Mark Abramson for The Chronicle of Higher Education

Steve Lance, a marketing consultant, put both his sons through college by participating in the Loans Plus program. He has yet to begin to start paying off the debt, he says.

More than a decade after Aurora Almendral first set foot on her dream college campus, she and her mother still shoulder the cost of that choice.

Almendral had been accepted to New York University in 1998, but even after adding up scholarships, grants, and the max she could take out in federal student loans, the private university — among nation's costliest — still seemed out of reach. One program filled the gap: Aurora's mother, Gemma Nemenzo, was eligible for a different federal loan meant to help parents finance their children's college costs. Despite her mother's modest income at the time — about $25,000 a year as a freelance writer, she estimates — the government quickly approved her for the loan. There was a simple credit check, but no check of income or whether Nemenzo, a single mom, could afford to repay the loans.

Nemenzo took out $17,000 in federal parent loans for the first two years her daughter attended NYU. But the burden soon became too much. With financial strains mounting, Almendral — who had promised to repay the loans herself —withdrew after her sophomore year. She later finished her degree at the far less expensive Hunter College, part of the public City University of New York, and went on to earn a Fulbright scholarship.

Today, a dozen years on, Nemenzo's debt not only remains, it's also nearly doubled with fees and interest to $33,000. Though Almendral is paying on the loans herself, her mother continues to pay the price for loans she couldn't afford: Falling into delinquency on the loans had damaged her credit, making her ineligible to borrow more when it came time for Aurora's sister to go to college.

Nemenzo is not alone. As the cost of college has spiraled ever upward and median family income has fallen, the loan program, called Parent Plus, has become indispensable for increasing numbers of parents desperate to make their children's college plans work. Last year the government disbursed $10.6 billion in Parent Plus loans to just under a million families. Even adjusted for inflation, that's $6.3 billion more than it disbursed back in 2000, and to nearly twice as many borrowers.

A joint examination by ProPublica and The Chronicle of Higher Education has found that Plus loans can sometimes hurt the very families they are intended to help: The loans are both remarkably easy to get and nearly impossible to get out from under for families who've overreached. When a parent applies for a Plus loan, the government checks credit history, but it doesn't assess whether the borrower has the ability to repay the loan. It doesn't check income. It doesn't check employment status. It doesn't check how much other debt — like a mortgage, or other student-loan debt — the borrower is already on the hook for.

"Right now, the government runs the program by the seat of its pants," says Mark Kantrowitz, publisher of two authoritative financial-aid websites. "You do have some parents who are borrowing $100,000 or more for their children's college education who are getting in completely over their heads. Those parents are going to default, and their lives are going to be ruined, because they were allowed to borrow far more than is rational."

Much attention has been focused on students burdened with loans throughout their lives. The recent growth in the Plus program highlights another way the societal burden of paying for college has shifted to families. It means some parents are now saddled with children's college debt even as they approach retirement.

Unlike other federal student loans, Plus loans don't have a set cap on borrowing. Parents can take out as much as they need to cover the gap between other financial aid and the full cost of attendance. Colleges, eager to boost enrollment and help families find financing, often steer parents toward the loans, recommending that they take out thousands of dollars with no consideration to whether they can afford it.

When it comes to paying the money back, the government takes a hard line. Plus loans, like all student loans, are all-but-impossible to discharge in bankruptcy. If a borrower is in default, the government can seize tax refunds and garnish wages or Social Security. What is more, repayment options are actually more limited for Parent Plus borrowers compared with other federal loans. Struggling borrowers can put their loans in deferment or forbearance, but except under certain conditions Parent Plus loans aren't eligible for either of the two main income-based repayment programs to help borrowers with federal loans get more affordable monthly payments.

The U.S. Department of Education doesn't know how many parents have defaulted on the loans. It doesn't analyze or publish default rates for the Plus program with the same detail that it does for other federal education loans. It doesn't calculate, for instance, what percentage of borrowers defaulted in the first few years of their repayment period — a figure that the department analyzes for other federal student loans. (Schools with high default rates over time can be penalized and become ineligible for federal aid.) For parent loans, the department has projections only for budgetary — and not accountability — purposes: It estimates that of all Parent Plus loans originated in the 2011 fiscal year, about 9.4 percent will default over the next 20 years.

