Murders in New York have dropped to their lowest level in over 40 years, city officials announced on Friday, even as overall crimes increased slightly because of a rise in thefts — a phenomenon based solely on robberies of iPhones and other Apple devices.
There were 414 recorded homicides so far in 2012, compared with 515 for the same period in 2011, city officials said. That is a striking decline from murder totals in the low-2,000s that were common in the early 1990s, and is also below the record low: 471, set in 2009.Interesting, isn't it? To listen to the news, you'd think we were awash in a sea of violence. But, in actuality, violence is down everywhere in the United States, indeed, everywhere in the Western World. And there seems to be no statistical correlation at all between what people traditionally argue for, such as ignoring the 4th Amendment restrictions on search and seizures and gun control, and this phenomenon. On the other hand, our perception that the world is extremely violent has everything to with the media focusing on what violence is around, and on the common erroneous assumption that we must live in the worst of all times (Holscher's Sixth Law of Human Behavior).
Hmmm. . . is that the essence of civilization? That sort of argument is quite fascistic, actually.
“The essence of civilization is that you can walk down the street without having to look over your shoulder,” Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg said.
I'd think the essence of civilization is that you love your neighbor. That's what brings about civilization. There have been societies that had low levels of civil violence that none of us would want to live in. For that matter, societies like Saudi Arabia today are like that, but not too many of us would wish to live in them.
Sign of the cyber times, I guess. Folks who stole Ford automobiles in earlier eras, now still Iphones. Maybe that's progress in and of itself.The Police Department said thefts of Apple products had risen by 3,890, which was more than the overall increase in “major crimes.”
Another telling set of statistics. What does this tell us? Well, about half of all people who are murdered in New York are murdered by a primitive implement. They'd be dead if there were no firearms at all. Probably quite a few of the remaining also would be.Of the 400 murders in 2012, 223 were gunshot victims, 84 victims were stabbed to death, 43 died of blunt trauma and 11 died of asphyxiation. More of the 400 homicides occurred on a Saturday than any other day, followed by early Sunday morning. More occurred between 2 a.m. and 3 a.m. than any other time. People were more likely to be killed outside than in. Nearly 70 percent of the victims had prior criminal arrests, the police said.
People seem to kill each other on the weekend. That seems odd, but it's the time when a lot of people are out and about. So perhaps it isn't particularly when you consider that 70% of the victims had criminal records. Recidivism being what it is, this would suggest that a lot of people get killed because they choose to associate with a criminal element and, in all liklihood, quite a few of them are engaging in some sort of criminal activity.
Again, that suggests the current debate about what to do about "gun deaths" or homicide is probably off the mark, at least as to New York City, and probably everywhere, more murders occur in the big urban areas than anywhere else. It seems a lot of people who have been involved with crime, hang out with criminals, and that can go wrong. There's nothing a person can regulate or ban that's going to address that. On the other hand, overall crime is going down, so these deaths are too, which is a good thing.
Same story. People mad enough to kill, or motivated to kill by greed, revenge or drugs, kill. Seems pretty obvious.The likelihood of being killed by a stranger was slight. The vast majority of the homicides, Mr. Kelly said, grew out of “disputes” between a victim and killer who knew each other.
Left out of this, of course, are events like Newton Connecticut. But if we throw them in, what do we have? That said events are extremely rare, and are almost exclusively committed by somebody with a severe and obvious psychological impairment that we're ignoring as a society.
So, do we think this information will enter our current analysis?
Probably not. It's not what we mistakenly believe, and it's not what a lot of people want to believe.
7 comments:
With 70% of the homicides being criminals themselves, wouldn’t there be a break-even point at some point where we run out of criminals?
Bonjour, mon cher ami!
(Anon and I are good friends).
Actually, your comment in jest raises some more interesting statistical points. It won't, of course, be the case that the New York criminals kill themselves off in increasingly smaller actual numbers at the rate of 70%, because 70% of all New York criminals do not get killed every year. How many criminals New York contains, I know not, but the city had a population of over 8,000,000 in 2010. What percentage of those folks are convicted or unconvicted criminals I don't know, but it would be a fairly small number, but of course much larger than the number who get killed every year. But that tells us some interesting things.
