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Some have successfully picked apart Pinker's numbers even with regard to street crime. Murder rates have fallen because of amazingly improved trauma care, not a

Some have successfully picked apart Pinker's numbers even with regard to street crime. Murder rates have fallen because of amazingly improved trauma care, not a decline in assault and battery. Beatings and stabbings that were lethal 50 years ago are now routinely survived.

leroy_masochist 12y ago
That's an important point. For a more detailed discussion of it, I recommend Dave Grossman's On Killing. He makes a convincing argument that the long-term downward trend in the U.S. murder rate is a function of faster trips to the hospital (due to better first responder protocols), and better care once in hospital. An examination of the combined total of reported aggravated assaults and murders, according to Grossman, implies that we're getting more violent over time.
- schoen 12y ago
  So Grossman's theory is that it's just plain harder to kill people nowadays, not any particular lack of trying to do so?
  - leroy_masochist 12y ago
    His theory is that many attempted murders are prosecuted as aggravated assaults, and that advances in various medical best practices (care delivered on ambulance, emergency surgery, etc) have increased the survival rate of people who have been victims of assault, thus making the total number of people who die from murder decrease as a percentage of the population....but the actual rate of people trying to kill each other has increased.
- kahirsch 12y ago
  > He makes a convincing argument that the long-term downward trend in the U.S. murder rate is a function of faster trips to the hospital (due to better first responder protocols), and better care once in hospital. There was a disconnect between murder rate and aggravated assault rate from the mid-1970s to about 1990, but before then and after then, the two rates were highly correlated. Graph: http://i.imgur.com/bVG4RHm.png http://i.imgur.com/bVG4RHm.png
- njharman 12y ago
  When your stats are reported rates. You can't make claims about actual rates. could be we are just reporting more violence. Cause better record keeping.less lynchings. Which knows.
- Gibbon1 12y ago
  Yeah but that doesn't explain the decline in forcible rape in the US from 1970 to present.
brownbat 12y ago
The "improving trauma care" can't explain why there have been declines in categories of crime across the board,[1] or why murder rates spiked almost as steeply from the 50s to the 90s (while trauma care was also improving) as they declined afterwards.[2] Vehicle theft rates are less than a fourth what they were in 1990. Burglary less than half. Aggravated assault is down 40%. Vandalism has been cut in half. Fraud is less than a fourth of what it was in 1995. Most notably, homicide rates track really closely with violent crime rates overall.[2] You can say BJS is biased and collecting terrible stats, but this would have to be a new bias, since we're comparing their stats to earlier results. And they at least try to cross check trends across different methodologies, and publicize their methods for critics to scrutinize. Their approach would make it likely they'd notice some obvious trend (that would only affect death rates) that was skewing their stats.[3] Also, other data sources seem to confirm their findings, including those from local police.[4] It could be that many factors are conspiring to distort these statistics, each one covering for the other. The amount of other factors that would have to be messing with the statistics simultaneously though make the trauma care hypothesis seem a likely target for occam's razor. Crime rates absolutely did fall. Every criminologist and even several economists are scrambling to solve the puzzle, and no one has definitively succeeded. It's a real trend driving everyone to study it, and there's no "gotcha" explanation for it, it's going to be a product of several complex factors. [1] http://www.bjs.gov/index.cfm?ty=datool&surl=/arrests/index.cfm http://www.bjs.gov/index.cfm?ty=datool&surl=/arrests/index.c... [2] http://www.krusekronicle.com/kruse_kronicle/2012/12/a-historical-perspective-on-violence-in-the-united-states.html http://www.krusekronicle.com/kruse_kronicle/2012/12/a-histor... [3] https://www2.fbi.gov/ucr/cius2009/about/crime_measures.html https://www2.fbi.gov/ucr/cius2009/about/crime_measures.html [4] http://www.nyc.gov/html/nypd/html/crime_prevention/crime_statistics.shtml http://www.nyc.gov/html/nypd/html/crime_prevention/crime_sta...
- tim333 12y ago
  >Crime rates absolutely did fall. Every criminologist and even several economists are scrambling to solve the puzzle I blame the internet. They're all sitting about on facebook and twitter when they should be out there stealing.

