By Tarice L.S. Gray

The news was comforting: the Federal Bureau of Investigation recently reported a significant drop in violent crime last year. The numbers from 2010 revealed a 5.5 percent drop compared to the previous year. That’s remarkable given where we were 20 years ago, when there were 1.9 million violent crimes reported across the country. The news was all the more positive given that economic instability usually leads to increases the worst kind: violent crime, including murder.

But all of America isn’t resting easy. Despite declines that reached even the most violent epicenters, residents of urban neighborhoods are still burying their young victims of violent crime, and still watching their young get packed off to jail. Too many of them are black.

In fact, such cities as Philadelphia, Chicago, Detroit and New Orleans have seen an increase in deadly violence. Residents of the largely poor low-income African- American neighborhoods within those cities have watched the number of young black male victims of murder rise by 31 percent between 2002 and 2007, according to a national study done by Northwestern University in Chicago. Last year, Philadelphia reported that roughly 325 people were murdered, up from 306 in 2010 and 302 the year before. Detroit’s homicide rate increased 15 percent between 2010 and 2011, and New Orleans’ murder rate grew by 14 percent.

Chicago’s predominantly black neighborhoods in that time have also become one of the most prominent epicenters of murderous violence. Pastor Corey Brooks, who presides over the New Beginnings Church on the South Side of Chicago, said violence is suffocating his community. He’s rallied other religious leaders to help come up with solutions and pray for an end to the violence. Pastor Brooks said he’s grown tired after “having to do 10 funerals in one year of young black males under the age of 25.” He added, “Seeing these kids over and over and over come to these funerals and not change their lives, is crazy.”

Since arriving on the South Side 16 years ago, Pastor Brooks has witnessed some highs and lows suffered by the mostly black region. Last year was a low. According to police statistics, Chicago on a per-capita basis recorded 15.7 homicides per 100,000 residents. Compare that to New York City, the nation’s most populous, which held its murder rate at 6.7 per 100,000 the same year. (Philadelphia was the only major city to top Chicago’s disturbing numbers.) Chicago’s black population is 1.6 million, compared to New York’s, which hovers around 3.5 million.

The violence in the Windy City got so bad government officials considered calling the National Guard to the most violent areas of Chicago. For his part, Pastor Brooks intends to open a community center to offer, alternatives to the street life, too many black youth get lost in. It would join a dense network of network of public and private efforts to try to stem the violence, In addition to peace activists and community advocates working directly with poor youth to try to steer them away from crime, the city government has periodically sponsored gun buy-back programs (for example, the 2007 drives took more than 6,700 guns off the streets). Current Mayor Rahm Emanuel has proposed putting 1,000 more police on the streets to help preserve the peace.

Nonetheless, bringing an end to violence has proven to be a painfully slow, for Chicago and many urban areas because the problem of crime among the poor is so deeply intertwined with the problems of poverty, high unemployment, residential segregation, poor schooling and family disorganization.

Professor Harold Pollack of the University of Chicago Crime Lab has tried to understand the problems that linger behind the stubbornly high rates of violent crime in specific pockets of the city. A study he co-authored on gun violence among youth there found that 80 percent of the city’s 510 murder victims in 2008 were shot to death, and nearly half of them were between the ages of 10 and 25. The report also found that it was difficult to curb the violence in the most distressed communities. Professor Pollack said the real problem is identifying programs that actually work in combating the violence in the most distressed communities. “It’s not that all the things that we’re doing are failing,” he said,  “but given that we’re spending huge amounts of money on so many things to try to reduce violence, after decades of effort we often don’t have an acceptable evidence base to understand what are we really getting out of the investments.”

The report explains that, while, for example, the Federal Drug Administration requires a series thorough clinical trials prior to approving a drug like those to combat high cholesterol, there is no requirement to evaluate what works in fighting violent crime. As a consequence, over the past 50 years, the federal, state and local governments have poured money into programs to reduce gun violence among youth without any comprehensive evaluation of these programs.

The end result – a confusion about what works – makes it harder to treat the recurring spasms of violence, but at least now, the professor says city officials and law enforcement leadership are asking the right questions. Professor Pollack said, “It’s interesting that across the political spectrum there is a real desire to figure out what do we really need to do.”

According to Professor Pollack, one program has shown promise. Chicago police officials met with others across the country as part of the National Network for Safe Communities (NNSC), last May. The national, federally funded program introduced new crime reduction strategies that have proven highly effective.

One that caught the attention of Chicago law enforcement leadership was the High Point Community Against Violence. High Point executive director Jim Summey explained the organization uses focused deterrence to crack down on identified offenders. Police work with community leaders to avoid harassing the wrong people further creating distrust and disobedience against authority. The High Point Strategy targets youth, 95 percent of whom are African American, in North Carolina, who’ve committed violent offenses and gives them a choice pay for your crime in jail or become a productive citizen.  “We care for them as individuals,” he said. “It’s been working because our recidivism rate is hovering around 10 percent and the national recidivism rate is about 67 percent.” He added his role as head of the organization is similar to that of a probation officer minus the ability to arrest.

The High Point strategy is relatively new to Chicago; and its impact on the major city has not been broadly felt yet.  Summey said, “Chicago is an elephant. You can’t eat an elephant in one sitting. You take it bit by bit.” Professor Pollack said, despite the slow progress in that city, the pursuit of a meaningful solution fuels his optimism. But he adds, “We need to develop the right mixture of patience and urgency – patience to really see what’s working and [take time to] pursue that, and urgency to say there’s people dying out here in reasonably high numbers and we have to attack that problem.”

Pastor Corey Brooks, whose daughter was robbed at gun point in front of his church, is running out of patience waiting for government authority to figure out a solution. That’s why he’s hoping to open his community center within the next two years. It’s his way of doing, something.  “I’m so disheartened and frustrated and discouraged by politicians and their rhetoric and the government and their promises. So, I’m going to work as hard as I can for us, for my community.”

Tarice L.S. Gray is a freelance writer and blogger for GrayCurrent.com