The influx of evacuees from New Orleans after Hurricane Katrina had slight impact on crime rates in the cities that took them in, said by the researchers.

5 criminologists who examined crime rates in the 3 cities found a spike in homicide also robbery in Houston immediately after Hurricane Katrina and in homicide in Phoenix, the Houston Chronicle reports. However they found no significant increase in other crimes, and murder and robbery rates soon declined yet again.

Houston grew by 7 % as roughly 240,000 people from New Orleans evacuated there. About 30,000 people came to San Antonio and 6,000 to Phoenix.

Mr. Sean Varano, a criminologist at Roger Williams University in Rhode Island, said he and the other researchers wanted to check on anecdotal information on huge increases in crime.

“One of our takeaway messages is if the evacuees were legally responsible for this crime wave, we would have expected to see a much broader range of crime to increase besides murder and robbery,” Sean Varano said. “This is not quite the effect the local people claimed on the ground there.”