It’s become somewhat of a meme now when there is a story on crime, or other bad things happening in a city, people pipe up and say “That’s how it is in blue cities!” “This could only happen in a Democrat city!” However, I noticed they never say “… and that’s why only want to live in X” or “… that would never happen in Y”.
If living in “blue cities” are such a nightmare, where are all these Utopian “red cities” that people are apparently in favor of?
It seems like a lot of the time they are like “boy, crime is higher”… but if you live in a city that’s just a fact of life. It’s pretty obvious that there will be less crime out in the sticks. I wouldn’t really attribute this to any “blue” policies.
It’s usually lower per capita. Right wing media likes to report in nominal numbers, because have 10 crimes sounds like a lot more than 2 crimes. But when you see it’s 10 out of 1000 (1%) people vs 2 out of 50 (4%) it doesn’t look as good.
Per capita is always the way to go, otherwise the only cities considered free of crime would be the nearly deserted ones in the Midwest with 100-500 people.
Part of “less crime in the sticks” is a population effect. The rate of violent crime in New York City is 494/100,000 people. The rate of violent crime in the whole state of Alabama, from its stickiest sticks to the 225,000-resident Huntsville metropolis, is 404/100,000, which isn’t that different, in my book.
I suspect that’s just because of Birmingham, and possibly Mobile. They have pretty bad crime rates, and Birmingham is the state’s main “blue city”, at least based on how counties voted in the 2024 election.
Birmingham had a violent crime rate of 1440 per 100k, making it one the worst cities in the nation for violent crime.
Mobile had a crime rate of 825 per 100k. Mobile’s county was slightly red in the 2023 election.
Meanwhile Huntsville (who was slightly red in that same election) had a violent crime rate of 133 per 100k, and has been proudly claiming a 100% arrest and conviction rate for homicide cases. So to answer @yarr@feddit.nl’s question, I guess Huntsville is an example of a successful “red” city (although it may be less successful in coming years due to Trump’s NASA cuts).
Rural Alabama (excluding counties that were classified as metropolitan) had a violent crime rate of 248 per 100k, making it less safe than Huntsville but far better than the state average of 494 per 100k.
I’m not going to actually claim that the crime rate is just from politics, Huntsville has a big aerospace industry and it’s probably more of an education/class thing than anything else. But regardless those are the violent crime rate numbers for 2023, so feel free to draw your own conclusions.
100% arrest and conviction rate doesnt really mean anything. Sounds like theyre just arresting whoever and corrupting the jury to convict. Iirc only about 1/3 homicides are solvable?
https://www.al.com/news/huntsville/2022/07/no-homicide-case-went-unsolved-in-huntsville-in-2021.html
Here’s an article on it, it was actually in 2021 (where the rest of the data was from 2023) so the 100% rate probably isn’t the case anymore. Basically they attribute it to having a really low base crime rate compared to other cities, saying that it frees them up to give a lot of attention and resources to each one.
I live in Huntsville. We are not a red city. Best description would be a blue oasis surrounded by red.
NASA is a conspiracy to get smart people to move to the south
We also see that rural crime is undercounted, underreported. Many studies show that (sometimes) rural areas have more crime. Of course it varies by time and location and depends how you define everything.
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Uh oh! Don’t tell the reds that.
ive seen some ytubers kept parroting that, california and nyc specifically. they have no minds of thier own.
I wouldn’t say there is less crime out in the sticks. But there’s less detected crime out in the sticks.