Iraq & California?
Which is more dangerous? Rodger knows.
One other thing, in the USA there were 16,765 homicides in 2000. More than 2,300 are in California? Fourteen percent of our homicides occur in one state? We should ban California, not guns.
Remember, I do this to entertain me, not you.
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August 28th, 2003 at 2:00 pm
Well, California does have 12-13% of the nation’s people, many of them crammed into an urban environment.
August 28th, 2003 at 2:28 pm
True enough, but CA ranks 9th highest for violent crime as a percentage:
http://www.disastercenter.com/crime/cacrime.htm
Florida is number one, which surprised me. It should be number two but DC afterall isn’t a state.
August 28th, 2003 at 7:05 pm
Unrelated but interesting: during the eight years of the Clinton Administration, the total crime rate in the U.S. dropped by 24.8%. The murder rate dropped by 42.1%… Not bad for an administration that was supposedly “soft on crime.”
Now I know that there were a lot of other factors involved there (something the conservatives will be quick to point out), but I suspect that if Bush posted those sorts of numbers, conservatives would give Bush credit for them. Apparently Clinton got a bad rap on crime.
August 28th, 2003 at 7:16 pm
Another thing I found interesting, looking at the state-by-state lists: there doesn’t seem to be any correlation between liberal/conservative policies and the crime rate. California (generally liberal) and Florida (generally conservative) both have high crime rates. Massachussetts (staunchly liberal) and Ohio (staunchly conservative) have relatively low crime rates.
Population density doesn’t seem to matter much, either. Alaska ranked 10th per capita in violent crime, and ranks worst in per capita rapes. Connecticut ranked 33rd in violent crime, and 47th in rapes.
Of course, these statistics are all over the board. There don’t seem to be any correlations anywhere, proving the old adage about lies, damn lies, and statistics.
August 28th, 2003 at 8:18 pm
Actually, i’d attribute the lower crime rate during Clinton’s tenure to the economy. High crime areas tend to be in poorer areas. If the economy is good, fewer folks are poor and crime is not as rampant. That’s my theory, anyhoo.
August 28th, 2003 at 8:28 pm
One more thing, the total crime rate dropped 18% not 24.8%.
14,144,800.00 1992
11,605,751.00 2000
2,539,049.00 Difference
18.0% %
And it’d be curious to see local economic info for the same areas to prove or disprove my theory. E.g., I assume florida is pretty affluent financially (retirees and all) but i imagine maybe miami (which has a large poor population) makes up most of the crime stats. It’d be curious.
August 29th, 2003 at 1:26 am
One should correlate for age as well, there just aren’t that many geezers holding up 7-11s, after all.
August 29th, 2003 at 7:32 am
I would agree with you that the economy is the overriding factor in the crime rate. If it’s really true, I’d expect to see the crime rate go up in 2001, 2002, and 2003. Not sure if that’s happened. I seem to remember a recent announcement that crime was DOWN again, so that would blow our theory up.
Second point, your math is flawed on two levels. First, you calculated the difference in number of crimes committed. I calculated the difference in per capita crimes (per 100,000 residents), which is what this index is measuring. Your math assumes the population of the US stayed consistent over the eight year period, which it did not. You need to look at the per-capita indexes by scrolling down to the blue section.
Second, Clinton may have been elected in 1992, but he didn’t take office until 1993. I can’t go giving Clinton credit for the last year of the Bush Administration (which actually had a slightly lower crime rate than the first year of the Clinton Administration).
5484.4 1993
4124.0 2000
1360.4 Difference
24.8049%