Cont.
First it tells us that, even amongst the criminal element, homicide is rare. Television dramas would have us believe that murder is rampant and that criminal elements are in a full blown state of perpetual warfare. Obviously, they are not. That doesn't make them nice, and it doesn't make a life of crime attractive, but a person isn't anywhere near as likely to be killed doing it, at least in NYC, than the popular imagination would suggest.
Depending upon the crime, I'm sure a person might be likely to die doing it, but getting murdered is another thing entirely.
Cont.
Next the statistical figures, are really revealing.
If 70% of the murder victims had criminal records, that 290 people of the 414. That means that only 124 of the victims did not have criminal records, but the question would then arise, how many of the 124 had criminal associations? If murders in NYC are so strongly associated with a criminal element, and they can only track, logically, those who have been convicted of a crime, as opposed to those engaged in crimes, logic would dictate that some of the 124 were in close association with criminal activity. Of course, some of the 290 may no longer have been. But, ignoring that latter fact, what percentage can we reasonably suppose of the 124 were involved in criminal associations?
Perhaps 70%, but we have no real ability to say that. I'd guess, however, that 50% would not be unwarranted. But let's make it 33%. That would mean that an additional 41 of victims were victims of their unfortunate criminal associations, probably. That takes us to 330 of these unfortunate souls.
Cont.
If we make that assumption then, what could we have done to save the 330? Probably something, but none of the common ideas would suffice. What we usually here about murder is that it can be prevented by:
1. Violating the search and seizure provisions of the Constitution.
2. Gun Control.
Neither of these would work here, unless you had warrantless searches at random based on profiling and mere supposition on a massive scale. Nobody wants that, and the Supreme Court is not going to allow it.
Indeed, 330 people out of a population of 8,000,000 is so small, that quite frankly it's stunning that the number is that low. At that rate, tragedy while each killing is, nothing can really be done, I suspect.
Cont.
But what of the remaining 84? Who were they?
Well, we don't really know, but we do know that most murders in NYC happen on weekends, and that the killer and the victim almost always know each other. We also know, fwiw, that a shockingly high number of killings are by very primitive methods. I'd guess that the percentage of these people killed by very primitive means is higher here than amongst the criminal element, but of course, that's a guess. But who are they.
Well, if we have to take people who know each other, etc., chances are overwhelming that most of these murders are of one partner in an abusive relationship, or of a boyfriend of a girlfriend's child by another man (something I've read of on more than one occasion here), of cheating spouses or of the ill advised paramour, etc. If that's the case, and I'm almost certain that it is, what could we have done about that?
Well, once again, maybe not much, but much of the killing in these categories is social in nature. Social violence is much better understood than it used to be, and I suspect it's better handled in the traditional family, but because there's a lot of people to whom that concept is foreign, it does come up in a situation which in former eras was rare or even illegal. That may mean that, for a percentage of the 84, attention on the dynamics of these relationship is warranted, and perhaps could save some of them. I'd guess that maybe, correctly understood, half of those killings could have been avoided. That is, if the danger of "shacking up" with somebody you don't know well, to you or a child, were better understood, perhaps.
But that's a sort of approach that nobody is suggesting.
Cont.
That then leaves us with a really tiny number that happen some other way. Some horrific act of violence, in a robbery, etc. What can be done about that.
Well, given these numbers, probably not very much. But given the extremely tiny percentage of them, it actually suggests that those who argue for self protection may have a point. The New York City police can't really be expected to be able to protect 40 people out of a population of 8,000,000 in a way that would save them from attack. That'd be absurd. It's a bit scary too, but on the good side of things, events of this type are extremely rare, and folks who simply choose to approach them by ignoring them are taking a statistically valid approach, one of the examples where ignoring a problem isn't really unsound.
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