But according to an outside analysis of federal survey data, many low-income borrowers appear to be overburdening themselves.

The analysis, by financial-aid expert Kantrowitz, uses survey data from 2007-08, the latest year for which information is available. Among Parent Plus borrowers in the bottom 10th of income, monthly payments made up 38 percent of their monthly income, on average. (By way of contrast, a federal program aimed at helping struggling graduates keeps monthly payments much lower, to a small share of discretionary income.) The survey data does not reflect the full Plus loan debt for parents who borrowed through the program for more than one child, as many do.

The data also show that one in five Parent Plus borrowers took out a loan for a student who received a federal Pell Grant — need-based aid that typically corresponds to a household income of $50,000 or less.

When Victoria Stillman's son got into Berklee College of Music, she couldn't believe how simple the loan process was. Within minutes of completing an application online, she was approved. "The fact that the Plus loan program is willing to provide me with $50,000 a year is nuts," says Stillman, an accountant. "It was the least-involved loan paperwork I ever filled out and required no attachments or proof."

She decided against taking the loan, partly because of the 7.9-percent interest rate. Although it was a fixed rate, she found it too high.

Of course, Parent Plus can be an important financial lifeline — especially for those who can't qualify for loans in the private market. An iffy credit score, high debt-to-income ratio, or lack of a credit history won't necessarily disqualify anyone for a Plus loan. Applicants are approved so long as they don't have an "adverse credit history," such as a recent foreclosure, defaulted loan, or bankruptcy discharge. (As of last fall, the government also began disqualifying prospective borrowers with unpaid debts that were sent to collection agencies or charged off in the last five years.)

The Education Department says its priority is making sure college choice isn't just for the wealthy. Families have to make tough decisions about their own finances, says Justin Hamilton, a spokesman for the department. We "want folks to have access to capital to allow them to make smart investments and improve their lives," Hamilton says. In the years after the credit crisis, department officials point out, other means of financing college — such as home-equity loans and private student loans — have become harder for families to get.

The department says it's trying to pressure colleges to contain costs, and working to inform students and families of their financing options. "Our focus is transparency," says Hamilton. "We want to make sure we're arming folks with all the information they need."

Colleges' tricky role
Colleges rarely advise families on how much is too much. After a student's own federal borrowing is maxed out, financial-aid offices often recommend large Plus loans for parents.

Using Education Department data, The Chronicle and ProPublica took a closer look at colleges where borrowers took out the highest average Plus loan amounts per year. (See a breakdown of the top schools.) NYU ranked 11th, with an average annual loan of $27,305. The university generally gives students less financial aid than many of its peers. Last year, parents of NYU students borrowed more than $116 million through the Plus program, the second-largest sum taken on for a single university, trailing only Penn State University's $160 million.

"Our first suggestion is the Plus loan," says Randall Deike, vice president for enrollment management at NYU. Yet he has misgivings about the program. "Getting a Plus loan shouldn't be so easy," he says.

"It doesn't make me feel great, truthfully," Palmer says. "But then again, what can I do? We have to pay our bills."Among the top 25 institutions with the largest average Plus loans, more than a third focus on the arts. Tenth on the list is New York Conservatory for Dramatic Arts, a for-profit acting school.

The school's sticker price for the current year adds up to nearly $53,000 for a year's worth of tuition, fees, room, board, and other expenses. Without an endowment, says David Palmer, the conservatory's chief executive, the school can't provide much financial aid — so families are often left to make difficult decisions about how borrowing is too much. Ideally, families would have saved for college, according to Palmer, but often tuition payments come in the form of Plus loans.

Last year, 150 parents borrowed for their children to attend the institution of 330 undergraduate students. Palmer knows that sometimes families borrow too much, and students have to drop out. "It makes me sick to my stomach," he says. "Because they've got half an education and a mountain of debt."

Still, he says, "I don't know that it's the institution's responsibility to say we'll take a glimpse of what your individual situation is and say maybe this isn't a good idea."

