At 05:02 PM 2/15/2001 +0000, Charlie Stross wrote:
>How do you like living in a society with ten times the murder rate?
<nit>Actually, it is only three times higher than Scotland by recent
statistics.</nit>
For me it is a non-argument; crime levels aren't that far above the noise
floor as far as I'm concerned. The vast majority of people in the U.S.
face a very low risk of murder (there isn't a whole lot of indiscriminate
killing in the U.S.), and other forms of violent crime are considerably
less prevalent than in most of Europe. The murder rates of many European
cities are the same or higher than the cities I live and work in, so I'm
not sure what the big deal is. If we are lucky, perhaps the U.S. murder
rate will go down to what it was 40 years ago, when it was about the same
as European levels.
Given a fair and reasonable justice system, crime will take care of
itself. I think it is arguable that having too low a crime rate may be as
much an indication of a pathological condition as having too high a crime
rate. If I had to put a number to it, I think a murder statistic of around
1-1.5 would be acceptable for a healthy society.
-James Rogers
jamesr@best.com
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