Crime down in US, up in Europe?

TomF

I don't know if the statistics and facts in this column are true, but if they are, it is amazing. On the other hand, I read somewhere this week that there are 44 murders a day in the US.

JEFF JACOBY (Boston Globe newspaper)
More prisoners, less crime
By Jeff Jacoby, 8/28/2003

MAJOR CRIME in the United States is at a 30-year-low, and The Christian Science Monitor can't understand it.

In a story this week headlined "A drop in violent crime that's hard to explain," the Monitor's Alexandra Marks reported on the latest data from the Bureau of Justice Statistics, an agency of the US Justice Department. According to the bureau, there were 23 million instances of violent and property crime last year -- 48 percent fewer than the 44 million recorded in 1973. (The numbers don't include murder, which is measured separately by the FBI.) In just the past 10 years, the violent crime rate has plummeted by a stunning 54 percent, from 50 crimes per 1,000 US residents in 1993 to 23 per 1,000 in 2002.

The plunge in serious crime is pervasive; it crosses racial, ethnic, and gender lines and shows up in every income group and region. But welcome as they are, the new data are only the latest extension of a downward trend that first appeared in the 1980s, not long after the nationwide crackdown on crime got underway. The dramatic drop in criminal activity followed an equally dramatic boom in prison construction and a sharp surge in incarceration rates. The conclusion is obvious: Stricter punishment has led to lower crime.

But it isn't obvious to the Monitor. Marks's story makes no mention of prisons or prisoners. It claims that criminologists are actually "quick to list the reasons" why crime should be going up, such as the soft economy, cuts in local government spending, and the diversion of police from walking neighborhood beats to guarding public facilities against terror.

The only explanation Marks can offer for the continuing reduction in crime comes from Alfred Blumstein of Carnegie Mellon University, who speculates that post-9/11, Americans may be treating each other more considerately. "The only thing I can think of," Blumstein says, "is some sense of cohesion that's emerging as a result of the terrorist threat."

To be fair, Marks and the Monitor aren't the only ones with a blind spot for the nexis between crime and punishment. In the Associated Press story on the Justice Department data, there is no mention of incarceration until the 11th paragraph. "Some criminologists," the AP grudgingly notes, "say tougher prison sentences and more prisons are key factors."

None of those criminologists is quoted; instead, the point is dismissed as "political rhetoric" by the Justice Policy Institute, an anti-imprisonment advocacy group.

No one disputes that more criminals are being locked up in this country or that they are spending more time behind bars. The Justice Department reported in July that the nation's prison population had reached an all-time high of 2.1 million in 2002, with violent criminals accounting for most of the increase. At year's end, 1 of every 143 US residents was in a state or federal prison or jail.

That is a much higher level of imprisonment than is found in other modern democracies, a fact liberal critics point to it as evidence of American vengefulness. "The price of imprisoning so many Americans is too high . . . 5 to 10 times as high as in many other industrialized nations," admonished The New York Times in a recent editorial. "Locking the door and throwing away the key may make for good campaign sound bites, but it is a costly and inhumane crime policy."

Actually, keeping known criminals locked up is a sensible and effective crime policy. The Times laments that it costs $22,000 per year to keep each inmate in custody, but that is not an exorbitant price for preventing millions of annual murders, rapes, armed robberies, and assaults. The cost to society of a single armed robbery has been estimated at more than $50,000; multiply that by the 12 or 13 attacks the average released prisoner commits per year, and $22,000 per inmate looks like quite a bargain.

While crime has been tumbling in the United States, it has been soaring elsewhere. "Crime has recently hit record highs in Paris, Madrid, Stockholm, Amsterdam, Toronto, and a host of other major cities," Eli Lehrer wrote in The Weekly Standard last year. "In a 2001 study, the British Home Office found violent and property crime increased in the late 1990s in every wealthy country except the United States. American property crime rates have been lower than those in Britain, Canada, and France since the early 1990s, and violent crime rates in the European Union, Australia, and Canada have recently begun to equal and even surpass those in the United States. Even Sweden, once the epitome of cosmopolitan socialist prosperity, now has a crime victimization rate 20 percent higher than the United States."

Not every inmate belongs in prison. Petty drug offenders, for example, are better suited to intense probation and treatment than to jail. But on the whole, America's policy of locking up large numbers of criminals for long terms is doing just what it was meant to do: making us safer. Maybe the Europeans should follow suit.

Jeff Jacoby's e-mail address is jacoby@globe.com.

© Copyright 2003 Globe Newspaper Company.

