Why Texas Has So High Crime Rates ?? (Houston, Dallas: low income, crime)

[jobless]

Interesting find. What's the unemployment rate in Dallas and Houston? That could be another contributing factor.

It's amazing that a place with one of the lowest cost of living has so much poverty. How many are living below the poverty level?

I've (and still) considering relocating to either Dallas or Houston metro (not necessarily in the city itself). But that won't be for another year to a year-and-a-half.

[KewGee]

And very unfortunately, Houston acquired 250,000 New Orleans refugees and the other big cities in Texas got their share as well. Neighboring small towns were not immune from it either. This will certainly contribute to the new crime statistics for Texas when they are available. We're already hearing about it on the news. Trajic!!

[txsn]

Originally Posted by speedoflight

I did a look up on crime numbers for Texas cities versus other cities infamous for crime. For example, Dallas v. Los Angeles; Houston v. NYC and also of large Texas cities against each other. The statistics given are 2004 numbers.

LA is about 3x larger than Dallas in population but it has less murders per 100,000 people than Dallas. LA has about 3.8 million people and Dallas has 1.2 million people. Dallas leads in murder, rape, robbery, burglary, larceny theft and vehicle theft (See the image file I have attached at the very bottom of my post).

LA v. Houston. Both cities are very similar in population size. LA: 3.8 million v. Houston: 2 million. Houston leads in rape, robbery, burglary, larceny theft and vehicle theft. (See image file)

I also did comparisons of Houston and NYC. NYC is about 4x larger than Houston in population but still fares less than Houston in crime in a most categories. Population of NYC is 8.1 million and Houston is 2.0 million. Houston leads over NYC (crime per 100k people) in murder, rape, robbery, assault, burglary, larceny theft and vehicle theft. (See image file)

I then compared San Antonio and Dallas, both cities are very similar in size with each other. San Antonio beats Dallas in only 1 category - rape. Dallas exceeds San Antonio in murder, robbery, assault, burglary, larceny theft and vehicle theft. Both cities have a higher than average crime rate. (See image file)

Here's a report entitled, "Texas Tough? An Analysis of Incarceration and Crime Trends in the Lone Star State" from the Center on Juvenile and Criminal Justice:
http://www.cjcj.org/pubs/texas/texas.html (broken link)

Interesting excerpt from this report:
The comparison between Texas and New York is particularly noteworthy, as their state populations are relatively matched. While Texas had the fastest growing prison system in the country during the 1990s, New York had the third slowest growing prison population in the U.S.(26) During the 1990s, Texas added more prisoners to its prison system (+98,081) than New York's entire prison population (73,233) by some 24,848 prisoners. This means that the number of prisoners that Texas added during the 1990s was 34% higher than New York's entire prison population. Throughout the 1990s, Texas added five times as many prisoners as New York did (18,001). Nevertheless, the Lone Star State's crime drops were much less impressive than what occurred in the Empire State. Since 1995, the percentage decline in overall crime in New York was four times greater than the drop experienced in Texas, and New York's crime rate dropped twice as much as Texas. Even if you go back further, from 1990 to 1998--the decline in the crime rate in New York was 26% greater than the drop in crime in Texas.
TX Crime Analysis (2004, DPS):
http://www.txdps.state.tx.us/crimere...4/cit04ch2.pdf

Just a side note... you set up all your stats by saying this city is __X larger than they other then give statistics that are per 100,000... These stats are already 'level' so LA being 3X bigger makes no difference. It just makes the smaller city sound worse than it really is. By the way.. like others have stated, most these numbers are based on the central city in which the metro area gets its name... the overall crime stats(burbs, etc) would be lower...

[Need_affordable_home]

I was considering Houston for its affordable houses, plethoa of jobs and big city attractions but the crime, traffic, illegals, etc turned me off

[KewGee]

Originally Posted by Need_affordable_home

I was considering Houston for its affordable houses, plethoa of jobs and big city attractions but the crime, traffic, illegals, etc turned me off

wise decision for sure

[momof2dfw]

Originally Posted by txsn

Just a side note... you set up all your stats by saying this city is __X larger than they other then give statistics that are per 100,000... These stats are already 'level' so LA being 3X bigger makes no difference. It just makes the smaller city sound worse than it really is. By the way.. like others have stated, most these numbers are based on the central city in which the metro area gets its name... the overall crime stats(burbs, etc) would be lower...

Not only that but each police department reports crimes differntly. One city may report 5 people getting shot at one location by the same person as one offense. Whereas another city may report 5 seperate reports leading to a very lopsided way to say which one is higher in crime than another. If everything was the same acrosst the board it would be much easier. As it stands each p.d. can decide how they want the reports done.

[Steve97415]

There is a correlation between latitude and higher crime rates that has no simple explanation. It isn't just Texas -- Florida, Lousiana, New Mexico, Arizona and southern California also fit the profile. On the other hand, states like Minnesota, Montana and Wisconsin have some of the lowest crime rates in the nation. Perhaps the difference is most obvious in California where the crime rate in the warm southern part of the state is two or three times higher than in the northern third of the same state. Immigration pressure is certainly part of the problem. Economic culture may be another. Could it be related to climate? There is a similar trend observable in Europe, with crime being much higher in Italy and Greece, for example, than in Sweden or Germany.

