COVER STORY: “Cities see crime surge as threat to their revival: Louisville, Trenton, N.J., and other metros whose downtowns are booming once again fear nationwide jump in violent crime may hurt prosperity,” by Haya El Nasser, USA Today, 25 January 2007, p. 1A.

Police chief of Providence came to me after PNM was published and we talked urban crime as the analogy of Gap violence. This was his revelation: the three-strikes and other harsh-penalty laws of the previous decade had surged the prison population, but soon the number of ex-cons being released (about 600k, if I remember) would surpass the number of new cons going in (about 500k). A simple prediction: urban crime was going to go up all across America. The bulk of these guys are functionally illiterate and go right back to the same broken communities and neighborhoods where they previously failed, except now where those areas are gentrified, we’ve got a “new” problem “out of nowhere.” Jobs are the “exit strategy” there too, along with “broken windows” community policing. Very similar to the Gap. For how this phenomenon can get cast in real estate, see this post from Coming Anarchy's Chirol (always intriguing and here with perfect timing for my purposes) on gated communities.