crime statistics and roe vs. wade connection? (page 2)

IronGland

When rugged individualism was the norm...people knew the rules and consequences for their actions...and proceeded accordingly.

WTF? When exactly was this golden era?

upside/down

That would for the most part be pre- New Deal (socialism)...ish

But it still exists for the INDIVIDUALS that choose to live by that moral code...of being responsible...and owning their own deeds...good and bad. Many people are still like this...

I prefer to view people as individuals...and not in the "collective" PC mindset of Democrat/Republican, Christian/Secularist, Country/City, etc.I feel these labels over generalize and stereotype and do more harm than good.

People are people...and circumstances change...

u/d(of the everyone "knows" how to be "good" class)

IronGland

That would for the most part be pre- New Deal (socialism)...ish

There was no crime before the new deal? less crime? Gotta cite for that? Sean Hannity's website doesn't count.

onintwo

Whoa! Hold on there! How and when did income get mixed up in this discussion? I didn't introduce this idea. Poor vs. rich?.... Unwanted babies can also be from a young woman in college who becomes pregnant and it would be terribly inconvenient, just now, at this point in her life, to carry the child to term. Don't want to sound callous about it. Not at all. But just that abortions are not the exclusive domain of low income people.

Onintwo

Jankyn

Levitt has a blog at http://www.freakonomics.com/blog.php.

His schtick is applying economic theory to social situations. It's interesting and it's controversial, so of course there's a lot to argue with. But stress the interesting part...

As for crime statistics: I spent 9 years in law enforcement and a good portion of my job in the last couple of years (before I left on a medical) was compiling Uniform Crime Reports for the FBI. Local agencies have a lot of leeway in how they classify crimes, and it's quite possible to make crime rates look better--or worse--by the way things are classified.

That said, my experience is that the most dangerous people in the world are young males of any race or social status in groups of three or more. When in a group, adolescent males will do things that they would never in a million years consider doing if alone, and that they are ashamed of later, but the group seems to produce behavior that appalls even its members.

When there's a bulge in the population of adolescents, there's a bulge in crime. When that bulge disappears, crime rates drop. A forty-year-old is much less likely to commit any crime (sociopaths and pyschopaths excepted) than a fifteen-year-old. The reasons are biological as much as anything--not only does the forty-year-old have less in the way of raging hormones, he's also reached the point at which his brain is capable of fulling processing the consequences of his actions--something most teens' brains are physically incapable of.

And that's not based on Levitt, that's based on my personal experience as well as my training at the law enforcement academy, corrections school, and later in educational psychology (after I left the department and went to graduate school).

Before you decide Levitt's full of crap, read him. It's interesting stuff.

Jankyn

onintwo

Thank you, Jankyn. Well stated opinion. Appreciated the part about 3 or more young males traveling together. Guess that's why law enforcement always has an eye on the car that's full of young males.

But I didn't realize local agencies had such leeway in the classifying of crimes. Can you give an example of how a crime might be described by one agency and differently by another?

Onintwo

Jankyn

The UCR gives a variety of labels for the different types of crime (example: Assault, simple; Assault, serious; Assault with a weapon; Assault with a firearm). The leeway comes in on whether to classify, say, an assault as "simple" or "serious"; whether to classify a bb gun as a "weapon" or a "firearm." Also, "Assault with a weapon" is intended to mean anything from a baseball bat to a switchblade, but I've seen officers classify someone who picked up their keys as using a "weapon."

Usually in classifying, you'd go with whatever the charge was, but that is often altered by the DA when pleading down (get a guy to plead guilty to simple assault rather than go to trial for serious assault).

Then there's the leeway given in charging. Some campus police will charge sexual assaults as simple assaults, both so that they "don't ruin some kids life" and so that they will keep their rate of sexual assault down (these things are reported to parents).

Whoever's filling out the form gets to decide how to classify the crime. You can classify a burglary, for instance, as a theft, which moves it down on the level of seriousness (difference: a theft from a residence is when they take a bike out of your driveway or backyard; a burglary is when they break into your house and is more serious both because of the intent involved and because of the risk to people inside).

I generally give crime statistics very little credence, because the reporting is so subjective. In fact, I'd guess that most sociological statistics have the same problem.

Jankyn

onintwo

Thank you, Jankyn. That opens my eyes to crime statistic reporting. Can be subjective, very subjective.

Onintwo

crime statistics and roe vs. wade connection?

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