To the dismay of consumer advocates, some universities lay out offers of tens of thousands of dollars in Parent Plus loans directly in the financial-aid packages of prospective students — often in the exact amount needed to cover the gap between other aid and the full cost of attendance. That can make it look like a family won't have to pay anything at all for college, at least until they read the fine print. The offers are often included in financial-aid packages even for families who clearly can't afford it.

"It is deceptive," says Greg Johnson, chief executive of Bottom Line, a college access program in Boston and New York. His organization's counselors have seen firsthand how students and families can get confused: When Agostinha Depina first got her financial aid award letter from New York's St. John's University, her first choice, she was excited. But upon taking a closer look at the package with her counselor at Bottom Line, she realized that a $32,000 gap was being covered by a Parent Plus loan that her parents would struggle to afford.

"It made it seem like they gave me a lot of money," says Depina. In reality, "it was more loans in the financial-aid package than scholarship money." Depina, 19, opted to go to Clark University, where she had a smaller gap that she covered with a one-year outside scholarship. A spokeswoman for St. John's did not respond to requests for comment.

There's considerable debate among financial-aid officials about whether and how to include Plus loans in students' financial-aid award letters. Some universities opt not to package in a loan that families might not qualify for or be able to afford. Instead, they simply provide families with information about the program.

"We inform them about the different options they have, but we wouldn't go in and package in a credit-based loan for any family," says Frank Mullen, director of financial aid at Berklee College of Music. "To put a loan as part of someone's package without knowing whether they'd be approved? I just wouldn't feel comfortable with it."

Others say it isn't so simple. "This is one of those knives that cuts both ways," says Craig Munier, director of scholarships and financial aid at the University of Nebraska at Lincoln.

"If we leave a huge gap in the financial-aid package, families could reach the wrong conclusion that they cannot afford to send their children to this institution," says Munier, who is also chair-elect of the National Association of Student Financial Aid Administrators. "The other side," he says, "is we package in a loan they can't afford, and they make a bad judgment and put themselves into debt they can't manage. You can second-guess either decision."

For parents in exceptional circumstances, colleges have some discretion to bypass the Plus application process and give a student the additional amount of federal student loans that would be available in the case of a Plus denial — up to $5,000. Those are judgment calls, says Justin Draeger, president of the aid administrators' group. Cases of a parent who is incarcerated or whose only income is public assistance are more straightforward, but the prospect of evaluating a parent's ability to pay is fraught. Deciding to tell them what they can afford "leaves the schools in sort of a moral dilemma," Draeger says.

But encouraging Plus loans for parents who would struggle to repay them lets colleges shirk their own responsibility to help families with limited means, says Simon Moore, executive director of College Visions, a college-access program based in Rhode Island. "Colleges can say, 'We want to enroll more low-income students,' but don't really need to step up and offer students good aid packages," he says. Plus loans "offer colleges an easy way to opt out."

Middle class struggles to repay
Some parents who have borrowed through Plus have found themselves working when they could be retired, and contemplating whether to pay off the debt by raiding their retirement nest eggs.

Galen Walter, a pharmacist, has put three sons through college. All told, the family racked up roughly $150,000 in loans, about $70,000, he estimates, in the Parent Plus program.

Walter is 65. His wife is already collecting Social Security. "I could have retired a couple years ago," he says, "but with these loans, I can't afford to stop." His sons want to help with the Plus payments, but none are in the position to do so: One son is making only $24,000. Another is unemployed. The youngest is considering grad school.

Before the downturn, Walter says, he might have been able to sell his house and use the profit to pay off the loans. But given what his house is worth now, selling it wouldn't cover the loan. With his sons in a challenging job market, he thinks he may be repaying the loans for at least a decade.

Many parents are more than willing to take on the burden. Steve Lance, 58, is determined to pay for the education of his two sons, whose time at private universities has left him saddled with $133,000 in Parent Plus loans. (He also says he's committed to paying for his sons' federal and private student loans, which bring the total to $317,000 in debt.)

