If you've been to the bad section of one city, you've pretty much been to all bad sections everywhere. Time and again we stopped gangbangers and similar folk, who wore the same garbage-baggish loose clothes that all bangers and most teenagers seem to like. LA, Denver, Chicago, Washington-same culture, same English, same guns, drugs, attitudes, same everything. There's not a lot of work for high school dropouts who can't read, and have a police record that would frighten a New York alley cat. Not to mention work habits that include shooting people they don't like.
People talk about the connection between poverty and crime.
I seldom see poverty. Most of the houses were perfectly livable middle-class places. We went through the projects, Nickerson Gardens, Imperial Gardens, Jordan Downs. Except for the crime, I would have no hesitation about living in any of them. I didn't get inside any of them, but I've been in just lots of homes in similar sections of other cities.