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26% of violent crime convicts account for 63% of violent crime conviction (2014)
- zerostar07 9y agoindeed, it would be horrible if it were more evenly distributed
- what-do-I-know 9y agoSo does this mean the US has it right with harsh prison sentences?
- maximumkek 9y agothis study is racist. we need to revise the mathematical methods used as they were mainly devised by straight white males
- exabrial 9y agoStudies like this are hard, because they're usually labeled 'racist', or it turns into an ad hominem attack on the authors, or struck down in the media for singling out some minority group. I love the wording as it has a focus on the positive; summed up it basically says: we can't help those who we can't identity.
- gaius 9y agoI guess it’s easier in Sweden which is not especially diverse. Also it’s worth noting that these are convictions so will be missing any unreported violence, or that police didn’t follow up on, or that got off on technicalities
- cc81 9y agoSweden is pretty ethnically diverse these days and is far more sensitive about race than the US is. EDIT: But for that period it was not as much, that is true.
- gz5 9y agoGood point. Any similar studies from more diverse countries? This study is not as comprehensive but in 30-state USA study, 77% of prisoners are jailed again within 5 years of release: https://www.bjs.gov/content/pub/press/rprts05p0510pr.cfm https://www.bjs.gov/content/pub/press/rprts05p0510pr.cfm
- alphabettsy 9y agoNot really surprising, you must consider that most of our jails and prisons are like criminal universities. Most barely offer any rehabilitation, if at all, but people can learn about how to be better criminals from other criminals.
- flexie 9y agoSweden is as diverse as the US, or more so.
- gaius 9y agoWell, it has had a massive influx of Middle Easterners in recent years but this study dates from 2004.
- walshemj 9y agoActually in terms of other more diverse countries like the UK and USA probably not just seems a lot as Sweden had virtually zero BME migration until recently.
- BigBuzzKill 9y agoThat’s patently false.
- rayiner 9y agoNot even close. The vast majority of Sweden is ethnic Swedes. The big minority group is ethnic Finns. 87% of the country is Lutheran (as of 2012). In the US, probably no ethnic group (e.g. Irish or English) has more than 20%.
- flexie 9y agohttps://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_ranked_by_ethnic_and_cultural_diversity_level https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_ranked_by_... Check out the list based on Alesina’s analysis. Or go to Sweden. In the younger population groups, muslims are now are huge minority.
- rayiner 9y agoThat index lists Canada as more diverse than the US, which is definitely false having been to both. Online sources suggest about 30% of Stockholm is non-Swedish, and most of those people are European. New York and Chicago are only about 30-35% European descent, and that’s mixed between Irish, German, Swedish, English, etc.
- whatyoucantsay 9y agoThis is why sex differences were reported and racial differences were not. It just leads to uncomfortable places, especially in the context of Swedish society.
- BigBuzzKill 9y agoWhich is weird, especially if racial differences provided meaningful significance. By the politically-correct logic, I could claim that the study is “sexist” (which is obviously dumb.....)
- gowld 9y ago> Persistence in violence was associated with male sex (OR 2.5), personality disorder (OR 2.3), violent crime conviction before age 19 (OR 2.0), drug-related offenses (OR 1.9), nonviolent criminality (OR 1.9), substance use disorder (OR 1.9), and major mental disorder (OR 1.3). So you are confusing mental/behavior explanations with unscientific correlation-hunting racial explanations that are too popular in discourse.
- weberc2 9y agoTypically it's the accusers of racism who make these conflagrations. These are usually well-intentioned progressives who, in their zeal to protect minorities, pounce on anything that could possibly be warped into an attack on minorities. For example, that time James Damore was crucified for suggesting that population level gender differences might better explain Google's hiring pipeline than discrimination.
- lostlogin 9y agoYou’re clearly not suggesting that the US is 80% male. Once you create a subset that fits your criteria it gets a little silly doesn’t it?
- throwaway894345 9y agoOP said "Google", not the "US". What's "silly" about thinking males are the majority at Google?
- stordoff 9y agoOP said "population level gender differences might better explain Google's hiring pipeline". Men may be the majority of Google employees, but they clearly aren't the majority of the population. That suggests there is discrimination somewhere, either in Google's hiring approach or in wider society (it's unlikely that there is some innate difference between men and woman that would account for such a disparity).