"The best thing I thought I can do as a parent is support them in having their dreams come true," says Lance, a creative director who writes and speaks on advertising and marketing. "There's no price tag on that." Out of necessity, he has put some loans in deferment.

Often, students and families set their hearts on a specific college and will do whatever it takes to make it work, betting that the rewards will outweigh the financial strain.

That's what happened with J.C., who asked that her name not be used. J.C. took out about $41,000 to help her daughter, an aspiring actress, attend NYU. A high-school valedictorian, her daughter could have gone to a public university in their home state of Texas debt-free, J.C. says. But the opportunities in theater wouldn't have been the same. It had to be NYU.

"The night she got there she said: Mom, this is the air I was meant to breathe," J.C. says of her daughter.

J.C., 58, is divorced and makes about $50,000 a year. She anticipates Plus loan payments between $400 and $500 a month, which she says she can handle. "I'll never retire. I'll work forever, that's OK," she says. Still, the hope is that her daughter makes it to the big time in her acting career: "If she's really, really successful I'll retire sooner rather than later," J.C. says.

Changes to Parent Plus, uncertain results
The Education Department's recent change in how it defines adverse credit history — adding unpaid collections accounts or charged-off debt as grounds for denial — is meant to "prevent people from taking on debt they may not be able to afford while protecting taxpayer dollars," Hamilton, the department spokesman, wrote in an email message.

The change may result in significantly more Parent Plus loan denials, according to Kantrowitz — and some financial-aid officers' recent observations seem to bear that out. But new denials may actually target the wrong people. After all, the tightened underwriting still examines aspects of credit history, not ability to repay.

"It's not going to make much of a difference for people who overborrow. It's not going to prevent people from overborrowing," Kantrowitz says. Instead, the new policy may preclude borrowers who once fell behind on a debt, he says, but now pose little credit risk.

Borrowers who are denied can appeal the decision and still get the loans if they convince the Education Department that they have extenuating circumstances. Or they can reapply with somebody cosigning on the loan.

It's not yet clear how much the change to the credit check will alter the scope of the Parent Plus program. Early tallies for the 2011-12 year show a modest dip in borrowing over the previous year, but the data is incomplete and won't be fully updated for months.

For now, the Parent Plus program is part of a stopgap solution to the complex problem of college affordability. And the factors that drive parents to borrow too much won't be changing anytime soon.

Kantrowitz believes that the student-loan system is in need of much broader solutions. The current federal loan limits for undergraduates are arbitrary, he says, and not based on the type of program or a student's estimated future earnings. More grant money could also help alleviate overborrowing, especially for low-income families.

"We need a complete overhaul of the student-loan system so there's a more rational set of limits" to curb the debt problem, says Kantrowitz. The government can't keep "magically sweeping it under the parent rug."

  Funding from local governments’ two biggest sources -- state aid and property taxes -- fell for the first time since 1980, according to a report released this month by the Pew American Cities Project. The decrease in funding from these two sources has forced many local areas to cut expenses significantly. Relying on the Pew report, 24/7 Wall St. identified eight states slashing local funding to cities, towns, counties and school districts.

24/7 Wall St.’s independent analysis of data from the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities and the U.S. Census Bureau indicates states that cut funding the most had budgets that were particularly hard hit during this period. Some suffered budget shortfalls that forced them to cut spending. Others experienced drops in tax revenue that prompted the same response.

Of the eight states with the highest cuts in local funding, four experienced among the steepest declines in tax revenue. Wyoming, which had the worst decline in tax revenue, fell a whopping 21.9 percent during the period.

Budget shortfalls were among the worst in many of these states. Arizona, California and Nevada, among the eight states cutting local budgets, had the first, second and third highest budget shortfalls as a percentage of their general fund. Arizona faced a 65 percent shortfall in 2010.

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These budget shortfalls, according to Robert Zahradnik, research director for the Pew American Cities Project, forced states to make deep budget cuts, hitting local governments -- and their employees -- particularly hard. According to the report, the number of employees on local government payrolls fell in 45 states between 2008 and 2011.

In several of the states with the largest cuts to local governments, these declines were the most pronounced. California, Arizona and Nevada were among the 10 states with the largest drops in government employees per person. In Nevada, the number of government employees fell by 15.4 percent, the most in the country.

