Repost from the old site.
From this great link, we learn many facts about crime that turn conventional knowledge on its head. Logic about crime rates in the US. First of all, the crime rate rise from 1965-present was not the first such major rise in this nation.
Similarly, from 1900-1930, the crime rate rose sharply in America, then dropped sharply from 1930-1960, then rose sharply again from 1960-1980, then dropped sharply in recent years. But you would never know this to listen to public discourse.
All we know is that crime skyrocketed around 1960 and has remained at astronomical levels ever since. The old days, pre-1960, were times of almost no crime in a gloriously White America. This is a smoking pack of lies.
Crime rates do differ by race and sex, and to discuss this is not necessarily racist in the least. The Black homicide rate is 8X the White rate, and the male rate is 10X the female rate.
One thing we know is that the homicide rate is much higher today than in the good old days, right? Wrong. Homicide was higher from 1910-1940, in the days of glorious and safe White America, than it is today, often much higher.
What about robbery? It is true that robbery tripled between 1965-1975, remained high until 1991, and then dropped 40% to about a 1970 level.
Surely the death penalty could fight this horrible crime wave, right? Wishful thinking. Executions were very high from 1910-1950 but so was crime for much of that period.
More money for more cops will surely do the trick, right? Spending on crime fighting efforts has gone up almost 16 times per capita since 1900, but there has not been much of an effect on crime.
Race and sex combine to produce the most extreme outliers in the crime rate. Black males are 106 times (!!) more likely to be locked up than White females. If you want to feel safe, hang around White women.
As noted above, the crime rate is much lower than during 1910-1940, but we are locking up 6 times as many people as we were then per capita. So what gives? Why lock up so much people when the crime rate is so much lower, especially since 1910-1940 is hardly regarded as a time of terrifying crime in the US?
Surely violent crime is far higher than in the past, though, right, and so many more prisoners now are locked up for violent crime than in the past? Think again. Violent crime is the same – 25% of prisoners were locked up for violent crime in 1910 and 25% are locked up now.
One salient fact is that juvenile crime has risen dramatically – the juvenile rate for violent crime has gone up 4X and the rate for property crime has gone up 2.5X over a century. Yet the current juvenile crime rate is only 30% higher than 1957.
The list of statistics above would seem to not only smash many of our cherished myths about crime, but is also frustrating in that it seems to pour cold water on many of our proposed solutions to crime. We can see why criminology is something of a round file for social science theory. After studying it intensively for decades, so much of crime still seems to defy scientific analysis and explication.
The only way that these statistics make any kind of sense is if we conceive of America as always have a lot of crime and violent crime for the past 100 years. This is something that the Europeans and Asians know well. Sometimes the rates go up, sometimes they go down, but they are usually much higher than rates in much of Europe and Asia.
There is something criminogenic and violent about US society, and there has been for some time. Violent crime rates among both Whites and Blacks were very high in the South all through the 1800′s and remained high for both races through the past century.
Lots of booze and guns, an honor culture, primitive attitudes towards women, a cultivation of stupidity and fundamentalist brainrot contributed to a Stroke Belt of homicidal hotheads.
I just got through watching most of Yukmouth Presents: United Ghettos of America, Volume 2 , a documentary about rappers. Check it out (if you don’t mind the porn that is) if you want to see the rot that is rap music – a celebration of everything that is coarse, stupid, sickening, dangerous, amoral, sociopathic and depraved about Ghetto Black Culture.
Watching that video, I do not expect the crime rate in the US to move towards Japanese levels anytime soon.
“the crime rate is much lower than during 1910-1940, but we are locking up 6 times as many people as we were then per capita. So what gives? Why lock up so much people when the crime rate is so much lower….?”
Maybe the crime rate is lower because so many people are locked up.
Or maybe prison is just more profitable than ever. If less people are committing violent crimes, lawmakers will create crime from nothing like magicians.
Ihttp://core.ecu.edu/soci/juskaa/SOCI2110/Prison_Industrial_Complex.htm
…..like banks create money….
…seriously though, from 1980-2003, the violent crime rate remained constant or declined. But in that period, public policy changes meant that people were locked up for longer. That’s one of the main reasons that the prison population has increased. If violent criminals were locked up for longer, they weren’t back on the streets re-offending and that would show in the stats. I don’t know if it would make a significant difference to the stats but it might actually reduce the violent crime rate or stop it from rising. I’d have to work it all out.
plus if more people are being locked up (as well as locked up for longer), they aren’t on the streets committing crime. I’m guessing that as incarceration rate increases, crime rate decreases because a lot of criminals are off the streets.
Maybe more criminals are being caught nowadays??
“the crime rate is much lower than during 1910-1940, but we are locking up 6 times as many people as we were then per capita. So what gives? Why lock up so much people when the crime rate is so much lower….?”
You might find this answer more productive: the war on drugs.