"Poverty rules in crime capital of the South"

part of the contining saga of the US, viewed from down under.
The Australian: Poverty rules in crime capital of the South [September 05, 2005]: "Poverty rules in crime capital of the South
John Harlow, New Orleans
September 05, 2005
EVEN before the flood, the mean streets of New Orleans had little respect for age and reputation. It was always a city where things could easily get out of control.

When Ray Davies of the Kinks chased a mugger who attacked his girlfriend in the city's French Quarter last year, he was shot in the leg. The singer was lucky not to be killed in what is, or was, the crime capital of the south.
Tourists were routinely warned against leaving the 30 blocks that made up the supposedly safe French Quarter, but crime in the Big Easy had an ingrained habit of breaking its banks.
While murder rates have declined in most US cities, in New Orleans they were still rising. There were 53.1 murders per 100,000 inhabitants in 2002, compared with 7.3 in New York.
The New Orleans Police Department - long accused of corruption - claimed it was cleaning up its act, but in an extraordinary admission last week the FBI said any improvement in the city's grim crime statistics could have been due to people taking the law into their own hands."