"The United States has the highest homicide rate of any affluent democracy - nearly four times that of France and the United Kingdom and six times that of Germany. Why? Historians haven't often asked this question. Even historians who like to try to solve cold cases usually cede to sociologists and other social scientists the study of what makes murder rates rise and fall or what might account for why one country is more murderous than another. Only in the nineteen-seventies did historians begin studying homicide in any systematic way. In the United States that effort was led by Eric Monkkonen, who died in 2005, his promising work unfinished. Monkkonen's research has been taken up by Randolph Roth, whose book 'American Homicide' offers a vast investigation of murder in the aggregate and over time. ...

 

"In the archives murders are easier to count than other crimes. Rapes go unreported, thefts can be hidden, adultery isn't necessarily actionable, but murder will nearly always out. Murders enter the historical record through coroners' inquests, court transcripts, parish ledgers, and even tombstones. ... The number of uncounted murders, known as the 'dark figure,' is thought to be quite small. Given enough archival research, historians can conceivably count with fair accuracy the frequency with which people of earlier eras killed one another with this caveat: the farther back you go in time - and the documentary trail doesn't go back much farther than 1300 - the more fragmentary the record and the bigger the dark figure. ...

 

"In Europe, homicide rates, conventionally represented as the number of murder victims per hundred thousand people in the population per year, have been falling for centuries. ... In feuding medieval Europe the murder rate hovered around thirty-five. Duels replaced feuds. Duels are more mannered; they also have a lower body count. By 1500 the murder rate in Western Europe had fallen to about twenty. Courts had replaced duels. By 1700 the murder rate had dropped to five. Today that rate is generally well below two where it has held steady with minor fluctuations for the past century.

 

"In the United States, the picture could hardly be more different. The American homicide rate has been higher than Europe's from the start and higher at just about every stage since. It has also fluctuated, sometimes wildly. During the Colonial period the homicide rate fell, but in the nineteenth century while Europe's kept sinking, the U.S. rate went up and up. In the twentieth century the rate in the United States dropped to about five during the years following the Second World War, but then rose reaching about eleven in 1991. It has since fallen once again to just above five, a rate that is nevertheless twice that of any other affluent democracy. ...

 

"2.3 million people are currently behind bars in the United States. That works out to nearly one in every hundred adults, the highest rate anywhere in the world and four times the world average. ...

 

"[Roth theorizes] that four factors correlate with the homicide rate: faith that government is stable and capable of enforcing just laws; trust in the integrity of legitimately elected officials; solidarity among social groups based on race, religion, or political affiliation; and confidence that the social hierarchy allows for respect to be earned without recourse to violence. When and where people hold these sentiments the homicide rate is low when and where they don't it is high."

 

Author: Jill Lepore

Title: "Rap Sheet"

Publisher: The New Yorker

Date: November 9, 2009

Pages: 79-81

About Us

Delanceyplace is a brief daily email with an excerpt or quote we view as interesting or noteworthy, offered with commentary to provide context. There is no theme, except that most excerpts will come from a non-fiction work, mainly works of history, are occasionally controversial, and we hope will have a more universal relevance than simply the subject of the book from which they came.

 

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Because comparing the entire US to countries that are barely as big as single states is fair.

per capita.

They're murder rates. So compare California to England (California about 40m, England about 60m) and you probably get mostly the same result. Better yet compare Illinois to France (IL 12m to France's 65m) and it still holds. Matter of fact if size and/or population is the issue just count all of western Europe vs. the United States... same thing Yeah there are countries with higher violent crime rates (Mexico, Brazil etc.) but not among the countries that are advanced as us.

Whoa, that font...

Whoa, that font...

 

should have used Comic Sans

should have used Comic Sans

"The United States has the highest homicide rate of any affluent democracy - nearly four times that of France and the United Kingdom and six times that of Germany. Why? Historians haven't often asked this question. Even historians who like to try to solve cold cases usually cede to sociologists and other social scientists the study of what makes murder rates rise and fall or what might account for why one country is more murderous than another. Only in the nineteen-seventies did historians begin studying homicide in any systematic way. In the United States that effort was led by Eric Monkkonen, who died in 2005, his promising work unfinished. Monkkonen's research has been taken up by Randolph Roth, whose book 'American Homicide' offers a vast investigation of murder in the aggregate and over time. ...

 

"In the archives murders are easier to count than other crimes. Rapes go unreported, thefts can be hidden, adultery isn't necessarily actionable, but murder will nearly always out. Murders enter the historical record through coroners' inquests, court transcripts, parish ledgers, and even tombstones. ... The number of uncounted murders, known as the 'dark figure,' is thought to be quite small. Given enough archival research, historians can conceivably count with fair accuracy the frequency with which people of earlier eras killed one another with this caveat: the farther back you go in time - and the documentary trail doesn't go back much farther than 1300 - the more fragmentary the record and the bigger the dark figure. ...