While police and fire departments and other areas of local budgets were hit hard as well, no area suffered more than school districts. Zahradnik explained, “about half of the reduction of the local government jobs were in the education sector, and that’s not entirely surprising because that’s where the staff and the money are for the local government.” This is a notable departure from standard practice during a downturn in the economy. Usually, Zahradnik noted, local governments will leave education off the table because it is something the public wants to protect. In the great recession, however, there simply were no other options.

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24/7 Wall St. identified the eight states with a 5 percent or greater decrease in state aid to cities, towns, counties, and school districts between 2009 and 2010 based on state funding to regional governments and government employee data from the Pew American Cities Project report, “The Local Squeeze: Falling Revenues and Growing Demand for Services Challenge Cities, Counties, and School Districts.” The report relies on the latest available Census Bureau information on state budgets. It also calculated the change in government workers between December 2008 and December 2011 using Bureau of Labor Statistics data on government employee figures, as well as population estimates, also from the Census Bureau. Separately, 24/7 Wall St. obtained state budget shortfall data from the Center for Budget Policies and Priorities, as well as changes in tax revenue between 2009 and 2010 from the Census Bureau.

These are the eight states slashing local funding the most.

1) New Mexico

•  Percent decline in local funding: 10.4 percent
•  Actual decline local funding: $498 million (9th largest)
•  State budget shortfall (2010): 18.2 percent (11th smallest)
•  Percent change in government workers per capita: -5.4 percent (16th largest decline)

Out of all states, New Mexico cut funding to its localities the most, reducing spending by more that 10 percent between 2009 and 2010. According to the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, additional state cuts also resulted in fewer funds for higher education, the state workforce and services for the elderly and the disabled. The Santa Fe New Mexican writes that the Santa Fe School District endured the worst of its fiscal cuts in the 2009-2010 school year, when they were underfunded by about $11 million. After three consecutive years of deep budget cuts, New Mexico is now projecting a budget surplus of $250 million in 2012. NPR reports state leaders are debating whether to restore some services.

2) Wyoming

•  Percent decline in local funding: 9.5 percent
•  Actual decline local funding: $185 million (19th largest)
•  State budget shortfall (2010): 1.8 percent (the smallest)
•  Percent change in government workers per capita: +2.5 percent (2nd largest increase)

Between 2009 and 2010, Wyoming’s local governments’ revenue suffered from what Pew calls a “one-two punch”: shrinking in both state aid and property taxes. According to Census State Government Finance data, state aid fell by $185 million, while tax revenues declined by 21.9 percent -- the highest proportional decline in the country. Belt-tightening measures were necessary for the state to avoid layoffs of government officials. According to the Billings Gazette, officials at the Natrona County Detention Center were told that if they did not comply with budget cuts as high as 27 percent, they would be forced to lay off almost a third of their staff.

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3) Virginia

•  Percent decline in local funding: 8.5 percent
•  Actual decline local funding: $1 billion (4th largest) 
•  State budget shortfall (2010): 24.1 percent (20th largest)
•  Percent change in government workers per capita: -4.7 percent (tied at 22nd largest decline)

In February 2010, Virginia Governor Bob McDonnell proposed a total of $2.3 billion in cuts in order to balance the state budget without any increase in taxes. As a result of these cuts, the state of Virginia reduced transfers to its localities by more than $1 billion. The city of Roanoke, which was forced to raise taxes after the state’s budget was passed, responded to these cuts with particular frustration. Local officials in Roanoke denounced the state initiatives as indirect taxation, because they required municipalities to raise taxes to cover those funding cuts.

4) Minnesota

•  Percent decline in local funding: 8.2 percent
•  Actual decline local funding: $928 million (5th largest)
•  State budget shortfall (2010): 22.7 percent (21st smallest)
•  Percent change in government workers per capita: -3.8 percent (24th smallest decline)

According to the Minnesota Budget Project, the inability of the state to pay down its deficit in the 2010-2011 biennium was caused by a heavy reliance on one-time measures that failed to correct or reduce long-run deficits. In 2011, the League of Minnesota Cities sued the state’s legislature and governor in order to continue receiving aid after a government shutdown that July. The cities eventually agreed to accept a $138 million dollar cut in the funds to be received -- a reduction of about 19 percent.

