Study: Birmingham is nation's sixth most dangerous city

If you live or work in Birmingham, you might oughtta watch your back. A study comparing FBI statistics in six major crime categories - homicide, rape, robbery, aggravated assault, burglary and auto theft - ranks Birmingham as the sixth most dangerous city in the U.S. The AP report is here; the B'ham News reports here.

The study has stirred up a great deal of controversy right where you would expect it - among the mayors, police chiefs, and city councilmen who are now faced with the uneasy task of explaining why it is that they can't seem to perform their most important responsibility - that of maintaining law and order. Unfortunately, many of these officials have opted to explain away the embarrassing statistics rather than to explain their own failings.

To be sure, the study has its shortcomings, and there are some legitimate concerns about how to interpret the results. For instance, the American Society of Criminology has been highly critical of the rankings, calling them "invalid, damaging, and irresponsible." How so? The ACR explains:

They fail to account for the many conditions affecting crime rates, the mismeasurement of crime, large community differences in crime within cities, and the factors affecting individuals' crime risk. City crime rankings make no one safer, but they can harm the cities they tarnish and divert attention from the individual and community characteristics that elevate crime in all cities.

CQ Press, which conducted the study, responds (quite effectively) to the criticism here.

It seems that the real dispute is not over the validity of the rankings themselves, which are based on actual crime data collected by the FBI, but rather over how to properly label what exactly is being ranked. That is: is it fair and accurate to call those cities with the highest per-capita incidence of homicide, rape, robbery, aggravated assault, burglary and auto theft "most dangerous," or is there some better label?

I don't know the answer to that question, but I do know this: if you live or work in any of these places - including our own Tragic City of Birmingham - you had better watch your back.