America’s safer streets: why is elusive

[Majormarginal]

"over reliance on measures of effectiveness" is a great phrase.

[Dayuhan]

"over reliance on measures of effectiveness" is a great phrase.

If you torture statistics enough they will tell you whatever you want to hear.

[Fuchs]

Statistics don't lie to people.
People lie to people.

[Bill Moore]

People lie to themselves.

[slapout9]

Adult Warning Label! this is considered controversial by many people but the research is supposedly top notch.


Link to University of Chicago explanation of the crime drop.
http://pricetheory.uchicago.edu/levi...alized2001.pdf

[carl]

Maybe rather than looking at why crime dropped, it would be more fruitful to look at why crime increased in the 60s and 70s. Those were the years the welfare state really took off and with it corrosive effects upon family structure. Those were also the years affected by the Warren court and the sort of change in view about what caused crime. If I remember correctly crime had been diminishing during the years prior to those decades.

So perhaps one of the reasons crime has been going down lately is it just took the country some time to get back on the track it had been on prior to the 60s and 70s.

I am listening to Thomas Sowell's The Vision of the Anointed and that prompted this thought (he may have actually said that but I haven't finished it yet).

[davidbfpo]

Moving from the USA to Germany regarding organised crime, specifically biker gangs. First a news report (background to site not researched, perhaps our German readers can assist there? It appears anti-establishment):http://www.heise.de/tp/artikel/37/37477/1.html

Oddly the official German state response appears to have "leaked" to the Hells Angels; the cited report is in German and its size defies Google translation:

A "sub-committee leadership, commitment and fight against crime" (UA FEK) had established a federal-state task force "crime-fighting strategy Rocker conceptual framework" (BLPG BR-RK). The aim of the project group is the coordination of joint action against rocker crime. She has released a document that says, "Report of the federal-state task force of the UA FEK 'Rocker crime reduction strategy - conceptual framework' [BLPG BR-RK]". It comes from the Ministry of the Interior and Sports of Rhineland-Palatinate, is characterized as "VS - ONLY FOR OFFICIAL USE (iS IFG not able to be released)," and it started a few weeks ago on a publicly accessible website of the Hells Angels . It looks real.