A perspective on crime

Young Philly Politics has an interesting post on Philadelphia murder rates (compared with a rather different place and time). Hard to know what to do with that perspective, but it is a bit of an eye-opener. However, I remember from psychology classes that there's a definite increase in violence with crowding (of animals, people, etc.), so I'm not sure you can ever hope for a big city to have per capita rates comparable to a largely pastoral country -- anybody who's every navigated a busy intersection knows where folks get a gradually increased misanthropy after years of bumping into and winding around other folks. But that doesn't mean we can't improve matters markedly.