- frabbit 9y ago"Studies like this are hard, because they're usually labeled 'racist'," Please provide some factual, quantified basis for this statement.
- dsacco 9y agoBe more charitable in your reading of that comment. If you’d prefer, interpret it this way: “These studies can be socially controversial, and so authors must be especially careful in the way they conduct their research and present their conclusions.” At a certain point, demanding empirical evidence for a clearly observable societal zeitgeist becomes disingenuous or obtuse, regardless of how well-intentioned the request is. It stifles discussion that can otherwise proceed.
- frabbit 9y agoI am not being uncharitable. I am asking whether the poster has analyzed the number of studies in the USA, structured as carefully as this one, and found that they are in fact labelled racist more than 50% of the time. And if so, by whom. I don't think the poster needs charity. Clarity is more like it.
- icegreentea2 9y agoI think what you're asking for is unreasonable. Labelled racist by who? How do you count 50%? Does it matter if only one fringe group labels it racist? Or does it have to be called racist by a group with political capital > X. It also leaves any potential of discussing "chilling effect" like things. You're measurement does nothing to gauge the overall zeitgeist of the time, which would clearly influence the outlook of any researcher who didn't have balls of steel and bulletproof funding. I agree the author needs more clarity. And the clear thing to say is that "one could easily imagine this type of study in the United States causing problems for the author due to possible accusations of racism".
- frabbit 9y agoI agree with your "labelled racist by who, how do you count, etc" questions. But that just throws the meaninglessness of the original statement into starker relief: it's simply an empty expression of unsupported complaint. Your finishing formulation, is unfortunately simply more prolix. I do not see those sorts of comments as up to the usual standards of HackerNews. Perhaps to be expected on an article like this, but still they should be discouraged.
- pron 9y agoWhat you are saying is troubling because it shows that many people really don't understand what it is that we call racist -- and it's not studies like these. I am a radical leftist (and a radical feminist) and I do not consider a statistical assertion such as "black people in the US are significantly overrepresented among those who commit violent crimes" at all as racist. What is racist (not just "labeled" racist; we usually "label" as racist things that are actually racist[1]) are various conclusions -- often hinted and sometimes explicitly stated -- that simply do not follow from the data according to any reasonable scientific standard and make claims about certain causes of such an effect. [1]: Though not necessarily xenophobic; the difference between the two confuses many people, as does the difference between sexist and misogynistic. Xenophobia and misogyny imply a certain intent, a certain feeling of resentment towards other races, cultures and genders, while racism and sexism are merely actions or inactions -- usually unintentional and sometimes even well-meaning -- that serve to increase or maintain the current disparity in power among different groups. While I don't like applying the terms sexist and racist to people, as they're best applied to actions, laws, rules, institutions etc., we can apply them to those who do racist/sexist things. I know I'm racist and sexist, and I can assume you are, too. If you spend some time learning about those concepts, you know it is very much expected for people in racist/sexist societies to be racist and sexist, and it takes active effort to fight them. People should not be offended that they're racist and sexist, just as they should not be offended to learn that they may be carrying and spreading germs that cause infectious diseases, although I'm sure many were insulted to be "labeled" as disease-spreading when microbes were first discovered. Once you understand those "labels" aren't insults but well-researched observations, you know you shouldn't be offended by them, but you should learn to identify racist/sexist behaviors and prevent them, just as you learned to wash your hands.
- coldtea 9y ago>What you are saying is troubling because it shows that many people really don't understand what it is that we call racist -- and it's not studies like these. I am a radical leftist (and a radical feminist) and I do not consider a statistical assertion such as "black people in the US are significantly overrepresented among those who commit violent crimes" at all as racist. You might not, but lots of people do -- and publicly say so.
- acdha 9y ago> Studies like this are hard, because they're usually labeled 'racist', or it turns into an ad hominem attack on the authors, or struck down in the media for singling out some minority group. I think you’re confusing studies with conclusions. What you’re describing doesn’t happen but what is common are studies finding a correlation which leads to someone claiming causation and then complaining when they’re criticized. As an example, in the US it’s uncontested that some populations have worse academic performance. That doesn’t get criticized seriously. What does get criticism is when a right-wing commenter tries to say that this must be because of genetic causes or the popular euphemism “culture” – and that criticism is well deserved since that ignores all of the other explanations and checks which actual science would require and goes straight to the same conclusion which avowed racists have been pushing for centuries.