Read the rest of States Slashing Local Funding at 24/7 Wall St.'s site

AP

With a 32.3 percent poverty rate and nearly 20 percent unemployment, Detroit also has the second-highest violent crime rate in the country.

 This week, the FBI announced that violent crime dropped 4 percent in 2011, compared to a 5.5 percent drop in 2010. Nationally, the murder rate fell 1.9 percent from 2010, and robbery, forcible rape and assault fell 4 percent each. However, among the cities with the highest violent crimes rates, the trend is not entirely positive.

A 24/7 Wall St. review of 2011 FBI crime data shows that violent crime rose in more than half of the cities that have among the highest rates in the country. In seven of the 10 cities, murder rates increased. In eight of the 10, burglary went up.

Strained budgets are forcing police layoffs that many cities can’t afford to make. More than half of local police departments that responded to a national survey reported cuts in the 2011 fiscal year, according to the Police Executive Research Forum, an organization of police executives from across the country. Many are cutting police forces through planned layoffs and attrition.

More than half of the cities with the highest violent crime rates are cutting law enforcement budgets and police forces as well. However, unlike the national picture, the situation is worse for these cities, which depend on tax bases that are shrinking faster than most.

The cities with the highest crime rates tend to have particularly high poverty rates, high unemployment and low median income. Two of the worst-off cities, Flint and Detroit, Mich., both have had well-publicized budget woes. Flint was taken over by an emergency city manager after failing to pay its bills in 2011. Detroit is facing similar budget problems and recently came to a temporary oversight agreement with the  state.

While the Police Executive Research Forum notes that budget cuts appear to be slowing in police departments in the United States, most departments are still cutting. According to the group’s April report on local police budgets, this includes many of the cities on this list.

Oakland, Calif., cut its budget by 7 percent in the current fiscal year, with an additional 5 percent cut on the way, according to PERF. In the past two years, the city lost 80 police officers to layoffs and another 108 to attrition. This occurred despite increases in both violent and property crime in 2011.

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Similarly, while the Detroit Police Department reported no cuts for fiscal year 2012, the city is planning a 15 percent cut next year. Detroit also has one of the highest crime rates in the country.

On its website, the FBI cautions against using crime data to compare city violence because rankings tend to be simplistic and ignore factors that influence crime, as well as the different ways crimes are measured and reported. “Data users should not rank locales because there are many factors that cause the nature and type of crime to vary from place to place,” the FBI warns.

Congressional Quarterly, which publishes and analyzes FBI crime statistics each year, referred to crime rate in terms of the “safest” and “most dangerous” cities. However, the publication recently dropped the terms “safe” and “dangerous” due to the concerns of criminologists, Rachel Boba Santos, professor of criminology at Florida Atlantic University who wrote the introduction to the Congressional Quarterly Report, told 24/7 Wall St.

Despite these objections, Santos said the data is useful to get a feel for the needs of a particular community and to look at a specific city’s trends on a year-over-year basis. She said the data also is used at the federal level to determine funding resources for different communities, comparing crime rates.

Based on the FBI’s Uniform Crime Report, 24/7 Wall St. identified the 10 U.S. cities with populations of 100,000 or more with the highest rates of violent crime per 1,000 residents. Using the estimated populations and crime incidents from UCR, which measures incidents of eight types of violent and nonviolent crime for 2011, 24/7 Wall St. calculated the incidence of the four types of violent crime per 1,000 persons for that year: murder, forcible rape, robbery and aggravated assault. In addition to crime data, 24/7 Wall St. reviewed median income and poverty rates for these cities from the U.S. Census Bureau for 2010, the most recent available year. We also included average 2011 unemployment rates for these cities, provided by the Bureau of Labor Statistics.

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These are the 10 cities with the highest rates of violent crime.

