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Crime Declines, Fear Remains
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Sid9
Jun 19, 2012, 10:19:23 AM6/19/12
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Crime Declines, Fear Remains
By Matt Pearce
June 18, 2012, 6:00 a.m.
Forget, for a moment, everything you think you know about the crime rate.
Because it's probably wrong.
The United States is almost safer than ever, according to the latest
statistics from the FBI's Uniform Crime Reporting Program, the nation's
bible for crime stats.
Despite the recession, despite joblessness, despite guns and drugs and Al
Qaeda, murder, rape, robbery and assault dropped 4% in 2011.
That continues a long fall from violent crime's high in the early 1990s - a
plunge that continues to astound everybody. Property crimes have dipped for
nine years straight too. Higher crime is typically associated with hard
economic times, but the grinding economy hasn't stopped the drop.
Experts' explanations veer all over the place: We have more cops, and new
technology and the data-driven policing renaissance have made them better at
policing. Crime is perpetrated mostly by young people, and America's
population is, on average, getting older. The crack epidemic has petered
out. More abortions have meant fewer dadless troublemakers. (Not kidding;
that's a real theory.)
Oh, and we have more criminals in jail than anybody else in the world.
Which is perhaps one reason you shouldn't trust these numbers as much as you
might.
"Statistics are notoriously slippery, but the figures that suggest that
violence has been disappearing in the United States contain a blind spot so
large that to cite them uncritically, as the major papers do, is to collude
in an epic con," Christopher Glazek wrote in a recent issue of n+1 magazine.
"Uncounted in the official tallies are the hundreds of thousands of crimes
that take place in the country's prison system, a vast and growing
residential network whose forsaken tenants increasingly bear the brunt of
America's propensity for anger and violence."
Prison rapes, murders, assaults - "Crime has not fallen in the United
States," Glazek writes. "It's been shifted."
His article - titled "Raise the Crime Rate" - made the equally provocative
suggestion that the cost of safer cities has not been worth the hidden costs
of uprooting nonviolent offenders from their homes and their families to
hide them away in prisons, from where they are more likely to return to the
streets jobless and to become repeat offenders.
At which point they return to the miseries of prison, and the cycle
continues.
"You cannot relieve the suffering of the prison population without
increasing safety risks for the rest of us," wrote Glazek, a senior editor
at the magazine. "And increasing those risks, from a moral standpoint, is
the right thing to do."
If this sounds controversial, it is, even though the U.S. Supreme Court
has weighed in.
In 2011, for instance, it ruled that California had to release tens of
thousands of inmates because crowded prisons had caused "needless suffering
and death" that amounted to cruel and unusual punishment. Not a popular
position to take, especially in the Golden State.
At the same time, America's police forces have become increasingly
militarized. In many cities, public safety budgets are often the last to be
cut, despite police spending increasing 445% since 1982, according to the
Justice Policy Institute.
One explanation might be that American voters don't realize how safe they
are.
We are, for some reason, obsessed with rankings and take a particular shine
each year to reports using the FBI's data to rank the "Most Dangerous Cities
in America" - despite the FBI's annual, insistent, begging requests not to
do so, if just for accuracy's sake. Cities' reporting methods and accuracy
vary.
But the gap between perception and reality when it comes to crime has never
quite closed. In 1994, when violent crime was at or near its peak, 43% of
Americans told Gallup they'd be afraid to walk home at night. In 2010, that
number had only dipped to 37% - despite statistics showing violent crime had
plunged by two-thirds.
Look at TV - and not just at CBS' wildly popular, crime-obsessed prime-time
lineup.
A 2004 study by Ronald Weitzer and Charis E. Kubrin found that people who
watched local news - with its oft-sensational, if-it-bleeds-it-leads
attitude - were more afraid of crime than those who didn't.
And in a competitive media marketplace of television, newspapers and the
Web, you might not be surprised to see greater focus on always-popular crime
news despite the nation's dropping crime rate.
Meaning it's increasingly possible that what you see is becoming less and
less representative of what life is actually like.
Don't believe all this? Then ask yourself: How many people will read this
story versus the one about the Miami face-eater?
Which headline will you remember most?
Violent crime in America nears its lowest point in generations.
Florida police kill naked man as he chews on another man's face.
The defense rests - though it probably shouldn't.
--
Ziggy's law, "For every complicated problem there's usually a simple
solution and its always wrong!"
By Matt Pearce
June 18, 2012, 6:00 a.m.
Forget, for a moment, everything you think you know about the crime rate.
Because it's probably wrong.