- TheCoelacanth 9y agoAlso people often make an unfounded extrapolation from arrest or conviction stats to crimes committed. We can accurately measure arrests or convictions fairly easily so we frequently have statistics for those, but it is very hard to accurately measure who is committing crimes. People often like to assume that there is a direct correspondence between arrests/convictions and crimes committed, but that is an unjustified assumption.
- ctlby 9y agoIt’s not at all hard, and obviously so: for most crimes (e.g. assault, rape, robbery, murder), the perpetrator’s race is observable. The National Crime Victimization Survey (NCVS) and National Incident Based Reporting System (NIBRS) measure exactly this, and surprise, surprise: offense rates and arrest rates line up pretty exactly for every race across every category of crime.
- mwilliaams 9y agoA logical and reasonable assumption, and I think probably mostly true, but still unproven.
- exabrial 9y ago
- djsumdog 9y agoDid you read the abstract? Race isn't one of the characteristic they took into account.
- zerostar07 9y agoGot it, this is taboo science that may lead to societal collapse. We should find science that better suits our preconceptions. Just pointing out the obvious absurdity here.
- kelukelugames 9y ago>Persistence in violence was associated with male sex (OR 2.5), personality disorder (OR 2.3), violent crime conviction before age 19 (OR 2.0), drug-related offenses (OR 1.9), nonviolent criminality (OR 1.9), substance use disorder (OR 1.9), and major mental disorder (OR 1.3). It sounds like we need to invest more in mental health.
- splitrocket 9y agoAnd perhaps divest ourselves of the idea that putting one time violent offenders in a building full of other violent offenders will somehow reduce the likelihood of future offense.
- nofilter 9y agoYea but we don't put them in a building full of other violent offenders to rehabilitate them. We do that to get rid of them with zero care for whatever they will do once they serve their sentence because, yet again, we can get rid of them and whatever damage they do while they are outside of the prison is considered unimportant in the grand scheme of things. Siderant: I find it funny how humans work. On a very personal level, we love each other (you <> your parents or significant other), but the further the connection goes to other people the less we care. Whereas if we cared about everyone in a very loving way, we would probably not get rid of people we don't like.
- Helmet 9y agoDo we? How do you draw that conclusion from the data? Personality disorders seem to be fairly resistant to treatment/therapy, and certainly more than 1% of the population has issues with mental health, yet they don’t seem to commit crimes at such an alarming rate. I’m not saying you’re wrong, but I don’t think your conclusion is directly supported by this study.
- dang 9y agoYou've been using HN primarily for ideological battle. That's an abuse of this site, regardless of which ideology you're promulgating, because it destroys the intellectual curiosity which the site is for. Since (a) the site guidelines explicitly ask you not do this; (b) you've ignored our recent request to stop doing this, and (c) you've been using multiple accounts to do it in this thread, we've banned this account. Please don't create accounts to break the site guidelines with. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
- gallerdude 9y agoAn interesting 20/80 rule going on here. The good news is if we can fix whatever issues affect this 1%, we solve 63% of violent crimes. Or maybe I'm naive.
- gowld 9y agohttps://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Confusion_matrix https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Confusion_matrix The challenge is to fix that 1%, without terrorizing the N% who look vaguely similar.
- vvillena 9y agoAre you implying that solving the issues affecting that 1% means jailing or terrorizing them, thus making such solutions undesirable for everyone else?
- deleted 9y ago[deleted]
- nostrademons 9y agoYeah. Looking at the data, we could prevent 90% of violent crimes by locking up all men. Somehow, I don't think most people here would go for that.
- caseysoftware 9y agoBefore anyone espouses their favorite theory, you should note this study covers Sweden from 1973-2004 which is a very ethnically and relatively-economically homogeneous country with a population of < 10M people.
- splitrocket 9y agoWhat does ethnic homogeneity have to do with this?
- Wohlf 9y agoStudies like these that take place in the USA are labeled racist because they disproportionately include minorities.
- splitrocket 9y agoStudies that don’t take into account socio-economics are, in fact, racist. When you control for income and wealth, particularly intergeneraltional, racial differences disappear.
