Harlem

:This article is about the Harlem neighborhood in New York City. For other places named Harlem, see Harlem (disambiguation).

Criminality

Not surprisingly, as a neighborhood with a long history of marginalization and economic deprivation, Harlem has long been associated with crime.

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In the 1920s, the white mafia (both Jewish and Italian) played a major role in running the whites-only nightclubs in the neighborhood, and the speakeasies that catered to a white audience. Mobster "Dutch" Schultz controlled all liquor production and distribution in Harlem in the 1920s.

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Rather than compete with the established mobs, black gangsters concentrated on the "policy racket", also called "bolito", or the Numbers Game. This was gambling scheme similar to a lottery that could be played, illegally, from countless locations around Harlem. According to Francis Ianni, "By 1925 there were thirty black policy banks in Harlem, several of them large enough to collect bets in an area of twenty city blocks and across three or four avenues."

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The bosses who ran the numbers operations became financial powerhouses, providing capital for loans and investment for those who could not qualify for them from traditional financial institutions. Remarkably, one of the powerful early numbers bosses was a woman, Madame Stephanie St. Clair.

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The popularity of bolito waned with the introduction of the New York State lottery, which has higher payouts and is legal, but the practice continues on a smaller scale among those who prefer the "numbers" tradition or who prefer to trust their local numbers runner over the state.

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By 1950, essentially all of the whites had left Harlem and by 1960, the black middle class had gone. At the time of the 1964 riots, the drug addiction rate in Harlem was ten times higher than the New York City average, and twelve times higher than the United States as a whole. Of the 30,000 drug addicts then estimated to live in New York City, 15,000 to 20,000 lived in Harlem. Property crime was pervasive, and the murder rate was six times higher than New York's average. Half of the children in Harlem grew up with only one parent, or none, and lack of supervision contributed to juvenile delinquency.

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Injecting heroin grew in popularity in Harlem through the 1950s and 1960s, though the use of this drug then levelled off. In the 1980s, use of crack cocaine became widespread, which produced collateral crime as addicts stole to finance their purchasing of additional drugs, and as dealers fought for the right to sell in particular regions, or over deals gone bad.

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In 1981, 6500 robberies were reported in Harlem. The number actually dropped to 4800 in 1990, perhaps due to an increase in the number of police assigned to the neighborhood. Over the next ten years, with the end of the "crack wars" and with the initiation of aggressive policing under Mayor Rudolph Giuliani, crime in Harlem plummeted. In 2000, only 1700 robberies were reported. There have been similar changes in all categories of crimes tracked by the New York City Police Department. In the 32nd Precinct, for example, in Central Harlem, between 1993 and 2004, the murder rate dropped 68%, the rape rate dropped 70%, the robbery rate dropped 60%, burglary dropped 81%, and the total number of crime complaints dropped 62%. The crime rate in Harlem in 2005 is comparable to that in wealthy, white neighborhoods in other American cities.

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