Keeping the Peace Through Intensive Community Policing

14 KEEPING THE PEACE
Victimization Rate for Blacks in 1980 Compared to
Whites (per 100,000)
BLACKS WERE
SIX TIMES MORE LIKELY TO BE VICTIMIZED
per 100,000 people
40
35
30
25
20
15
10
5
0
37.7 per 100,000
Black
6.3 per 100,000
White
SOURCES: FEDERAL BUREAU OF INVESTIGATION, CRIME IN THE UNITED STATES.
UNIFORM CRIME REPORTS. WASHINGTON, DC: GOVERNMENT PRINTING OFFICE,
1940-1993 AND UNITED STATES CENSUS BUREAU, HTTPS://WWW.CENSUS.GOV/
QUICKFACTS/FACT/TABLE/US/PST045219.
they were, however, the direct costs of the crime wave were only part of
the story. The crime wave imposed indirect costs on all the residents of
high crime communities, and the breakdown in public order that went
hand in hand with the rise in crime imposed indirect costs as well. As
with the direct costs, the burden of all of these indirect costs fell most
heavily on Blacks and the poor.
One major indirect cost of the rise in crime and disorder was the climate
of fear that degraded the quality of life for the residents of high-crime,
high-disorder neighborhoods. In his best-selling memoir, Between the
World and Me, Ta-Nehisi Coates described a childhood blighted by that
kind of constant fear: