Post: #26

A lot of property crime can go unreported, and a lot of fraud can go undetected, but....

...it's very difficult to fudge murder rates. The cold reality of a corpse is difficult to sweep under the rug. Is the suggestion really that, for example, some "homie" discovered dead on a street corner on Chicago's South Side ( I presume this is still a rough neighborhood), riddled in bullets, is recorded as a natural death by coroners so that police can misstate the murder rate?

Post: #27

(07-09-2015 12:56 PM)Bad Hussar Wrote:  A lot of property crime can go unreported, and a lot of fraud can go undetected, but....

...it's very difficult to fudge murder rates. The cold reality of a corpse is difficult to sweep under the rug. Is the suggestion really that, for example, some "homie" discovered dead on a street corner on Chicago's South Side ( I presume this is still a rough neighborhood), riddled in bullets, is recorded as a natural death by coroners so that police can misstate the murder rate?

I've read a lot of stories about how the police try to not label "homicides" as actual homicides, so I tend to disagree with the above statement re murder rates. The local police and city governments get accolades, praise and extra tax dollar for reporting that crime rates or murder rates are going down, and thus do whatever they can to not label certain deaths as crimes or murders. This was a big thing in Chicago if I recall correctly.

Despite all that, murder rates are WAY up in the bigger, left-leaning "sanctuary cities" in the US this year:

http://www.newsmax.com/US/homicide-citie...id/654358/

I tend to think that Samseau is largely right though. There are increasing "no-go" areas that police don't actively police, and the powers that be fudge the numbers so as to make the overall situation seem much safer than it really is. Sure you might be safer in your average upscale area with a lot of gated communities surrounding it, but if you're in the morass of people caught in the middle to lower class it's hit or miss and when things go wrong they go bad bigtime.

Post: #28

You just pointed at the middle of the Crack Wars going on in the middle of every city at the time. The increased sentences and all that other stuff were the result.

Post: #29

Turns out the answer was already out there. Guess what it turns out to be? Leaded gasoline.

The studies behind it are solid and cross-studied across the planet. Children exposed to lead have lowered IQs and become more impulsive in adulthood. When leaded gasoline was introduced, the children that would inhale the exhaust would later disproportionately become criminals. When it was banned, the crime fell, with the same lag time of about 23 years. Never would have thought it would be something like this but I'm thoroughly convinced that's the explanation:

http://www.motherjones.com/environment/2...k-gasoline

Post: #30

(09-07-2015 06:26 PM)speakeasy Wrote:  Turns out the answer was already out there. Guess what it turns out to be? Leaded gasoline.

The studies behind it are solid and cross-studied across the planet. Children exposed to lead have lowered IQs and become more impulsive in adulthood. When leaded gasoline was introduced, the children that would inhale the exhaust would later disproportionately become criminals. When it was banned, the crime fell, with the same lag time of about 23 years. Never would have thought it would be something like this but I'm thoroughly convinced that's the explanation:

http://www.motherjones.com/environment/2...k-gasoline

Neil Degrasse Tyson did a thing on this for an episode of Cosmos. It was about Clair Patterson who first started to suspect the link between lead toxicity and broader issues. This makes me wonder about various third world countries with sky high crime rates (ie. Venezuala) where the industry isn't nearly as regulated.