We're havin' a crime wave

Back in the late 70s, some sociologists at Northwestern got a Dept of Justice grant for something called the "Reactions to crime project". They went to urban neighborhoods and interviewed the locals about local crime and compared this information to the actual local crime statistics. One of the Chicago neighborhoods was Wicker Park (along with Lincoln Park, Woodlawn and Back of the Yards.)

Today I want to highlight this:

This is the annual crime count for 1976 crimes in Wicker Park. (Augusta to Armitage, Western to Ashland)

Look at those counts. They were 6-10 times higher than they are currently. They're higher than the entirety of West Town. In fact I would put them up against any similar sized area in the roughest parts of Englewood or Austin and make those neighborhoods look like Mayberry.

In any event the original studies can be found here:
http://skogan.org/files/Lewis_and_Maxfield.Fear_in_the_Neighborhoods_An_Investigation_of_the_Impact_of_Crime.1980.pdf
https://www.ncjrs.gov/pdffiles1/nij/85917.pdf
https://www.ncjrs.gov/pdffiles1/nij/85506.pdf
They're required reading for any student of Wicker Park history.Particularly the second "The methodological overview" it contains some great contemporary accounts of what the neighborhood was like when it started to gentrify.

Paul K. Dickman