Turnip

How many crimes in the US go unreported and therefore skew the official crime rate figures? I have read somewhere that in Sweden the crime report rate is very high but the actual number of crimes committed is low.

PH01

need I say more?

TomF

I started thinking again about the US having 44 murders a day. If the US population is 290 million, and if Ireland's is 4 million, then the US might be expected to have 72.5 times more of everything. So if there are 44 murders a day in the US, for Ireland to be as violent/safe, there would be about 17 murders here in a month. That certainly sounds high for Ireland.

It makes me wonder what a statistician could do with a comparison between the urban US and urban Ireland.

Of course with gun control laws in effect here, maybe you would have to compare deaths by kicking in the head or by stabbing to be statistically accurate!

napalm@night

Simple way to stop crime...barcoding everybody is barcoded from birth...dont give me the big brother rubbish...if you dont do anything wrong then you have nothing to hide etc...this barcoding could be used in cars as well for speeding etc...creating a much safer nation where crime is prevented and not reacted to

Imposter

Originally posted by napalm@night
Simple way to stop crime...barcoding everybody is barcoded from birth...dont give me the big brother rubbish...if you dont do anything wrong then you have nothing to hide etc...this barcoding could be used in cars as well for speeding etc...creating a much safer nation where crime is prevented and not reacted to

That'd be a great system, sure it's not as though they can be copied or anything! /me shakes head

napalm@night

copied? at birth you are given this barcode it is a unique number that is defined at birth you would know excatly the last number used...so thus a copy is useless and if a copy did crop up you could track that copy to a location in seconds

gandalf

Originally posted by napalm@night
Simple way to stop crime...barcoding everybody is barcoded from birth...

Yep that would work, of course it would only work properly if you could trust the authorities not to abuse the power it would give them over the population. I think the manipulation over Iraq has proved the Authorities can not be trusted. Therefore this idea is already as dead as a dodo.

Gandalf.

bonkey

And no-one would think of covering theri barcode with some sticky-tape while comitting a crime.

jc

Lemming

Originally posted by bonkey
And no-one would think of covering theri barcode with some sticky-tape while comitting a crime.

jc

Or (as painful as it would be) scratch/peel the skin it's on off?

napalm@night

oh God we are all so smart arent we the barcode is a feckn implant like a transmitter(with something along the lines of gps) thats implanted in your body at birth

Turnip

Anyone who'd be dumb enough to want to be barcoded should be allowed.

Imposter

Originally posted by napalm@night
oh God we are all so smart arent we the barcode is a feckn implant like a transmitter(with something along the lines of gps) thats implanted in your body at birth

/me still shaking head

Turnip

I assume that it would have a little explosive charge, so if you tried to remove it you'd get your arm (and head) blown off.

napalm@night

Well if you wanted to go that far all you need is a remote alarm and as for the stupid enough thing the barcode acts as your passport from country to country around the world it would act as your plane tickets your credit card it becomes a completely integrated device removing the need for passports etc(never mind the fact that i said your implanted with the device at birth)

Wook

Originally posted by Imposter
/me still shaking head

/me shakes my head as well.....

bonkey

Originally posted by napalm@night
oh God we are all so smart arent we the barcode is a feckn implant like a transmitter(with something along the lines of gps) thats implanted in your body at birth

a) Thats not a barcode.
b) Anything that transmits can be jammed. Its not technically that challenging even.

jc

yossarin

retinal scanners (a la Minority report)

/mental image of blowing up eyeballs

napalm@night

bonkey great another lovely gent willing to cast his knowledge upon us thnaks for that:)i really dont care about the about the minor details...the basic fabric and concept of the idea remains and where there is a will there is a way(yes that can go both ways) but it would help prevent 90% of crime and tht would be a pretty good start....

gandalf

And what about the possibility of misuse and abuse of such a system?
How would you ensure that doesn't happen?

I'm just asking you clearly so you don't avoid answering it this time napalm

Gandalf.

Capt'n Midnight

the violent crime rate has plummeted by a stunning 54 percent, from 50 crimes per 1,000 US residents

50 crimes per 1,000 PER YEAR * 70 years life expectancy
=> on average every person would expect to be a victim 3.5 times !

Note: ~ 10% of the US population is coloured
they make up half the prision population
about 11% of black males in the 15-40 bracket are in jail,..

and murder is the leadinbg cause of death in urban black males

anyone watch Oz ? - kinda reminds me of that B/W film "chain gang fugitive"

Am also reminded of Goldfinder - when Bond points out that 50,000 would be kjilled by the VX gas - Auric replies "american motorists kill that many every two years"

also puts sept 11 into perspective - check the stats by I'd bet just like in the Falklands war vandalism rates dropped due to "Patriotism"

sovtek

The article conveniently leaves out the murder rate which is extremely high compared to all of Europe. It also leaves out the fact that the majority of people in prison in America aren't there for violent crime.
While America's crime rate may be going down and Europe's going up. Europe is still lower in violent crime than America.

sixtysix

hope you all read the article in the sunday times a few weeks ago about the american economist who claimed that the drop in the us crime rate had a direct relationship with the increase in the abortion rate.

