https://mises.org/wire/fbi-us-...ide-rate-51-year-low





some discussion of Mexico-US border stats

It would be much higher if only the inner cities crowd would not hold the guns sideways and emt's would not do such a great job.

What's with Nunavut?

There was one person shot last year and that reduced the population by 20%...

Now match the murder rate graph with the prison population graph. It's almost a perfect inverse. This shows locking up criminals really does work.

This will not be picked up by any MSM.

quote:

Originally posted by BBMW:
Now match the murder rate graph with the prison population graph. It's almost a perfect inverse. This shows locking up criminals really does work.

No, that does not show causation. It shows correlation. Further work would be needed to show that there is a causal relationship.

But, for whatever reason, violent crime is down quite notably over the last 40 to 50 years. There was a little bump in the murder rate over the last tow or three years, but it is still much lower than it was historically.

It would be a hell of a coincidence that just when the country got tough on crime, ditched a lot of the sixties touchy feely attitude about criminals, and started aggressively enforcing the law meting out significant punishments, that the murder rate imploded.

quote:

Originally posted by jhe888:

quote:

Originally posted by BBMW:
Now match the murder rate graph with the prison population graph. It's almost a perfect inverse. This shows locking up criminals really does work.

No, that does not show causation. It shows correlation. Further work would be needed to show that there is a causal relationship.

But, for whatever reason, violent crime is down quite notably over the last 40 to 50 years. There was a little bump in the murder rate over the last tow or three years, but it is still much lower than it was historically.

I know the topic is verboten on this forum but there is some speculation that the legalization of of abortion correlates with the decrease in crime.

It became legal in 1973 and about the time the kids would have reached adulthood the crime rate starts to decrease.

And while murder rates have declined, felonious assault, aggravated assault and attempted murder rates have risen drastically.
If you live, its no longer murder. Thanks to better medical care.

quote:

Originally posted by BBMW:
It would be a hell of a coincidence that just when the country got tough on crime, ditched a lot of the sixties touchy feely attitude about criminals, and started aggressively enforcing the law meting out significant punishments, that the murder rate imploded.

Well, we didn't really have a touchy-feely attitude in the '60s. Or for the early '70s.

But that is the classic mistake of confusing correlation with causation. It is an interesting confluence of facts, but you cannot conclude the two are related without further research.

As noted some have noted, and even researched a link between abortion and crime rates. Others have done the same for the elimination of lead exposure in the '70s, with some indication that there is causation there.

You remember the old joke about someone thinking that because the rooster crowed in the morning that he made the sun rise? You cannot assume that correlation and causation go together. You have to dig deeper, especially with such complex social phenomena. Maybe increased incarceration contributes to less crime. Maybe that contribution is large and maybe it is small. And maybe they aren't related, no matter how appealing and "obvious" the link seems.

quote:

Originally posted by YooperSigs:
And while murder rates have declined, felonious assault, aggravated assault and attempted murder rates have risen drastically.
If you live, its no longer murder. Thanks to better medical care.

Most of this can be attributed to improved medical care

Lots of scientific improvements have happened to catch criminals in the last two decades.
DNA, video cameras everywhere, cell phones carried by most people, legal gun ownership and carrying, etc.
Jailing criminals has likely helped too but it is such a complex subject with so many moving parts that it's hard to draw definite conclusions.