Quote:The totals are lower and the statistics look better, but the number of incidents of certain types are increasing. In the city were I live, you can attribute most murders to three sources; a. Drug turf wars, b. Domestic violence (esp. under the influence of drugs), and c. sociopathic violence. I see that categories a. and b. are decreasing, but c. seems to be increasing. We can disrupt the drug trade and target the trafficking of substances that are most lethal to the community(eg. Meth) which has a dual impact on violence. I believe that as long as our society embraces intoxication as entertainment we will have a built in level of violence, and also deaths due to driving while intoxicated. Anecdotally, I sense there is an increase in the last two years in robbery and burglary.
So, we are talking about the incidence of sociopathic violence randomly directed which would include some gang murders (like cold blooded initiation killings), school shootings, rape, and other random murders by seemingly detached or insane people. There was a double murder here in Minneapolis a couple years ago, where three young adults robbed two men at gunpoint having them kneel, then shot them in the back of the head. It was just cold. That qualifies in my book as deranged.
Here is a site I just googled looking at trends in violent crime over time; Josephson Institute - Center for Youth Ethics
Interesting, especially for its harsh indictment of the spread of firearms. They clearly believe that guns are bad, and their prevalence accounts of a huge number of deaths in the US relative to other countries.
However, only one of those statistics has a comparative component showing a worsening over time. (There are a couple that say "have not declined since", but that means things are staying the same, not getting worse.) That would be the claim that, in 1933, 75% of deaths between 15-19 were natural causes, whereas in 1993 80% of deaths for that bracket were murders. The rest of the statistics would have to be compared to an equivalent series of data to support a claim that these numbers are up from earlier times.
There are a few issues with that. First is the timing: 1933 was during the depression, and 1993 was during the crack boom. So, in the first instance, "natural causes" like disease and starvation would be up, whereas in 1993, murders would be way up. The 10 years after 1993 were not as violent.
The other issue is that the data is presented as a % of deaths. It is possible to move from the first number to the second with no change whatsoever in the murder rate, simply through improvements in the survival of youth. The polio vaccine would be one such applicable example, I suspect there are others. Perhaps that does not account for all of it, but it would be interesting to know how much it does account for, which is not said.
I don't buy the case. You're right that letting people out of institutions for the insane has had a negative impact, but that's not a morality issue, but a problem with how we deal with insanity, which I agree is a problem. Alcohol abuse is also a serious problem leading to an inflated rate of violent crime, but then, it has always been a serious problem. I don't think it's getting worse. I'm also not terribly convinced of the power of moral crusades to reduce these problems. Prohibition leads to speakeasies, and education programs that emphasize abstaining from drugs and alcohol don't seem to have much impact. People like their vices, always have, and probably always will.
Edit: Interesting set of numbers for the youth element. Also, shows the flip side of using the early 1990s as a baseline for murder rates: comparisons made with later dates show strong declines.
http://www.safeyouth.org/scripts/facts/statistics.asp
-Jester
(Tom Selleck, nice!)