Xhen

You Euros will concoct any explanation to cling to your shallow cliches about America. Some of you are pathologically incapable of processing new information in order to re-examine the reality of your beliefs. Here's a dose of reality from Mark Steyn: http://www.thevanguard.org/thevanguard/other_writers/steyn.shtml


Norfolk is a remote rural corner of England. It ought to be as peaceful and crime-free as my remote rural corner of New England. But it isn't. Old impressions die hard: Americans still think of Britain as a low-crime country. Conversely, the British think of America as a high-crime country. But neither impression is true. The overall crime rate in England and Wales is 60 percent higher than that in the United States. True, in America you're more likely to be shot to death. On the other hand, in England you're more likely to be strangled to death. But in both cases, the statistical likelihood of being murdered at all is remote, especially if you steer clear of the drug trade. When it comes to anything else, though -- burglary, auto theft, armed robbery, violent assault, rape -- the crime rate reaches deep into British society in ways most Americans would find virtually inconceivable.

I cite those celebrity assaults not because celebrities are more prone to wind up as crime victims than anyone else, but only because the measure of a civilized society is how easily you can insulate yourself from its snarling underclass. In America, if you can make it out of some of the loonier cities, it's a piece of cake, relatively speaking. In Britain, if even a rock star or TV supremo can't insulate himself, nobody can. In any society, criminals prey on the weak and vulnerable. It's the peculiar genius of government policy to have ensured that in British society everyone is weak and vulnerable -- from Norfolk farmers to Tom Cruise's neighbor.

And that's where America is headed if those million marching moms make any headway in Washington: Less guns = more crime. And more vulnerability. And a million more moms being burgled, and assaulted, and raped. I like hunting, but if that were the only thing at stake with guns, I guess I could learn to live without it. But I'm opposed to gun control because I don't see why my neighbors in New Hampshire should have to live the way, say, my sister-in-law does -- in a comfortable manor house in a prosperous part of rural England, lying awake at night listening to yobbo gangs drive up, park their vans, and test her doors and windows before figuring out that the little old lady down the lane's a softer touch.

Between the introduction of pistol permits in 1903 and the banning of handguns after the Dunblane massacre in 1996, Britain has had a century of incremental gun control -- "sensible measures that all reasonable people can agree on." And what's the result? Even when you factor in America's nutcake jurisdictions with the crackhead mayors, the overall crime rate in England and Wales is higher than in all 50 states, even though over there they have more policemen per capita than in the U.S., on vastly higher rates of pay installing more video surveillance cameras than anywhere else in the Western world. Robbery, sex crimes, and violence against the person are higher in England and Wales; property crime is twice as high; vehicle theft is higher still; the British are 2.3 times more likely than Americans to be assaulted, and three times more likely to be violently assaulted. Between 1973 and 1992, burglary rates in the U.S. fell by half. In Britain, not even the Home Office's disreputable reporting methods (if a burglar steals from 15 different apartments in one building, it counts as a single crime) can conceal the remorseless rise: Britons are now more than twice as likely as Americans to be mugged; two-thirds will have their property broken into at some time in their lives. Even more revealing is the divergent character between U.K. and U.S. property crime: In America, just over 10 percent of all burglaries are "hot burglaries" -- committed while the owners are present; in Britain, it's over half. Because of insurance-required alarm systems, the average thief increasingly concludes that it's easier to break in while you're on the premises. Your home-security system may conceivably make your home more safe, but it makes you less so.

Conversely, up here in the New Hampshire second congressional district, there are few laser security systems and lots of guns. Our murder rate is much lower than Britain's and our property crime is virtually insignificant. Anyone want to make a connection? Villains are expert calculators of risk, and the likelihood of walking away uninjured with an $80 television set is too remote. In New Hampshire, a citizen's right to defend himself deters crime; in Britain, the state-inflicted impotence of the homeowner actively encourages it. Just as becoming a drug baron is a rational career move in Colombia, so too is becoming a violent burglar in the United Kingdom. The chances that the state will seriously impede your progress are insignificant.

