Welcome to the Inquiry, I'm Sharma Encosia.

Each week, one question, four experts and an answer.

It's 2020, the last day of May, a Sunday.

One city in America is experiencing its deadliest day in decades.

Multiple murders are happening on its streets.

The victims include students, a man who's there to visit relatives,

a father on the way to pay a phone bill, and others caught up in various disputes between rival gangs.

18 people are killed over the day and during that night.

Just weeks before, the newly appointed police superintendent challenged his department to keep the annual murder total to under 300 people.

That hadn't happened there since 1957.

By the end of the year, police figures reveal 769 homicides of 55% increase on the previous year.

That's much higher than the 271 reported in Italy, which has a population of 60 million.

Chicago's population is less than 3 million.

So this week we're asking, why are the murder rates in Chicago so high?

Part 1, a long road.

Chicago is really made up of, it's called a city of neighborhoods.

Next of all, San spent 20 years in Chicago researching the causes and effects of violent crime in the city.

He's now dean and professor at the Faculty of Social Work at the University of Toronto in Canada.

He says there are many past and present reasons why the city has reached this point and geography is a crucial one.

Under north side, you have primarily white individuals and on the south side, you have primarily black Chicago and ins.

And on the west side, high concentrations of Hispanics as well as blacks.

As well as areas being split along racial lines, dark divisions of wealth also exist within these neighborhoods.

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