Car thefts and car break-ins represent almost half of all reported crime in Philadelphia. They are the leading types of crime in a majority of neighborhoods. Rates of murder, rape and robbery are twice as high as for the city as a whole, and 15 times as high as in the city's safest neighborhoods. Some other neighborhoods are as safe as some suburbs. Fox Chase, Roxborough and Bustleton, for instance, have a slightly lower rate of violent crime than Springfield Township in Delaware County, Caln Township in Chester County and Burlington Township in South Jersey.
Crowds draw criminals.
Center City and the Delaware Avenue nightclub strip in Fishtown, which are flooded by commuters, tourists or other visitors, have the highest crime rates in the city. Next to Center City, the neighborhoods with the most property crime tend to be those just outside downtown - areas such as Fairmount, Powelton, University City and Queen Village, where affluent professionals live blocks from streets where dollars are scarce. While the city's overall crime rate has been relatively flat in recent years, robberies surged from 1992 through 1996. They were increasingly committed at gunpoint, bucking a national trend. Under pressure from police, prostitutes have been migrating from their former haunts in Center City to neighborhood locales such as Woodland Avenue in Southwest Philadelphia and Kensington Avenue in the lower Northeast.