 

"In Europe, homicide rates, conventionally represented as the number of murder victims per hundred thousand people in the population per year, have been falling for centuries. ... In feuding medieval Europe the murder rate hovered around thirty-five. Duels replaced feuds. Duels are more mannered; they also have a lower body count. By 1500 the murder rate in Western Europe had fallen to about twenty. Courts had replaced duels. By 1700 the murder rate had dropped to five. Today that rate is generally well below two where it has held steady with minor fluctuations for the past century.

 

"In the United States, the picture could hardly be more different. The American homicide rate has been higher than Europe's from the start and higher at just about every stage since. It has also fluctuated, sometimes wildly. During the Colonial period the homicide rate fell, but in the nineteenth century while Europe's kept sinking, the U.S. rate went up and up. In the twentieth century the rate in the United States dropped to about five during the years following the Second World War, but then rose reaching about eleven in 1991. It has since fallen once again to just above five, a rate that is nevertheless twice that of any other affluent democracy. ...

 

"2.3 million people are currently behind bars in the United States. That works out to nearly one in every hundred adults, the highest rate anywhere in the world and four times the world average. ...

 

"[Roth theorizes] that four factors correlate with the homicide rate: faith that government is stable and capable of enforcing just laws; trust in the integrity of legitimately elected officials; solidarity among social groups based on race, religion, or political affiliation; and confidence that the social hierarchy allows for respect to be earned without recourse to violence. When and where people hold these sentiments the homicide rate is low when and where they don't it is high."

 

Author: Jill Lepore

Title: "Rap Sheet"

Publisher: The New Yorker

Date: November 9, 2009

Pages: 79-81

About Us

Delanceyplace is a brief daily email with an excerpt or quote we view as interesting or noteworthy, offered with commentary to provide context. There is no theme, except that most excerpts will come from a non-fiction work, mainly works of history, are occasionally controversial, and we hope will have a more universal relevance than simply the subject of the book from which they came.

 

To visit our homepage or sign up for our daily email click here

To view previous daily emails click here.

To sign up for our daily email click here.

Whoa, that font...

yeah, makes you want to shoot someone . . .

They're murder rates. So compare California to England (California about 40m, England about 60m) and you probably get mostly the same result. Better yet compare Illinois to France (IL 12m to France's 65m) and it still holds. Matter of fact if size and/or population is the issue just count all of western Europe vs. the United States... same thing Yeah there are countries with higher violent crime rates (Mexico, Brazil etc.) but not among the countries that are advanced as us.

 

Less consequence for murder here, pretty simple.

Less consequence for murder here, pretty simple.

Yet we're about the only one in that group with the Death Penalty.

Yet we're about the only one in that group with the Death Penalty.

Death Penalty is a tiny, tiny percentage of prosecutions anyway, so that's not really useful to the topic. What he meant I'm sure is that the prison terms people actually serve for murder or manslaughter here end up being way too short, and I tend to agree with him. That has an effect.

 

Death Penalty is a tiny, tiny percentage of prosecutions anyway, so that's not really useful to the topic. What he meant I'm sure is that the prison terms people actually serve for murder or manslaughter here end up being way too short, and I tend to agree with him. That has an effect.

Wait, the prison terms for murder wind up being way too short? Are we breaking this down by race or anything? can you back that up with data, that prison terms for murder in the U.S. are shorter than in other western democracies? With the number of people we have in prison compared to the rest of the world I find that hard to believe without data.

 

(And anyway...the death penalty note is relevant there because one of the main arguments in favor of it is that it is a deterrent to serious crime, aka murder).

Availability/Legality of guns??? I wonder what the method of homicide rates are in the US as compared to other countries.

Edited December 1, 201015 yr by LittleHurt05

Wait, the prison terms for murder wind up being way too short? Are we breaking this down by race or anything? can you back that up with data, that prison terms for murder in the U.S. are shorter than in other western democracies? With the number of people we have in prison compared to the rest of the world I find that hard to believe without data.

 

(And anyway...the death penalty note is relevant there because one of the main arguments in favor of it is that it is a deterrent to serious crime, aka murder).

 

My brother has arrested multiple people here in Chicago with past murder convictions on their records, and I'm not talking about him arresting old men that served 50 years, got paroled, and then got caught again. I'm talking about convicted murderers that did just 7 years time and were paroled.

 

I can't speak about the rest of the worlds sentencing, but I HIGHLY doubt it's as low as ours.

 

I believe last I heard from him that if you commit a murder in Chicago, you have about a 75% chance to get away with it. I assume that means that murder investigations are solving just 25% of them right now. Then when it comes to sentencing, some of the sentences he's seen judges give are so much of a joke that he wonders why they even bothered arresting people.

 

This is the problem with "data". I'm sure "data" shows that if you murder someone there is NO WAY you could be paroled after 7 years in Chicago. Reality is, it happens. Data means nothing when it's massaged the Daley way.

