Crime
Houston's murder rate ranked 46th of U.S. cities with a population over 250,000 in 2005 (per capita rate of 16.3 murders per 100,000 population). In 2010, the city's murder rate (per capita rate of 11.8 murders per 100,000 population) was ranked sixth among U.S. cities with a population of over 750,000 (behind New York City, Chicago, Detroit, Philadelphia, and Los Angeles) according to the FBI.
Murders fell by 37 percent from January to June 2011, compared with the same period in 2010. Houston's total crime rate including violent and nonviolent crimes decreased by 11 percent.
Houston is a significant hub for trafficking of cocaine, marijuana, heroin, MDMA, and methamphetamine due to its size and proximity to major illegal drug exporting nations.
In the early 1970s, Houston, Pasadena and several coastal towns were the site of the Houston Mass Murders, which at the time were the deadliest case of serial killing in American history.
Read more about this topic: Houston
Famous quotes containing the word crime:
“There’s no scandal like rags, nor any crime so shameful as poverty.”
—George Farquhar (1678–1707)
“Only crime and the criminal, it is true, confront us with the perplexity of radical evil; but only the hypocrite is really rotten to to the core.”
—Hannah Arendt (1906–1975)
“By measuring individual human worth, the novelist reveals the full enormity of the State’s crime when it sets out to crush that individuality.”
—Ian McEwan (b. 1938)