The Wall Street Journal, Vital Signs, July 22, 2010 by Cari Tuna
http://bit.ly/cI3jHG
Violent crime across the Bay Area is declining even though unemployment remains high, mirroring a national trend that has confounded criminologists. The region’s four most-populous cities—San Jose, San Francisco, Oakland and Fremont—each reported fewer violent crimes such as murders and aggravated assault in 2009 than in 2008, says the Federal Bureau of Investigation. That’s counterintuitive because people expect felonies such as armed robberies to increase as more workers lose their jobs, says University of California, Berkeley, law professor Franklin Zimring.