Edited December 1, 201015 yr by Y2HH

Perhaps we wouldn't have to let people out earlier because of the insane overcrowding related to the War on Drugs™. It's time to end that so called war.

Edited December 1, 201015 yr by BigSqwert

My brother has arrested multiple people here in Chicago with past murder convictions on their records, and I'm not talking about him arresting old men that served 50 years, got paroled, and then got caught again. I'm talking about convicted murderers that did just 7 years time and were paroled.

 

I can't speak about the rest of the worlds sentencing, but I HIGHLY doubt it's as low as ours.

 

I believe last I heard from him that if you commit a murder in Chicago, you have about a 75% chance to get away with it. I assume that means that murder investigations are solving just 25% of them right now. Then when it comes to sentencing, some of the sentences he's seen judges give are so much of a joke that he wonders why they even bothered arresting people.

 

This is the problem with "data". I'm sure "data" shows that if you murder someone there is NO WAY you could be paroled after 7 years in Chicago. Reality is, it happens. Data means nothing when it's massaged the Daley way.

Briefly googling for worldwide conviction statistics I found this about the UK.

An investigation shows that conviction rates for many of the most violent crimes have been in freefall since Labour came to power in 1997 and are now well below 10 per cent. The chronically low figures for convictions come at the same time as reports that violent crime is increasing.

 

An analysis of Home Office figures reveals that only 9.7 per cent of all 'serious woundings', including stabbings, that are reported to the police result in a conviction. For robberies the figure falls to 8.9 per cent and for rape, it is 5.5 per cent.

 

The figures show that, 10 years after Tony Blair pledged to be 'tough on crime, tough on the causes of crime', the chances of getting away with rape, robbery, sexual assault or seriously wounding another person have never been higher.

Briefly googling for worldwide conviction statistics I found this about the UK.

 

This can't be possible though, every show on TV, they solve every crime!

Wait, the prison terms for murder wind up being way too short? Are we breaking this down by race or anything? can you back that up with data, that prison terms for murder in the U.S. are shorter than in other western democracies? With the number of people we have in prison compared to the rest of the world I find that hard to believe without data.

 

(And anyway...the death penalty note is relevant there because one of the main arguments in favor of it is that it is a deterrent to serious crime, aka murder).

First, I meant terms SERVED. Second, yeah, in most other countries, people actually convicted of murder serve longer sentences, from what I understand. But really, I meant they are shorter than the should be - I don't care that much what other countries do.

 

Also worth noting, other countries probably have vastly different rates of success for actually prosecuting homicides anyway, some way higher or way lower than here as a %. So number of people in prison isn't a good measure.

 

First, I meant terms SERVED. Second, yeah, in most other countries, people actually convicted of murder serve longer sentences, from what I understand. But really, I meant they are shorter than the should be - I don't care that much what other countries do.

Again, I'll state that this would thoroughly surprise me if it was true. I've spent about 10 minutes looking and found nothing in terms of realistic data. I'm open to being convinced.

I have to believe that our demographic makeup and geography (i.e., very segregated communities) has to account for a lot of this. Do other countries have the gang problems we have, with territorial wars being a major problem?

 

I also read a statistic the other day that children in Afghanistan are safer than children in the City of Chicago. Pretty insane.

I also read a statistic the other day that children in Afghanistan are safer than children in the City of Chicago. Pretty insane.

Again, I'm going to call BS on this until you back it up. We heard this over and over on Iraq...the problem was that they were just counting "Total murders" and not adjusting for per capita.

Again, I'm going to call BS on this until you back it up. We heard this over and over on Iraq...the problem was that they were just counting "Total murders" and not adjusting for per capita.

 

Got my cities mixed up, though he did say western cities. And it's safer from violent crime, not necessarily life in general, which i should have clarified earlier.

 

http://www.suntimes.com/news/world/2916220...nKids23.article

 

 

Got my cities mixed up, though he did say western cities. And it's safer from violent crime, not necessarily life in general, which i should have clarified earlier.

 

http://www.suntimes.com/news/world/2916220...nKids23.article

I bet even if you count violent crime Kabul still wins by a lot...they probably just don't get counted. There's not a single precise number/statistic presented in that article, you'll note.

It seems that my employer has blocked any searches that involve the term murder as tasteless. IIRC from my Forensic Psychology class of a couple years ago, most US murders were not premeditated, calculated acts. They were crimes of passion, or gang violence that escalated. The theory is the potential punishment has no bearing on a person's actions when they see a spouse cheating or that f***er won't let them watch The Simpsons. Toss in alcohol and drug impaired murders and you have a large percentage of the murders. Also, again without being able to search, there seemed to be little coorelation from nations that have the dealth penalty and those without. Even looking at states, Texas, the #1 executioner state, has a higher murder rate than most states. And Sparky in Huntsville gets used a few times per month.