- BigBuzzKill 9y agoAccept that isn’t true. Racial differences rarely disappear even when you take those factors into account. There is evidence that economic inequality has little to no effect whatsoever (1, 2). There is also evidence that inequality is predictive for blacks but no whites (3). There is also data that does support your latter conclusion, but my point is that this issue isn’t as clear cut as you’re framing it as. (1) https://academic.oup.com/sf/article-abstract/70/4/1035/2232609?redirectedFrom=fulltext https://academic.oup.com/sf/article-abstract/70/4/1035/22326... (2) https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/6742630 https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/6742630 (3) http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/j.1745-9125.1999.tb00493.x/abstract http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/j.1745-9125.1999....
- 9y ago
- scythe 9y agoThe ORs for various factors are all lower than the OR for Y chromosomes. I take this to mean we don't really have a good model of what causes persistent criminality, but we do have good evidence that it exists. A frustrating situation.
- trophycase 9y agoTestosterone
- gowld 9y agoIt's always interesting to see that there's a segment of the public discourse that consistently hammers on "melanin" as a predictor of crime, but ignores "testosterone"....
- TempAc 9y ago> It's always interesting to see that there's a segment of the public discourse that consistently hammers on "melanin" as a predictor of crime, but ignores "testosterone".... It's interesting to see the strawmen from people who were never interested in getting acquainted with the arguments to begin with. >Mean testosterone levels in blacks were 19% higher than in whites, and free testosterone levels were 21% higher. Both these differences were statistically significant. Adjustment by analysis of covariance for time of sampling, age, weight, alcohol use, cigarette smoking, and use of prescription drugs somewhat reduced the differences. After these adjustments were made, blacks had a 15% higher testosterone level and a 13% higher free testosterone level. A 15% difference in circulating testosterone levels could readily explain a twofold difference in prostate cancer risk." Testosterone level differences between human groups has been a known fact for quite some time. As is the case for the different ages for puberty onset: https://www.theguardian.com/world/2012/oct/20/us-study-boys-puberty-earlier https://www.theguardian.com/world/2012/oct/20/us-study-boys-... > The investigation also showed that American boys are divided by race when it comes to puberty. It found that, on average, black American boys started showing signs of puberty at a little older than the age of nine, while their white and Hispanic counterparts did likewise just after turning 10. And even gestational age : https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/15075154 https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/15075154 > The median gestational age at delivery was 39 weeks in Blacks and Asians and 40 weeks in white Europeans. We are going to pay for all this wilful ignorance and happy sentiments your kind has imposed on the rest of us in the west.
- splitrocket 9y agoHumans consistently make the same mistake about understand the motivations, the inhibiting and promoting pressures of other people. We assume that everyone else is exactly like us. Therefore, when we build systems and institutions that attempt to alter behavior, we encode our own motivations and desires as the impetus. I.E. why we have UX researchers, do user testing, A/B testing etc when we develop products. Our instincts about what other folks will pay for/want/value/use are rarely totally accurate. “I don’t want to go to jail, therefore, jail will be a globally effective crime deterrent” is demonstrably false for this subset of the population. From a purely behavioral science perspective, we know that humans deeply discount uncertain future downsides compared to short term certain upsides. If you are interested in this sort of stuff, I strongly suggest reading Mark Kleinman, particularly his work on “swift, certain, fair” as an effective means to address this population and challenge.
- splitrocket 9y agoLet me put it this way: the current “standard” criminal justice system is exceedingly effective at dissuading the sort of people who designed and operate the system from committing crime, but those folks are not the population that in fact commit crimes.
- saas_co_de 9y ago> exceedingly effective at dissuading the sort of people who designed and operate the system from committing crime More like the people who designed and operate the system consider everything they do legal and only criminalize the activity of people not like them.
- weberc2 9y ago> More like the people who designed and operate the system consider everything they do legal This is true by definition. Anyway, what sort of violent crime do you propose to legalize?
- 9y ago
- sercand 9y agoSo %1 becomes new kind of Pareto rule. The %1 owns half of the world's wealth and this.
- Fnoord 9y agoWell, I was thinking of all these people who are getting away with their crimes. I mean, "smart" criminals don't get caught, right? Specifically, I was thinking about the very rich who are offshoring their money to tax havens (see Panama Papers) but of course, they are not criminals. After all, they're not convicted, and innocent until proven guilty, and hey its tax avoidance not tax evasion. Which is a double standard; if I'd steal an iPhone from the tax avoiding Apple then that's theft. Heck they even mention that the price includes all kind of levies such as environmental and taxes. Yet when they steal from my government (who represent me) then that's totally fine? Or, if someone would operate a client computer from a country where piracy is illegal, but the server would be hosted in a country where piracy is legal, then suddenly the whole act is illegal even though the computer who executes the commands is allowed to. I don't have the numbers, so I'm very curious what's more damaging: tax avoidance or piracy. I've even seen criminal acts like mass selling pirated DVDs being also tax evasion. Yet all the crap within the Panama Papers is not? How that does rhyme? Furthermore it doesn't appear like anyone in power cares enough about tax avoidance in order for it to be solved (we, as in civilians of governments from all over the world, are missing out on a massive amount of tax dollars).
- pjc50 9y agohttps://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zipf%27s_law https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zipf%27s_law ?
- sjclemmy 9y agoIf I said I could identify a group of people who are responsible for all the horror in the world, you’d think think I was an idiot. But there is one group who is responsible (although you never hear the group blamed for anything). The group? Men.
- craftyguy 9y agoBy that (shitty) logic, women are equally to blame. It currently takes bits from both to make another human that might commit a "horror."
- johndevor 9y ago>although you never hear the group blamed for anything Just curious, where do you get your news from?
- dang 9y agoPlease don't post flamebait here. Flamebait plus divisive topic amounts to trolling. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
- yasp 9y agoThey didn't analyze IQ?
- blfr 9y agoPower law is everywhere in the world. It's gonna be 1% of scientists producing vast majority of worthwhile discoveries, 1% of founders building the biggest companies, and 1% of those companies owning most of their markets... We may like equality but Nature likes the power law.
- stewbrew 9y ago1.) Violent crime is a rare event (in post-WW2 European societies), so the proportion of offenders is rather small. 2.) One time offenders have a hard time getting their feet on the ground after being released from prison. Without appropriate support & back in their old networks, they often have few alternatives than going down that road again. IMHO that's not exactly news. I personally find it slightly surprising that only about one quarter of people committing violent crimes become repeat offenders. This rate is actually lower than what I would have estimated. I thought the number would be about one half. Maybe we should reconsider the effectiveness of our penal system and think of other ways to deal with violent crime that helps offenders not to become repeat offenders.
- BigBuzzKill 9y agoMaybe in Europe? Not in the USA it isn’t. We’ve seen drops in homicides and the like in some cities (NYC), but disturbing trends in homicides places like Baltimore and Chicago.
- stewbrew 9y agoNumbers please.
- BigBuzzKill 9y agoBaltimore: https://www.economist.com/blogs/graphicdetail/2017/07/daily-chart https://www.economist.com/blogs/graphicdetail/2017/07/daily-... Chicago: http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/data/ct-homicide-spikes-comparison-htmlstory.html http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/data/ct-homicide-spikes-c...
- weberc2 9y agoIn the long term crime is falling even in Baltimore and Chicago. The short term trends are probably the result of police learning to cope with abrupt, significantly increased scrutiny in those cities.
- pjc50 9y ago
- montrose 9y agoInteresting how similar the distribution of criminality is to the distribution of wealth, in which the top 1% own a bit over half. https://www.theguardian.com/inequality/2017/nov/14/worlds-richest-wealth-credit-suisse https://www.theguardian.com/inequality/2017/nov/14/worlds-ri...
- johndevor 9y agoPareto principle?
- dredmorbius 9y agoZipf Function / Power Distribution. Exceedingly common in population distributions.
- mc32 9y agoAt least among the Swedish population, but Id guess likely to similar in other places: >The majority of violent crimes are perpetrated by a small number of persistent violent offenders, typically males, characterized by early onset of violent criminality, substance abuse, personality disorders, and nonviolent criminality. Very interesting, so if you get past your teens without criminality you seem to not become a criminal.
- coldtea 9y agoNot a career / repeat criminal. You can still very much be a criminal, embezzler, murderer and so on -- e.g. a cheated spouse "on the heat of passion".
- dazc 9y ago'...so if you get past your teens without criminality you seem to not become a criminal' 'Give me a child until he is 7 and I will show you the man' There is a lot of truth in this. When I think back to my childhood there were always a few kids who were just bad. They came from the same background, had the same advantages, and so on but there was still something evil about them. Typical behaviours included stuff like sadistic cruelty to animals, bullying , random violence and vandalism with no real logic or reason to why they would act in such a manner? It could be explained away by saying something would be going on behind the scenes at home but (in these few cases) I really don't believe it. Of course, from as far as I can remember, all these people went on to be criminals of one sort or another in adulthood.
- tonyedgecombe 9y agoIt can be surprising though, I recall one of my children's school friends who although he was never very academic was always mild mannered and well behaved with us, there were other children in the school who were a much bigger problem. He is now in prison for murdering his girlfriend.
- quasse 9y ago>They came from the same background, had the same advantages, and so on Did they really though? Thinking back to my childhood recently, I've come to almost exactly the opposite conclusion. There were some kids who I thought were just naturally shitty until I experienced enough of life to realize that they were the ones getting beaten up by their angry or alcoholic parents or being emotionally abused by a narcissistic family member. These were all things that I saw the signs of going to their houses or at sports games, etc. as a kid, but it was so far outside of my frame of reference that I didn't understand the context for what was happening. That angry arm grab and wrench just because dad didn't like the choice of font on a book report? Not a sign of a healthy home life, especially if that was the way he behaved with an "outside observer" in the house. It's all still anecdotal of course, with my small sample size and situation, but after going to a small school with the same ~25 kids (all from similar middle class households) for 9 years I can say that later success in life was strongly correlated to the ones that had supportive and non-traumatic home lives.
- hn_throwaway_99 9y agoI think a the title, while absolutely true, is written in a way to highlight a distribution that seems abnormal, but is pretty much what you would expect in any similar distribution. A very low number of people are ever convicted of a violent crime (they could have also written "3.9% of population accountable for 100% of violent crime convictions"). I think a better way of saying the same thing as the title is "26% of violent criminals commit 63% of violent crimes."
- RickJWag 9y agoAmazing. This deserves serious political discussion, it seems to hold potential for massive increases in quality of life.
- jakobegger 9y agoMaybe we should stop seeing people who are violent as people that we need to punish and start seeing them as people who need help. I'm not a specialist, but I'd think that giving someone a job, a place to live, and a weekly therapy session would do a lot more to prevent future crime than locking him up with a bunch of other violent offenders that have nothing to do all day long. Sometimes restricting someones freedom is necessary to protect others. But right now we are doing it backward: we lock people up after they committed a crime, but there's very little that we can do to protect potential victims before it is too late.
- deleted 9y ago[deleted]
- infinity0 9y agoOfc smarter criminals don't primarily do violent crime, yet sometimes do the greater damage to society.
- pjc50 9y agoPeople interested in solutions should look to studies of different types of interventions. My usual example is the extremely effective Violence Reduction Unit: http://www.actiononviolence.org.uk/ http://www.actiononviolence.org.uk/ https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2015/apr/06/glasgow-murder-rate-knife-gang-crime-police https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2015/apr/06/glasgow-murd... "The results were remarkable. Among the 200 gang members who became directly involved with CIRV, violent offending fell by almost half, according to a 2011 study. Weapon possession was down 85%. Even among gang members who had not attended a call-in, violence had fallen by almost a quarter."
- mempko 9y agoin other words, 99% of people are mostly peaceful.
- opwieurposiu 9y ago99% of swedes from <2004 aka 99% of white people
- benjyhirsch 9y agoSome of these risk factors have possible non-causal explanations that I don't see addressed in a quick scan of the paper: 1) Even if every person had the same random chance of being convicted of a violent crime each year from the age of 15 on, one would expect those convicted before age 19 to have been convicted of more crimes than those whose first conviction is after age 19, and those convicted of more crimes to be more likely to have their first conviction at an earlier age. 2) As for the various mental health factors: not sure if the "Hospital Discharge Register" includes prison hospitals, but one might imagine people who've spent more time in prison being more likely to have mental health evaluations, and prison doctors being more trigger-happy about diagnosing major disorders. Even if the Hospital Discharge Register doesn't include prison hospitals, other mental health professionals who know of someone's criminal history might be similarly trigger-happy about their diagnoses, or diagnoses from prison might become part of their medical record that's read at other hospitals. Did someone who read it more carefully see these possibilities mentioned?
- LarryDarrell 9y agoHaving lived poor places across the US for the last 15 years, I have come up with two root causes for the violence I have seen. 1. Drug prohibition related. 2. Keeping it Real going wrong. The Drug War and inter-generational poverty are two tough nuts to crack. The American mythology of Bootstraps and Individualism that's so baked into our culture gives us limited toolsets for dealing with these problems because they helped create the problems in the first place.
- dredmorbius 9y ago"Rugged Individualism" is a campaign slogan of Herbert Hoover from 1928. https://books.google.com/ngrams/graph?content=rugged%20individualism&year_start=1800&year_end=2000&corpus=15&smoothing=3&direct_url=t1%3B%2Crugged%20individualism%3B%2Cc0 https://books.google.com/ngrams/graph?content=rugged%20indiv... https://www.google.com/search?q=%22rugged+individualism%22&lr=lang_en&source=lnt&tbs=lr%3Alang_1en%2Ccdr%3A1%2Ccd_min%3A1%2F1%2F1900%2Ccd_max%3A12%2F31%2F1934&tbm=bks https://www.google.com/search?q=%22rugged+individualism%22&l... See particularly: https://books.google.com/books?id=85cGAQAAIAAJ&q=%22rugged+individualism%22&dq=%22rugged+individualism%22&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwjynrbTjZ3ZAhUW12MKHWa1DMkQ6AEIUDAK https://books.google.com/books?id=85cGAQAAIAAJ&q=%22rugged+i...
- crististm 9y agoApparently these results confirm Price' square root law. A small fraction of the population does most things, regardless of the subject in question. Search youtube for Jordan Peterson on this topic.
- blfr 9y ago"Jordan Peterson on creative productivity and the One Percent" perhaps? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JoPlMU4KiGI https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JoPlMU4KiGI
- rectang 9y agoI'd love to hear whether 1% account for all white collar crime. But Willie Horton terrifies people in a way that Bernie Madoff does not, so I expect that "tough on crime" will continue to exclude white collar crime.
- DanBC 9y agoNot sure why you got downvoted. You make an interesting point. How would you measure? Dollar value? Number of crimes? Number of victims of crime?
- rectang 9y agoMmm, I'd say number of crimes. The recidivism rate would would be very interesting to study because it is so typical for white collar criminals to receive absurdly light sentences. There's a sentiment here in this discussion that we should lock violent criminals away with extreme prejudice, even at the cost of false positives. (Which is the at odds with the idea of having criminal conviction require proof "beyond a reasonable doubt".) I wonder if people are similarly enthusiastic about such harsh treatment of white-collar criminals.
- beefman 9y agoA better title would be: 26% of violent crime convicts accountable for 63% of violent crime convictions. In terms of the entire population, probably: * 96% never convicted * 3% convicted once * 1% convicted as many times as the justice system allows until well into middle age (average of five times) An interesting question is: How many of the 3% are released and take up normal life, and how many are not convicted again because their first offense was severe enough to warrant a long sentence? Edit: Unfortunately, the paper can't answer this question.
- stordoff 9y agoThat was my thought on reading the headline - it's somewhat skewed because you'd expect a similarly small percentage of the population to be responsible for _all_ violent crime convictions (as most people aren't violent offenders; the study notes 3.9% had at least one violent conviction).
- dang 9y agoOk, let's try your title. I had to slightly compromise its grammar to fit the year in there too.
- WoodenChair 9y agoIMHO the title should include "In Sweden..."
- ggg9990 9y agoThe utilitarian approach would be to identify the worst n% of the population and pre-emptively kill or imprison them. There would be mistakes for sure though.
- jl6 9y agoBetter choose your utility metric carefully, because I’ll bet 90% of the world’s population aren’t necessary to achieving most people’s ideas of goals.
- tehwebguy 9y agoNow do one for financial crimes
- crpatino 9y agoOn other news, water is wet!!! Imagine what kind of society it would be if the number of convicted felons and ex-felons (of violent crimes alone!!!) would be a significative percentage of the population. Either, it would be a Mad-Max world where everybody would be shooting and stabbing their neighbour for the most ridiculous reasons; or we would all live under the boot of a Despotic Government that would put you in jail for the tiniest displays of non-compliance... like, calling "violence" to scowling at some annoying person or another.