Post by HeadMarshal on Jan 10, 2013 17:07:44 GMT -5
After several publicized mass shootings since 2009 and now a two wounded incident at a Central California high school, people are now panicking that the United States is the most violent it has been and the nation is extremely dangerous.
I shall make the argument that crime rates have recently gone up but that does not mean per capita crime rates have returned to their high point in the 1970s-mid 1990s.
bjs.ojp.usdoj.gov/content/glance/tables/viortrdtab.cfm
For instance, there's the Bureau Of Justice statistics for violent crime per every 1000 people between 1973 to 2008. Notice how total violent crime reached it's high point at 52.3 in 1981. It hasn't gone up past 40 per 1000 since 1996.
Murder remained at 0.1 per every year except for 2009 due to a new method in calcuating murders (shown by a "b" next to the 2009 homicide rate). Rape, robbery, aggravated and simple assault all dropped to a low point in the 2000s.
Now to be fair, crime rates did go up in 2011, the first time since 1993. However that was mainly because of an increase in assaults; 22.5 per 1000 in 2011 the highest since 1998 when there was a rate of 23.5 simple assaults and 7.5 aggravated assaults. Now it is true that a fair number of crimes are not reported, however while it would hard to tell if that number has increased, it has most likely not since every type of violent crime dropped in the 2000s decade.
www.cnn.com/2012/10/17/us/violent-crime/index.html
I shall make the argument that crime rates have recently gone up but that does not mean per capita crime rates have returned to their high point in the 1970s-mid 1990s.
bjs.ojp.usdoj.gov/content/glance/tables/viortrdtab.cfm
For instance, there's the Bureau Of Justice statistics for violent crime per every 1000 people between 1973 to 2008. Notice how total violent crime reached it's high point at 52.3 in 1981. It hasn't gone up past 40 per 1000 since 1996.
Murder remained at 0.1 per every year except for 2009 due to a new method in calcuating murders (shown by a "b" next to the 2009 homicide rate). Rape, robbery, aggravated and simple assault all dropped to a low point in the 2000s.
Now to be fair, crime rates did go up in 2011, the first time since 1993. However that was mainly because of an increase in assaults; 22.5 per 1000 in 2011 the highest since 1998 when there was a rate of 23.5 simple assaults and 7.5 aggravated assaults. Now it is true that a fair number of crimes are not reported, however while it would hard to tell if that number has increased, it has most likely not since every type of violent crime dropped in the 2000s decade.
www.cnn.com/2012/10/17/us/violent-crime/index.html