leroy_masochist 12y ago

That's an important point. For a more detailed discussion of it, I recommend Dave Grossman's On Killing. He makes a convincing argument that the long-term downward trend in the U.S. murder rate is a function of faster trips to the hospital (due to better first responder protocols), and better care once in hospital. An examination of the combined total of reported aggravated assaults and murders, according to Grossman, implies that we're getting more violent over time.

schoen 12y ago
So Grossman's theory is that it's just plain harder to kill people nowadays, not any particular lack of trying to do so?
- leroy_masochist 12y ago
  His theory is that many attempted murders are prosecuted as aggravated assaults, and that advances in various medical best practices (care delivered on ambulance, emergency surgery, etc) have increased the survival rate of people who have been victims of assault, thus making the total number of people who die from murder decrease as a percentage of the population....but the actual rate of people trying to kill each other has increased.
kahirsch 12y ago
> He makes a convincing argument that the long-term downward trend in the U.S. murder rate is a function of faster trips to the hospital (due to better first responder protocols), and better care once in hospital. There was a disconnect between murder rate and aggravated assault rate from the mid-1970s to about 1990, but before then and after then, the two rates were highly correlated. Graph: http://i.imgur.com/bVG4RHm.png http://i.imgur.com/bVG4RHm.png
njharman 12y ago
When your stats are reported rates. You can't make claims about actual rates. could be we are just reporting more violence. Cause better record keeping.less lynchings. Which knows.
Gibbon1 12y ago
Yeah but that doesn't explain the decline in forcible rape in the US from 1970 to present.

brownbat 12y ago

The "improving trauma care" can't explain why there have been declines in categories of crime across the board,[1] or why murder rates spiked almost as steeply from the 50s to the 90s (while trauma care was also improving) as they declined afterwards.[2] Vehicle theft rates are less than a fourth what they were in 1990. Burglary less than half. Aggravated assault is down 40%. Vandalism has been cut in half. Fraud is less than a fourth of what it was in 1995. Most notably, homicide rates track really closely with violent crime rates overall.[2] You can say BJS is biased and collecting terrible stats, but this would have to be a new bias, since we're comparing their stats to earlier results. And they at least try to cross check trends across different methodologies, and publicize their methods for critics to scrutinize. Their approach would make it likely they'd notice some obvious trend (that would only affect death rates) that was skewing their stats.[3] Also, other data sources seem to confirm their findings, including those from local police.[4] It could be that many factors are conspiring to distort these statistics, each one covering for the other. The amount of other factors that would have to be messing with the statistics simultaneously though make the trauma care hypothesis seem a likely target for occam's razor. Crime rates absolutely did fall. Every criminologist and even several economists are scrambling to solve the puzzle, and no one has definitively succeeded. It's a real trend driving everyone to study it, and there's no "gotcha" explanation for it, it's going to be a product of several complex factors. [1] http://www.bjs.gov/index.cfm?ty=datool&surl=/arrests/index.cfm http://www.bjs.gov/index.cfm?ty=datool&surl=/arrests/index.c... [2] http://www.krusekronicle.com/kruse_kronicle/2012/12/a-historical-perspective-on-violence-in-the-united-states.html http://www.krusekronicle.com/kruse_kronicle/2012/12/a-histor... [3] https://www2.fbi.gov/ucr/cius2009/about/crime_measures.html https://www2.fbi.gov/ucr/cius2009/about/crime_measures.html [4] http://www.nyc.gov/html/nypd/html/crime_prevention/crime_statistics.shtml http://www.nyc.gov/html/nypd/html/crime_prevention/crime_sta...

tim333 12y ago
>Crime rates absolutely did fall. Every criminologist and even several economists are scrambling to solve the puzzle I blame the internet. They're all sitting about on facebook and twitter when they should be out there stealing.