The United States is almost safer than ever, according to the latest
statistics from the FBI's Uniform Crime Reporting Program, the nation's
bible for crime stats.
Despite the recession, despite joblessness, despite guns and drugs and Al
Qaeda, murder, rape, robbery and assault dropped 4% in 2011.
That continues a long fall from violent crime's high in the early 1990s - a
plunge that continues to astound everybody. Property crimes have dipped for
nine years straight too. Higher crime is typically associated with hard
economic times, but the grinding economy hasn't stopped the drop.
Experts' explanations veer all over the place: We have more cops, and new
technology and the data-driven policing renaissance have made them better at
policing. Crime is perpetrated mostly by young people, and America's
population is, on average, getting older. The crack epidemic has petered
out. More abortions have meant fewer dadless troublemakers. (Not kidding;
that's a real theory.)
Oh, and we have more criminals in jail than anybody else in the world.
Which is perhaps one reason you shouldn't trust these numbers as much as you
might.
"Statistics are notoriously slippery, but the figures that suggest that
violence has been disappearing in the United States contain a blind spot so
large that to cite them uncritically, as the major papers do, is to collude
in an epic con," Christopher Glazek wrote in a recent issue of n+1 magazine.
"Uncounted in the official tallies are the hundreds of thousands of crimes
that take place in the country's prison system, a vast and growing
residential network whose forsaken tenants increasingly bear the brunt of
America's propensity for anger and violence."
Prison rapes, murders, assaults - "Crime has not fallen in the United
States," Glazek writes. "It's been shifted."
His article - titled "Raise the Crime Rate" - made the equally provocative
suggestion that the cost of safer cities has not been worth the hidden costs
of uprooting nonviolent offenders from their homes and their families to
hide them away in prisons, from where they are more likely to return to the
streets jobless and to become repeat offenders.
At which point they return to the miseries of prison, and the cycle
continues.
"You cannot relieve the suffering of the prison population without
increasing safety risks for the rest of us," wrote Glazek, a senior editor
at the magazine. "And increasing those risks, from a moral standpoint, is
the right thing to do."
If this sounds controversial, it is, even though the U.S. Supreme Court
has weighed in.
In 2011, for instance, it ruled that California had to release tens of
thousands of inmates because crowded prisons had caused "needless suffering
and death" that amounted to cruel and unusual punishment. Not a popular
position to take, especially in the Golden State.
At the same time, America's police forces have become increasingly
militarized. In many cities, public safety budgets are often the last to be
cut, despite police spending increasing 445% since 1982, according to the
Justice Policy Institute.
One explanation might be that American voters don't realize how safe they
are.
We are, for some reason, obsessed with rankings and take a particular shine
each year to reports using the FBI's data to rank the "Most Dangerous Cities
in America" - despite the FBI's annual, insistent, begging requests not to
do so, if just for accuracy's sake. Cities' reporting methods and accuracy
vary.
But the gap between perception and reality when it comes to crime has never
quite closed. In 1994, when violent crime was at or near its peak, 43% of
Americans told Gallup they'd be afraid to walk home at night. In 2010, that
number had only dipped to 37% - despite statistics showing violent crime had
plunged by two-thirds.
Look at TV - and not just at CBS' wildly popular, crime-obsessed prime-time
lineup.
A 2004 study by Ronald Weitzer and Charis E. Kubrin found that people who
watched local news - with its oft-sensational, if-it-bleeds-it-leads
attitude - were more afraid of crime than those who didn't.
And in a competitive media marketplace of television, newspapers and the
Web, you might not be surprised to see greater focus on always-popular crime
news despite the nation's dropping crime rate.
Meaning it's increasingly possible that what you see is becoming less and
less representative of what life is actually like.
Don't believe all this? Then ask yourself: How many people will read this
story versus the one about the Miami face-eater?
Which headline will you remember most?
Violent crime in America nears its lowest point in generations.
Florida police kill naked man as he chews on another man's face.
The defense rests - though it probably shouldn't.
--
Ziggy's law, "For every complicated problem there's usually a simple
solution and its always wrong!"
Oglethorpe
Jun 19, 2012, 6:09:11 PM6/19/12
to
"Sid9" <sid9@ bellsouth.net> wrote in message
news:jrq1pd$pri$1...@dont-email.me...
goes the liew about guns causing crime.
BeamMeUpScotty
Jun 19, 2012, 7:52:17 PM6/19/12
to
proof is there for any Liberal to see, and if they want a LIBERAL GUN
FREE PLACE TO LIVE, go live in a prison.
--
*He has the most who is most content with the least* -Diogenes-
-Kum bay ya- ☠
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