Now I'm Canadian, so, as you might expect, the Second Amendment doesn't mean much to me. I think it's more basic than that. Privately owned firearms symbolize the essential difference between your great republic and the countries you left behind. In the U.S., power resides with "we, the people" and is leased ever more sparingly up through town, county, state, and federal government. In Britain and Canada, power resides with the Crown and is graciously devolved down in limited doses. To a north country Yankee it's self-evident that, when a burglar breaks into your home, you should have the right to shoot him -- indeed, not just the right, but the responsibility, as a free-born citizen, to uphold the integrity of your property. But in Britain and most other parts of the Western world, the state reserves that right to itself, even though at the time the ne'er-do-well shows up in your bedroom you're on the scene and Constable Plod isn't: He's some miles distant, asleep in his bed, and with his answering machine on referring you to central dispatch God knows where.

These days it's standard to bemoan the "dependency culture" of state welfare, but Britain's law-and-order "dependency culture" is even more enfeebling. What was it the police and courts resented about that Norfolk farmer? That he "took the law into his own hands"? But in a responsible participatory democracy, the law ought to be in our hands. The problem with Britain is that the police force is now one of the most notable surviving examples of a pre-Thatcher, bloated, incompetent, unproductive, over-paid, closed-shop state monopoly. They're about as open to constructive suggestions as the country's Communist mineworkers' union was 20 years ago, and the control-freak tendencies of all British political parties ensure that the country's bloated, expensive county and multi-county forces are inviolable.

The Conservatives' big mistake between 1979 and 1997 was an almost willfully obtuse failure to understand that giving citizens more personal responsibility isn't something that extends just to their income and consumer choices; it also applies to their communities and their policing arrangements. If you have one without the other, you end up with modern Britain: a materially prosperous society in which the sense of frustration and impotence is palpable, and you're forced to live with a level of endless property crime most Americans would regard as unacceptable.

We know Bill Clinton's latest favorite statistic -- that 12 "kids" a day die from gun violence -- is bunk: Five-sixths of those 11.569 grade-school moppets are aged between 15 and 19, and many of them have had the misfortune to become involved in gangs, convenience-store hold-ups, and drug deals, which, alas, have a tendency to go awry. If more crack deals passed off peacefully, that "child" death rate could be reduced by three-quarters. But away from those dark fringes of society, Americans live lives blessedly untouched by most forms of crime -- at least when compared with supposedly more civilized countries like Britain. That's something those million marching moms should consider, if only because in a gun-free America women -- and the elderly and gays and all manner of other fashionable victim groups -- will be bearing the brunt of a much higher proportion of violent crime than they do today. Ask Phil Collins or Ridley Scott or Germaine Greer.

bonkey

Originally posted by napalm@night
bi really dont care about the about the minor details...the basic fabric and concept of the idea remains

No - thats my point. THe basic fabric and concept of hte idea does not remain. The technology does not exist to do what you are requesting, nor is it ever likely to exist. There is no way to determine the difference between a chip which was shielded, and one which is broken, someone going out of coverage, nor broken receiver-stations.

It is technically impossible.

and where there is a will there is a way

There has been a will to solve AIDS since its inception. Perhaps you would be so good as to point me at the cure?

There has been a will to travel through time, and to travel faster than light since we understood the basic concepts of time and the speed of light. Perhaps you would be so good as to point me at the ways that have been found for these as well?

Indeed, people have been saying that there must be a system to effectively end crime since, oooh, at least Victorian times. Your proposal is the next along a long line of failed concepts.

And yet you want me to accept that something I know to be technically impossible is still the solution because "if there's a will there's a way" ???

but it would help prevent 90% of crime and tht would be a pretty good start....

The last time I heard figures like that introduced, it was in relation to blanket-coverage by CCTV systems in urban areas. Perhaps you should read up on the staggering lack of success such systems have had, relative to what they promised before pulling such emotive, but baseless, figures out of the air.

jc

Victor

The Garda Annual Report indicates 52 murders (this does not include all criminal deaths) in 2001, but 86,633 "headline" (excludes most traffic, public disorder and minor drug offences) crimes. There were 326,527 non-headline offences.

I don't think many people loose sleep at night over individual shoplifting indicents (I saw two women being arrested in Superquinn the other day - whats the most expensive thing you could steal in Superquinn?). Putting a weighting on the crimes might be a good way of analyising things and comparing them between countries.

Originally posted by TomF
Crime down in US, up in Europe?

Maybe because quite a few of them are stuck in Washington DC and Baghdad?

The figures given as ~€20,000 to keep someone in prison excludes the potential for that person to contribute to the economy and so under-estimates the cost of having two million people in prison by tens if not hundreds of billions of dollars.