WASHINGTON -- Edward Bedenbaugh III was about to start a job as a youth-violence counselor working in inner-city schools, mediating disputes before they escalated into lethal exchanges. He was celebrating his appointment at a nightspot in an upscale part of the nation's capital when he was shot in the back five times. The 29-year-old man died the next morning, April 17, two days before his oldest daughter's 10th birthday.

He was one of 14 people, all African-Americans, to die in a 13-day spasm of violence. That surge was enough to help make this April, with 18 murders, 20% deadlier than April 2007.

The grim run hasn't been limited to Washington. Several cities around the country, including Chicago and Philadelphia, endured similar mini murder waves during the same period, leading criminologists to worry whether this signifies the beginning of a trend -- or evidence of an unnoticed one.

What is most troubling to people who study crime is that there is no simple explanation for this rise. There are the usual reasons -- the economy, poverty, gangs and crews, and the availability of firearms, but there is one that has been little explored: the migration of the prison culture back to the streets. As nearly 700,000 convicts a year return home, some may be bringing prison culture with them.

"This is part of the price we're paying for 20 years of mass incarceration," said David Kennedy, director of the Center for Crime Prevention and Control at New York City's John Jay College of Criminal Justice.

While he acknowledges that the economy and demographics might have a role in some cases, they don't explain the current spate of crime, which he calls "God-awful serious."

He said the violence also turns on a central currency within prisons: respect. Disrespect can lead to lethal responses at the slightest provocation. In one recent case, police suspect that a victim simply strayed into the wrong neighborhood, which can be seen as disrespectful. Mr. Kennedy said there are now many people on the streets who live by a prison code, as the prison population has ballooned to 2.2 million from 330,000 in 1980.

The cycle of violent retribution can be seen at the funerals of the younger victims, where, in some cases, the families of the slain beseech the attendees to refrain from revenge.

The result is that while the overall murder rate has dropped for years, it has been inching up in the black community in recent years. African-Americans make up only 13% of the nation's population, but more are killed in the U.S. than any other racial group, accounting for 49% of all murder victims, according to Federal Bureau of Investigation statistics.

A county medical examiner who has analyzed all the available data on his murder victims thinks that education -- or the lack of it -- is a vital component. O'dell Owens, the Hamilton County medical examiner in Cincinnati, studied the death certificates of his victims and found that over a five-year period, 60% of them had quit school.

"The homicides occur in neighborhoods where folks don't finish high school," Mr. Owens said. "If you can't make the transition from learning to read to reading to learn, you're done."

Jack Levin, head of Northeastern University's Brudnick Center on Violence and Conflict, believes the troubled economy indirectly affects crime levels. In tough economic times, "one of the first things to go are policies and programs for fighting crimes," he said. Combine that with rising desperation and frustration, especially in the less affluent areas of society, and violence is the outcome.

Police also blame a rise in gang violence, as well as domestic incidents. But some, like James Pasco, executive director of the Fraternal Order of Police, said the surge is also the result of changing age demographics, particularly the 18-to-25-year-old group. "That is the adult age group most prone to violence," and it's growing, he said. But "it remains to be seen if the uptick will continue."

Mr. Bedenbaugh was going to be one of the counselors who tried to slow the violence. The father of two had been a basketball coach and youth volunteer at LifeStarts Youth and Community Services while also working with his father in a landscaping business.

His boss at LifeStarts, Curtis Watkins, said Mr. Bedenbaugh was known for his ability to reach even the hard-core teenagers in the neighborhood. "You have to have people who can relate to these kids, who can give them a vision beyond their neighborhood and the 'hood," said Mr. Watkins, whose own son's 2006 murder has never been solved. "Ed could do that. He had that magic."

What sparked the argument is unclear. According to court papers, Mr. Bedenbaugh tried to defuse the situation by refusing to go outside with the would-be gunman to continue the argument. The gunman had hidden in an alley nearby and had to wait for an hour, pacing back and forth, according to witnesses. When Mr. Bedenbaugh finally came out, he shot him in the back.

An arrest has been made, but that is of little consolation for the family, said his sister, Latia Davis, 27. She works a half-block from where her brother was fatally wounded, and her daughter was born this year in the hospital where he died. "He wasn't some guy out there selling drugs or on the streets," she says. "This guy doesn't know what he took." The evidence, she said, is in the hundreds of people who came to pay their respects at his services.

Mr. Bedenbaugh was killed in an area better known for lawyers and lobbyists. Albert Herring, the executive assistant U.S. attorney for the District of Columbia, says the location holds a lesson for those who think that violent crime is confined to certain neighborhoods. "The problem that affects everybody, whether they appreciate it or not, is this: Crime migrates," he said.

--Louise Radnofsky contributed to this article.

Write to Gary Fields at gary.fields@wsj.com

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