"Murder Rates Up in Many Major U.S. Cities in 2006"

Back to the good-ole days:

After many years of decline, the number of murders climbed this year in New York and many other major U.S. cities, reaching their highest levels in a decade in some places.

Some cities had significantly higher increases:

Some cities, like Cincinnati — which has had 83 homicides so far, up from 79 in 2005 — posted their highest numbers ever. Others saw their highest death tolls in years.

Oakland, Calif., had 148 homicides as of Wednesday, up 57 percent from last year and the highest in more than a decade. Philadelphia's 2006 homicide total was 403 as of Wednesday, the first time the number has topped 400 in nearly a decade. There were 380 killings in all of 2005.

This is why I've argued that the crime rate would rise again after years of decline:

Andrew Karmen, a criminologist at John Jay College in New York, said that while there are various theories for the drop in murders in New York and other cities in the 1990s, no one knows for sure why it happened. And if they are going up again, no one knows the reason for that, either, he said.

Unless you get at the root of the problem, crime will always be a serious problem in America.