Baltimore and St. Louis still have among the worst crime rates when 2008 crime statistics are adjusted for socioeconomic factors, says the Baltimore Sun.  Detroit fell from No. 2 all the way to No. 53, indicating that, things in Detroit could have been a lot worse in 2008 given their demographics. Other cities, such as San Jose, San Francisco, Albuquerque, N.M. and Colorado Springs, Co. shot up the list. In other words, according to the researchers, even though crime appears low, something isn’t going right in those cities.

The rankings were issued by the Improving Crime Data Project of 63 large U.S. cities. Criminologists Richard Rosenfeld, Alfred Blumstein, and Robert Friedmann applied a statistical model that adjusts each city’s homicide figures by differences across the cities in poverty, median income, unemployment, race composition, and female-headed households.  The researchers say the model produces a more meaningful comparison of city homicide levels, especially for providing insight into the effectiveness of criminal justice policies and programs.