Children living in the inner-city found themselves in severely deteriorating living conditions: drugs, crime, and violence became increasingly widespread, particularly by the 1970s. In Chicago, the number of violent crimes began to rise in the mid-1960s, reaching record levels by the 1970s. Between 1965 and 1970, homicides rose from 195 to 810. During the 1970s, 80 percent of those convicted of murder were African American, and 70 percent of murder victims were black. Nationally, by the mid-1980s, nearly 50 percent of people accused of murder and 41 percent of murder victims were African American.
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