that in almost all countries though. Most countries have towns or cities with much higher than average rate. That is natural. Except e.g. the most violent city in Sweden has the same rate as the average in the US

[adventured]

It's not like that in most countries in fact. The US variance between high murder parts of high murder rate cities and the murder rate for the other 95% to 97% of the population is several times greater than other countries with comparable murder rates.

The murder rate among Sweden's largest cities does not consistently vary by ~20-30 fold top to bottom. That's the gulf between New York City and Baltimore, or Honolulu and St Louis, or Detroit and Austin TX. That extreme of a variance, is very unusual for all but a few countries.

Argentina for example, which is at least somewhat similar to the US in per capita murders in a given year, in their major cities you do not see Baltimore, Detroit, Chicago type examples of extreme outliers vs the ~6 national rate (eg Buenos Aires is typically around 5 or 6, as is Cordoba). Rosario, which saw a large murder rate spike in 2012-13, was considered shocking, because the murder rate went from ~10 to ~22 over a few years. So the US national rate is lower than Argentina, while having drastically higher outliers like Baltimore and Detroit versus eg Rosario (their bad case example).

[MichaelGG]

What's the racial make-up of this violence in Sweden Vs the US? Sweden should have zero spots that rival US cities for violence.

[lostlogin]

Is there a reason you go to race rather than any other measure? I’d suggest poverty as a better root cause.

[adventured]

There are critical cultural break-down issues that drive outlier murder rates dramatically more than traditional poverty.

That's why for example, the US hispanic murder rate is 1/3 that of the black murder rate, while hispanic poverty is quite high (most of the US hispanic population is sub 40 years old in terms of its existence in the US, and most hispanic immigrants were poor and with low skill levels when they came to the US). It's very clear that poverty is in fact not the primary cause, it's the collapse of poverty support systems in the cities in question (call it basic human infrastructure, or something). That system collapse leads to extreme desperation, which rapidly erodes a culture, which feeds on itself (~93%-95% of murders in St Louis are black on black murders for example), which prompts a vicious circle that becomes very difficult to break.

Cities like Baltimore and Detroit are more like failed states, to so speak. They've generally suffered total breakdown in the neighborhoods seeing these incredibly murder rate numbers. For example, the Baltimore murder rate comes across as shocking at 55 per 100k. When you drill down further, it's far worse than that, because those murders are isolated to a small percentage of the city, neighborhoods that see dozens of murders each year. These are neighborhoods that have suffered total collapse, their cultures have been destroyed, support systems are no longer existent, and almost everyone is universally afraid to go near the problem (both literally and figuratively). Simultaneously in eg Baltimore or Detroit, you have very scarce resources to go around, the collapsed neighborhoods killing themselves are not going to get those scarce resources. As cliche as it might sound, it's very simply a downward spiral (and as one might expect, to break that, is dramatically more difficult and costly than to just maintain a healthy context in the first place).

My suspicion is, the best way to fix failed cities like Baltimore, is direct, temporary Federal takeover, on the basis of a national interest. I don't see how it makes sense to pretend a city like Baltimore is an independent, functioning city any longer.

[lostlogin]

Are there any plans afoot to fix it or improve it? It’s been pretty bad for a long time - I’m pretty sure some failed states have pulled themselves up in the same time.

What would you suggest?

[adventured]

I keep tabs on Baltimore in particular, I spent some time around there growing up. I'm sadly unaware of any serious plans to fix the city. Nothing with substance or credibility.

Detroit is undergoing a modest recovery right now that is properly giving some people hope that it could get better there. It has far more industry to pull from than what Baltimore does, and it appears to have a spark to do so, a cultural determination if you will. Baltimore right now is lacking that aspect, it seems entirely adrift in a swamp of hopelessness.

If the Federal Government were smart, they'd shift a few major agencies over to Baltimore and push resources into the city by doing so. Absorb some labor slack, invest into communities, put resources into education and job training, etc. It would make a meaningful difference, Baltimore isn't a massive city. Just normalizing their high school dropout (~70% graduation rate, versus closer to ~90% for the US) rate would probably do wonders for sparking improvement.

If you look at what NYC accomplished, going from 1,200 murders to 1/5th that over 25 or whatever years. They had vast resources to pull from to accomplish that reformation. Baltimore is stuck between a classic rock & a hard place, lacking the resources they'd need to do it.

The city mostly has itself to blame for ending up where it has, I'm skeptical it can fix itself at this point. If it can, it'll take a very long time. Failed states usually take a very long time to recover. Ethiopia took decades to begin finding its footing after the disaster of the 1980s, and it's still on a difficult course. One would assume Venezuela has decades of recovery ahead of it, even if things stopped getting worse immediately. I consider Baltimore a humanitarian disaster, which in the world's richest nation is about a thousand notches beyond unacceptable. The Federal Government should step in and effectively abolish Baltimore as we know it today and reform it, put tens of billions of resources into the city, at the expense of all US tax payers. It should set various standards for how to operate the city to try to avoid it ending up right back where it is and gradually return control to local governance. Little different than when the US Government steps in and takes control over police departments (eg Seattle) when they effectively have failed at their basic responsibilities.