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Kansas City was named one of America's most dangerous cities. There's more to the story

Dr. Marijana Kotlaja and a team of researches took photographs of Kansas City neighborhoods to measure physical signs of neighborhood distress, which are a condition of several areas with higher incidences of crime.
Marijana Kotlaja
Dr. Marijana Kotlaja and a team of researches took photographs of Kansas City neighborhoods to measure visual indicators of neighborhood distress, which are often a condition of areas with higher incidences of crime.

Kansas City was recently dubbed the eighth most dangerous city in America. Local experts want residents to better understand the conditions that drive violent crime — and what will fix them.

2023 was Kansas City’s deadliest year, with 185 homicides. Then, it was ranked eighth on a list of the most dangerous U.S. cities, based on FBI crime reports.

“There’s a statistic that follows the homicide rate, right?” said Dr. Seth Fallik, the chair and associate professor at University of Missouri-Kansas City’s department of criminal justice and criminology department.

“The reality is… that was a community member that was lost. And that qualitative effort to understand that is lost sometimes in a numeric value.”

Dr. Marijana Kotlaja, a senior associate at Justice System Partners, emphasized that understanding the conditions that make crime more likely to occur means we can create solutions that target those conditions.

“It’s not necessarily bad people living in certain areas, because we know that the same locations are going to stay crime hotspots, even if residents are moving in and out,” Kotlaja said.

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To find out what exactly those conditions are, Kotlaja and a team of researchers talked to residents in several Kansas City neighborhoods.

One of the team’s objectives is to find the local areas with the least social cohesion, in order to develop targeted interventions.

“We know that if there is high social cohesion, there’s actually going to be lower crime in that area,” regardless of income level, Kotlaja said.

These grassroots efforts, along with city initiatives like focused deterrence, which Fallik studies the success of, could make a sustained impact in reducing the city’s violent crime rates.

Kotlaja expects that the results of the study will be published in October.

  • Dr. Seth Fallik, chair & associate professor, Department of Criminal Justice and Criminology, University of Missouri-Kansas City
  • Dr. Marijana Kotlaja, senior associate, Justice System Partners

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When I host Up To Date each morning at 9, my aim is to engage the community in conversations about the Kansas City area’s challenges, hopes and opportunities. I try to ask the questions that listeners want answered about the day’s most pressing issues and provide a place for residents to engage directly with newsmakers. Reach me at steve@kcur.org or on Twitter @stevekraske.
Georgia Kerrigan is the 2025 summer intern for Up To Date. Email her at gkerrigan@kcur.org
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