Bfgrn
New member
OK, so it has no validity here...those are the breaks.
Here are some studies that refute some of the claims here and show the ties between economics and crime.
States With Higher Levels Of Gun Ownership Have Higher Homicide Rates
ScienceDaily (Jan. 14, 2007) — Firearms are used to kill two out of every three homicide victims in America.. In the first nationally representative study to examine the relationship between survey measures of household firearm ownership and state level rates of homicide, researchers at the Harvard Injury Control Research Center found that homicide rates among children, and among women and men of all ages, are higher in states where more households have guns. The study appears in the February 2007 issue of Social Science and Medicine.
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2007/01/070111181527.htm
Firearm Suicide And Homicide Rates Associated With Level Of Background Check
ScienceDaily (June 3, 2008) — States that perform local-level background checks for firearms purchases are more effective in reducing firearm suicide and homicide rates than states that rely only on a federal-level background check, according to a new study by researchers at the Medical College of Wisconsin in Milwaukee.
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2008/06/080603155227.htm
A Tale Of Two Capitalisms: Research Into Homicide Rates And The Link To Political Economies
ScienceDaily (Sep. 4, 2009) — Homicide rates are closely linked to the form of political economy that runs a nation, according to research from Northumbria University.
Senior Lecturers, Dr Steve Hall and Dr Craig McLean, claim in the latest international journal Theoretical Criminology that homicide rates are significantly higher in nations in neo-liberal politics where free market forces are allowed free rein, such as the USA, but are significantly lower in nations governed by social-democratic policies which still characterise most Western European nations.
Historically, says Hall, homicide rates are at their lowest when social-democratic policies govern nations. The US homicide rate was halved in the decades following the Depression, when the social democratic policies of the New Deal replaced ailing free-market policies. The nation experienced an initial rise from the mid-60s, when the nation’s brief social democratic project began to wind down, followed by sharp increases during the ‘crime explosion’ of the mid-80s and early 90s which followed Reagan’s abrupt introduction of free-market policies. Rates were eventually brought down in the late 90s, but only by imprisoning large numbers of violent offenders.
Similarly, in Britain, the homicide rate has almost tripled since its historical low point in 1956. These figures are even worse in areas blighted by job losses in the 1980s which have stayed in permanent recession. Hall claims that some of these areas have become breeding grounds for alternative forms of criminal ‘employment’– prostitution, loan-sharking, drug-dealing and distributing stolen goods, most of which appears on neither the Police nor British Crime Survey statistics. In some of the former industrial areas and inner cities devastated under Mrs Thatcher’s reign, homicide rates are six times higher than the national average. This contrasts sharply with Western European cities where the homicide rate is much closer to their national averages.
In the current recession, property crime is already on the increase and he predicts there will be a rise in career criminality, particularly as the UK has the highest number of young people not in work, education or training in Europe.
Hall lays most of the responsibility for higher crime rates at the door of the neo-liberals who claim competitive individualism and greed can be stimulated and harnessed to create wealth. That might be true, he argues, but it also corrodes our ability to empathise with others.
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2009/09/090904103525.htm
