Speculation over why US crime stats are recording falls
 

Less crack rock. Or, I should say, less interest in using crack.

Yes.

If you had mentioned the # 2 in your post, there wouldn't have been that issue. A common courtesy.

Excuse me? Why would I need to?

Less crack usage. I said it. What's the point of me specifying #2?

I see how it is. I do something it's wrong. Everybody else does the exact same thing and it's all dandy. Real logical place this Apolyton is. It's the ****ing twilight zone.

Was it my responsibility to specify #2? Why? How is that common courtesy? Is Bugs tabulating our responses and presenting them in numeric form makes his data gathering easier?

I like #9. Take that Jack Thompson!

#10 is a load of crap. See http://apolyton.net/showthread.php/1...he-****-Canada

I also think the playing of video games (I'm not saying what number that is on purpose) plays a role as well because it occupies enough young people instead of them hanging on the corner and getting into trouble. I still believe the decline in the popularity of crack is the primary reason for the decline, though.

#11 - With the state local budget crunches, we had to lay off the people who keep the crime statistics.....

Yes.

Incidentally, your contributions disappoint me.

Oh, I forgot. Social mobility for minorities has increased greatly. Even if you were a really smart black kid in the late 60's it was hard to get a job at the white dominated firm which wasn't low paying where as now more jobs and better types of jobs are open to folks who previously would have been marginalized.

Crack didn't take off until the 80's but despite all the media coverage about gangs and drive by shootings violent crime in the 80's was lower then the 70's.

The Law of Oerdin is Always Wrong NEVER FAILS!!!

US Violent crime rate:

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedi...Crime_Rate.jpg

I'm not sure where you got that graph but the FBI says "serious crimes" peaked by 1980 (probably in the late 70's but the graph doesn't show every year) and has been going down ever since. Please note crack wasn't big until the mid80's so your claims about crack are wrong.

http://img707.imageshack.us/img707/1365/933.gif

Uploaded with ImageShack.us

All crime, not just drug crimes.

8. The baby boomers grew up. With birth rates peaking between 1957 and 1961, the proportion of men in the US in their late teens and early 20s was highest in the late 70s and early 80s. As time went on, the proportion of people at "criminal age" decreased. That this was number 8 shows that this article is ****

Louisiana and Mississippi do appear to have high incarceration rates:
http://www.publicagenda.org/charts/i...ion-rate-state

It proves my point, the number varies rather heavily. Incarceration rates are much higher in Louisiana than Maine, for instance.

xpost

Another chart from wikipedia:
http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedi..._by_race_2.gif
5% of black males are in prison

What are the differences between violent crime and "serious crimes"? I'm guessing burglary isn't a violent crime.

Here:

http://www.disastercenter.com/crime/uscrime.htm

Property crimes peaked in 1980 at 5,353 reported property crimes per 100K people (which actually was not much more than the 5000+ throughout the late 80's til 1992).

VIOLENT crimes, however... hit 596.1 in 1980, went down a bit, then shot up to 757.5 by 1992; From 1986-1997, the violent crime rate was higher than 1980.


The Law of Oerdin is Always Wrong never fails! http://www.discussworldissues.com/fo...milies/lol.gif