From: Kevin Freels (megaquark@hotmail.com)
Date: Tue Aug 26 2003 - 18:25:20 MDT
Personally, I have always had a "hunch" (nothing substantial to back me up)
that crime rates are simply another "fashion" item.
For a time, being a "bad-ass" is popular among the youts of America. Then as
the next generation grows to replace them, it becomes unfashionable. The
next group to grow up sees them as a bunch of pansies and crime rates go up
again. I'm sure that if you dig deep enough you can find a correlation
between a type of clothing such as t-shirts, blue-jeans etc. or something
else and crime.
No doubt some politician will find this and claim that that item "causes"
crime, and when the next reduction comes along, the party in power will
claim that it was the result of their policies and use that as a basis for
re-election.
Unfortunately, there is no way to actually chart this. My "hunch" also says
that crime reporting also varies from generatin to generation. When a couple
of boys spray-painted a garage or got into a fight, many years ago, it may
have never been reported simply because
the grown-ups (grups) would have thought of it as "boys being boys" and
handle the problem personally by contacting the parents, wheras now, someone
would promptly call the police to handle it.
Any opinions on my "hunch"?
----- Original Message -----
From: "Damien Sullivan" <phoenix@ugcs.caltech.edu>
To: <extropians@extropy.org>
Sent: Tuesday, August 26, 2003 6:33 PM
Subject: Re: FWD (SK) Re: U.S. Crime Rate Down
> On Tue, Aug 26, 2003 at 01:46:52PM -0700, Charles Hixson wrote:
>
> > A better answer is that the population is aging. The late teens-early
> > twenties are always the high crime years. As a smaller fraction of the
> > population is in that age brackett, the amount of actual crime
diminishes.
>
> I think the rate of crime among teenagers has also been dropping, though,
> which is indepenent of the age fraction*. Don't know about the twenties.
>
> * Except that there are more adults per teens, now. So they're getting
more
> care?
>
> -xx- Damien X-)
>
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