[Check123]

I found this on Yahoo Answers:

"Before I attempt to answer this question, I want to make sure that you know the difference between experimental and correlational studies. Virtually all research looking at the connection between violent crime and violent weather is correlational in nature. Although there is nothing wrong with this, correlational studies cannot conclude any cause and effect relationships. In other words, even if there is a high correlation between violent weather and aggression, we cannot say that violent weather causes aggression. Cause and effect relationships can only be concluded from experimental studies, which have a dependent variable (the measure), an independent variable (the treatment or intervention), and random assignment of subjects. For example, there is a known positive correlation between crime and the sale of ice cream, but does this mean that ice cream causes crime (or vice-versa)? No, because a third variable (in this case, warm weather) is responsible for the changes in the other two variables (this is called the third variable effect). Along the same lines, you will need to specifically define what she or he means by violent weather and violent crime. A number of social psychologists have looked at the relationship between temperature and aggression and typically find what is called a curvilinear relationship. This means that aggression rises as temperature rises up to certain point, but then as it gets too hot, aggression starts to decrease. This is sometimes called the negative affect-escape model (see references below). Some of the findings of other studies are as follows: 1) assaults are highest in the summer months and lowest in the winter months; 2) family disturbances are positively correlated with ozone levels; 3) assaults are negatively correlated with wind speed and levels of humidity (most assaults seem to occur on dry days); 4) fewer violent crimes are reported in very cold days (e.g., the crime rate in New York City was very low during the blizzard of 1996). The references listed below should give you a head start on your research. Most of these sources can be found in any large college library. If you can get these, you can then use the reference section of each article to get many other references."

Anderson, C.A. (1989). Temperature and aggression: Ubiquitous effects of heat on occurance of human violence. Psychological Bulletin, 106, 74-96.
(this is a comprehensive review article)

Bell, P.A. (1992). In defense of the negative affect escape model of heat and aggression. Psychological Bulletin, 111, 342-346.

Cohn, E.G. (1993). The prediction of police calls for service: The influence of weather and temporal variables on rape and domestic violence. Journal of Environmental Psychology, 13, 71-83.
Cohn, E.G. & Rotton, J. (1997). Assault as a function of time and temperature: A moderator-variable time-series analysis. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 72, 1322-1334. (may want to start with this article as it is the most recent)

Rotton, J. & Frey, J. (1985). Air pollution, weather, and violent
crimes: concomitant time-series analysis of archival data. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 49, 1207-1220.

[Ankhharu]

It is a bit odd for the state as a whole. Some want to say it's because of immigrants, well LA's immigration problem is far worse than Dallas or Houston, and Dallas surpasses LA in crime as already discussed. I do find it mind boggling that the state as a whole has this problem. But as for Dallas, some of it makes sense due to the local government and the way they have run things, not to mention the corruption and problems with the DPD Chief of Police over the past few years. This has definatley had an effect on things. In my opinion, the following is another contributing factor. I have a friend who is a DART police officer and he has informed me that their are problems in certain areas where DART and the DPD disagree on jurisdiction. Example: A crime is committed in an area. DART says they do not have jurisdiction and call DPD to handle the situation. DPD says it's DART's problem and their jurisdiction. The crime is reported, but the perp get's away with his assault or whatever he/she committed because neither department wants to handle the problem. Add to the fact that both sides are severly understaffed, you can see the ripple effect.
The only way I can explain the rest of the state is with the following theory. The ease of the locals in Texas being able to obtain a CHL, and the traditional outlaw attitude combined with it. That's just the best theory I can come up with right now.

[momof2dfw]

And theory it is.

For starters, Terrell Bolton has been gone from the Dallas Police Dept for a number of years. Kunkle is doing a great job of getting things taken care of and cleaning up the department. Bolton's fake drug scandal did not help, probably well before your time. Nor did him allowing officers w/ problems to stay on the force. Kunkle does not play politics and if an officer is not fit he fires them. Yes, we did and still do have issues w/ Katrina evacuees causing problems. Just in the last week they arrested 4 that were on a crime spree. Kunkle also reported that when this latest rating came out that the Dallas PD reports crimes differently than other areas, as I said before, for EVERY single offense even if committed at the same time by the same person is counted as a single crime. If one person goes into a house and shots 5 people they count it as 5 different crimes. Each department can report things differently and I would suspect those that want better ratings to play this game.

As for the issue w/ jurisdiction on DART property, this can be resolved rather simply. Many cities/counties, etc have done so with written agreements. Dallas and Rowlett have just such. One has to remember that without such agreements in the case of jurisdiction that if the DPD arrested someone in an area they did not have jurisdiction over the perp could walk away free because of the technicality involved. Sad but true. All DART has to do is go to the DPD and ask for an agreement for the DPD to have the right to patrol, arrest, prosecute any offending person on their property. The DPD can then also give permission for the DART officers to arrest someone that is off DART property but next to the DART property. Sadly there are laws that take control over this issue and you can not blame the DPD for all of it.