1. Flint, Mich.

•  Violent crimes per 1,000: 23.4
•  Population: 102,357
•  2011 murders: 52
•  Median income: $22,672
•  Unemployment rate: 18.9 percent

According to the FBI examined, no city with more than 100,000 residents had a higher violent crime rate than Flint. In 2011, there were 2,392 incidents of violent crime in Flint, which has a population just above 100,000. That same year, there were just 1,246 violent crimes in all 10 of the safest cities in America -- which have 13 times as many residents as Flint among them. Flint has the second-highest murder rate and the highest rates of aggravated assault, burglary and arson in the nation. According to Flint Mayor Dayne Walling: “there are too many guns on the street and it’s easy for individuals with evil motives to take another human being’s life.” Though the violent crime has long been a problem in Flint, in 2010 the city laid off 20 of its 140 police officers, a decision that diminished both the police’s street presence and response times to crime.

2. Detroit, Mich.

•  Violent crimes per 1,000: 21.4
•  Population: 713,239
•  2011 murders: 344
•  Median income: $25,787
•  Unemployment rate: 19.9 percent

Long regarded as one of the poorest cities in the U.S., with a 32.3 percent poverty rate and nearly 20 percent unemployment in 2010, Detroit has the second-highest violent crime rate in the country. Homicide increased by 11 percent in 2011, while robbery and aggravated assault are fourth and second highest in the country, respectively. Nonviolent crime is also an issue, with burglary, motor vehicle theft and arson rates in the top 10 rankings in the country. In response to an 18 percent decrease in the Detroit police budget, which will result in the elimination of 380 positions through attrition and early retirement, the city has begun taking steps to decrease police funding by introducing “Virtual Precincts.” The plan, which closes police stations between 4 p.m. and 8 a.m, requires citizens to report non-emergency crime to a call center, and frees up more patrol officers to respond to 911 emergency calls.

3. St. Louis, Mo.

•  Violent crimes per 1,000: 18.6
•  Population: 320,454
•  2011 murders: 113
•  Median income: $32,688
•  Unemployment rate: 11.7 percent

Although the total number of murders in the city has decreased by 31 since 2010, crime in St. Louis did not improve overall last year. Violent crime rates in St. Louis have risen dramatically, from 17.5 to 18.6 cases per 1,000 people. And the city’s murder rate is still the fourth highest in the nation, its robbery rate is the fifth highest in the nation and its aggravated assault rate is third-highest in the nation. Despite these troubling facts, the St. Louis Police Department recently faced potentially drastic budget cuts that may require the elimination of 100 street-patrolling officer positions through attrition.

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4. Oakland, Calif.

•  Violent crimes per 1,000: 16.8
•  Population: 395,317
•  2011 murders: 104
•  Median income: $49,190
•  Unemployment rate: 15.6 percent

Oakland historically has been among the most crime-ridden cities in California, with a violent crime rate this year of 16.8 per 1,000 people. There were 14 more murders in 2011 than in 2010, causing Oakland to maintain the ninth-highest murder rate in the country two years in a row. Oakland is the number one city for both robbery and motor vehicle theft rates in the country. Oakland city councilmember Desley Brooks, who wants to allocate $11 million in revenue to the police force, acknowledges the increased violent crime, saying, “we cannot ignore that we have had an increase in violent crime, and so we cannot continue to do the same thing the same way and expect that it’s going to be a different result.”

5. Memphis, Tenn.

•  Violent crimes per 1,000: 15.8
•  Population: 652,725
•  2011 murders: 117
•  Median income: $37,045
•  Unemployment rate: 11.1 percent

In 2011, Memphis defied the national trend of declining crime rates in major U.S. cities. The rate of violent crimes per 1,000 people increased, from 15.4 to 15.8. This was the product of increases in murders, which rose from 89 to 117, and aggravated assault incidents, which rose by 100 cases. A rising unemployment rate, which grew 1.2 percent to 11.1 percent in 2011, likely has not helped to reduce criminal behavior. With a current budget deficit of $45 million, Mayor Wharton says he may need to consider “taking boots off the street,” by laying off members of the police force in the near future.

Read the rest of the list of most dangerous cities at 24/7 Wall St.'s Web site.