I grew up in the 1970s in and around one of the "safest" big cities in the United States, Philadelphia. That might be news to you given the City of Brotherly Love—now a relatively placid place—was known during that era for its gang-related murders and social dysfunction. It was news to residents, too, given that the streets felt so menacing. But why argue with statistics?

A year after law-and-order populist Mayor Frank Rizzo won his election to clean up Philly, he bragged about the drop in crime. But as news reports made clear at the time, the administration likely gamed the statistics by reclassifying serious crimes as simple assault. "The chances of being victimized on the street are much greater now than ever before," a top criminologist told The New York Times in 1973.

I thought of t

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