>From: "Michael S. Lorrey" <retroman@turbont.net>
>Reply-To: extropians@extropy.com
>To: extropians@extropy.com
>Subject: Re: crime in big cities and Europe
>Date: Tue, 20 Jun 2000 14:44:58 -0400
>
>
>
>Waldemar Ingdahl wrote:
> >
> > I personally live in one of the most dangerous cities in Europe:
>Stockholm.
> >
> > You think it is strange? Well, Stockholm has in all its recorded history
> > been a violent city. For instance, today Los Angeles has a murder rate
>of
> > about 10.8 murders on every 100 000 inhabitants, Stockholm has 10.2!
>
>Very interesting.
Rather appalling numbers I would say.
> > Stockholm is the only metropolitan area in Sweden though, so the average
> > crime rate is comparatively low. The violence in Swedish society is also
> > very much concentrated on specific segments of society. Most often those
> > segments that don't receive much media coverage. "Bum A and Bum B met at
>Bum
> > A's ratty apartement and started drinking, then Bum B killed Bum A in
> > drunken stupor", is the average Swedish murder, nothing sassy to write
> > about. But the violence is very much present in Stockholm, and its
>expanding
> > outside the usual segments of society.
>
>Thats how much crime is here as well, only the media spins the story based
>on
>the circumstances. If Bum A was a woman and Bum B was a man, its a case of
>'domestic violence' or 'stalking'. If Bum A is black and bum B is white,
>its a
>'racist hate crime killing', while if it were the other way around, it
>would be
>'gang violence'. If the ratty apartment were near a school campus and both
>bums
>were students, it would be a 'school shooting'. If Bum B was working for
>Bum A,
>it would be a 'crazed worker going postal' incident, and if the 'apartment'
>was
>the back of Bum A's van, then its 'murder on the highways'.
Often these labels are stuck to the crimes by the medias to pump up an
otherwise "uninteresting" story. And unfortunately this is often
contributing to an atmosphere of fear, even if it is unjustified. The
harsher laws can be passed, affect the whole society while Joe Sixpack
whines about "society being lax on criminals" while HIS rights go down the
drain too.
> > Europe often points fingers at the US for its crime rate, while
>conveniently
> > forgetting its often higher (or at least comparable) crime rates. The US
>is
> > often more heterogenous that the European countries (that have been
>heavily
> > centralized) so comparisions between European countries and the US are
>often
> > not that good.
>
>Thank you Waldemar for the honest commentary.
In a transhumanist criminological spirit (that's a new one, transhumanist
criminology) I think its is important to show that crime isn't that all
encompassing danger it is often pointed out to be. Scared people seldom
think about improving themselves, just protecting themselves. An open
society cannot survive long if its citizens are terrified.
Sincerely,
Waldemar
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