URBAN HOMICIDES MAY HAVE INCREASED IN 2001, BUT FEW COMPLAIN

America's cities got more murderous in 2001.

While the number of murders in the entire country increased just 0.3
percent for the first six months of 2001, end-of-year statistics show many
large cities had dramatic increases in homicides.

That stands in contrast to the mid-to late-1990s, when the number of
killings in big cities dropped almost every year.

Kansas City was among the few cities that bucked 2001's pattern, with a
decrease of three murders, to 114. St. Louis saw a 21 percent increase,
from 123 in 2000 to 149 in 2001.

Among other major cities registering significant increases: Los Angeles,
Phoenix, Pittsburgh and Boston. Chicago led the nation with 667 homicides,
an increase of 36 over 2000.

"I wish I did have a reason" for the increase, said St. Louis Police Chief
Joe Moakwa. "We've had such a dramatic decrease over the last few years,"
that an increase was not surprising.

Many criminologists agree.

"Much as you would like it to, it can't go down every year," said Scott
Decker, a criminologist at the University of Missouri-St. Louis. "For big
cities with significant urban problems, there are going to be a core number
of homicides."

Plus, "the decline was so dramatic, so extraordinary, that it's not
reasonable to expect it to continue," added Samuel Walker, a criminal
justice professor at the University of Nebraska-Omaha.

Murder rates in the late 1980s and early 1990s, before the decline began,
were at or near all-time highs, as crack cocaine became an epidemic in U.S.
cities.

"Yes, we're up this year," Chicago Police Department spokesman Dave Bayless
said. "But we're a long way from where we were in the early 1990s. We're
coming off a seven-year decline."

Many credit the decline in murders in the latter half of the 1990s to
decreased crack use and to a burgeoning economy. Besides fewer murders, the
late 1990s saw positive moves in other social indicators, such as increased
employment and fewer teen pregnancies.

"The economy is the best bet," Walker said. "You need some explanation that
will cover everything."

And, Walker and others say, the recession makes a likely culprit for 2001's
increase in murders.

"The timing is almost exactly the same," Walker said. "That leads me to
believe there are similar underlying reasons."

Jobs keep potential killers busy with other activities and help them
develop better social relationships, Decker said.

Unemployed, "they're sitting on a corner drinking beer and smoking a joint,
and those are not typically relationships that lead people out of trouble,"
Decker said.

But it's far too soon to call the increased urban murders of 2001 a trend.

For one thing, other violent crime either remained stagnant or declined in
many cities even as murders increased.

For example, while there were more murders in Chicago last year, there were
fewer shootings and aggravated assaults. The same was true of St. Louis,
where Moakwa said crimes against persons were down in all categories except
murder.

Homicides generally occur as a result of other crimes, so the stagnancy or
decline of those other crimes bodes well, Decker said.

Compared to murder rates before the mid-1990s, and with the drops of the
late 1990s so dramatic and unprecedented, 2001 doesn't look all that bad,
said Franklin Zimring, a law professor at the University of
California-Berkeley.

"There isn't a police chief in any city in the United States who wouldn't
be delighted to have last year's homicide total from now until the cows
come home," Zimring said. "It looks more like a previous trend coming to a
halt than a definite up cycle."