The 1970s saw a strong uptick in violent crime, and as the 1980s got underway that trend showed few signs of stopping. TIME’s cover story looked at the statistics to show the correlation between violence and robbery in cities both large and small, detailing stories of crime from Los Angeles to Birmingham, Ala.:
Increasingly, the vast majority of America’s law-abiding citizens are being held hostage to the irrational acts of a relatively small cadre of career criminals. Declares New York Police Commissioner Robert McGuire: “Street crime is the most serious thing we face today. It has an enormous impact on the quality of people’s lives. It determines where we walk, what time we walk, even whether we play bingo at night and whether we go to the theater.”