Comments on: A crime puzzle

By: Bia

Bia — Mon, 11 Jun 2012 07:42:45 +0000

That’s an interesting point. It seems to me that many reports fail to take every possible factor into account. But then again that may be impossible. However I think an inclusion of statistics regarding shootings and stabbings that don’t lead to death is important too, and not overly prohibitive.

By: Tom C.

Tom C. — Thu, 07 Jul 2011 02:28:06 +0000

I wonder what effect the emergence of modern emergency medicine (or for that matter, the availability of modern medical treatment in general) has had on these trends? Shooting or stabbing victims would have been much more likely to have become murder statistics decades past and prior. I wonder if that would flatten out the long term trend somewhat. To what extent are we less murderous vs. less successfully murderous? Other and more varied violent crime rate statistics would be interesting.

By: Why is the American homicide rate declining? « Phil Ebersole's Blog

Why is the American homicide rate declining? « Phil Ebersole's Blog — Tue, 07 Jun 2011 14:01:29 +0000

[...] on A crime puzzle for a report by Claude Fischer in The Public Intellectual, which includes the originals of the [...]

By: E. L. Nickels

E. L. Nickels — Thu, 02 Jun 2011 06:57:58 +0000

So, what are you suggesting? That the fluctuations in the 20th century were just stochastic, or that this applies to larger frames of time. Surely, you concede the major point of the post, that there really is such a thing as a modernization curve?

By: oboe

oboe — Wed, 01 Jun 2011 17:23:00 +0000

Would love, love, love to see a graph comparing western European murder rates to US since the 1700s. Had no idea the US murder rate was so high going back pre-1900.

By: Long Term Trends in Homicide Rates — Marginal Revolution

Long Term Trends in Homicide Rates — Marginal Revolution — Wed, 01 Jun 2011 11:38:43 +0000

[...] is a graph of American homicide rates, the earlier results should be taken with a grain of salt of course, but the trend is clear. N.B. [...]

By: Mary Stevens

Mary Stevens — Tue, 17 May 2011 16:50:57 +0000

Great art for the piece! In reference to the above comment, by Hoyt Drayer, if we added in those deaths caused by legalized abortion or any legalized killing maybe the violent crime rate really isn’t that low for the western world.

By: admin

admin — Tue, 17 May 2011 15:09:45 +0000

Hello Melanie, you might be interested in the other articles in this package on policing and surveillance, including “Something smells like a pig, you say?” and “Jamaicans targeted for deportation.”

By: Melanie Parke

Melanie Parke — Tue, 17 May 2011 13:15:14 +0000

Sadly missing from this article is any reference to the upheavals of racism, the civil rights movement, Jim Crow laws, and the Great Migration. To suggest a blame on the violence between 1960 and 1990 to ” what happened in the black ghettos of the North” is to grossly neglect the violent white mobs which were responsible for initiating most of the deadly and destructive riots in those areas. To summarize “The population grew rapidly just when the well-paying blue-collar jobs for men were disappearing.” fails to observe the systematic racism in real estate laws prohibiting blacks from buying and renting outside of specified neighborhoods to get to the few jobs available to them. Even in the North racism persisted and many jobs were still not available to men or women.

I suggest adding to the reading list:

Family Properties- Race, RealEstate and the Exploitation of Urban America by Beryl Satter

The New Jim Crow, Mass Incarceration in an Age of Colorblindness by Michelle Alexander

The Warmth of Other Suns, The Epic Story of America’s Great Migration by Isabel Wilkerson

By: Hoyt Drayer

Hoyt Drayer — Sun, 08 May 2011 10:12:03 +0000

The latest drop in American violent crime has been shown by the authors of “Freakonomics” (Steven Levitt and Stephen Dubner) to be only partly the result of the above-mentioned factors. Each of those factors only account for a small percentage of the drop in violent crime. The most significant factor that the authors found was Roe vs. Wade. Starting about 20 years after abortion was made legal in the United States is when the crime rate started to drop quickly, thus suggesting that the people most likely to commit violent crimes weren’t being born in the first place anymore…namely…unwanted children. The authors of “Freakonomics” also found the opposite case in Romania, when abortion was banned in 1966 creating a 10% gain in birth rates and a spike in violent crime in the 1980s (when the unwanted babies born after the ban became adults), inspiring the post-revolution government to legalize abortion again in 1989. I am quite surprised this article makes no mention of this correlation.