The Trouble with Crime Statistics

Criminologists may disagree on questions of causality, but they agree that outsiders underestimate the complexity of criminology. “Everyone thinks they know what causes crime,” Sampson told me. Lauritsen concurred: “Everybody has a strong view that some factor is responsible, whether it’s video games, bad music, or sexist attitudes,” she said. Kleiman complained about the “very primitive models people have in their heads” when it comes to crime: “Most of those models imply that more severity of punishment is better, which is almost certainly false.” He went on, “Anyone who hasn’t studied this professionally has more confidence than they ought to have. You have to really look at it hard to see how confusing it is.”

Criminologists face a problem that’s common in many fields: overdetermination. Why does someone commit a crime? Was it peer pressure, poverty, a broken family, broken windows, bad genes, bad parenting, under-policing, leaded gasoline, Judas Priest? “You could just keep stepping back and back and back and back, and you wonder when, ultimately, you’re going to draw a line,” Lauritsen told me. “It could be drawn at probably thousands of points.” Criminologists aren’t the only researchers who study overdetermined subjects: biologists, who have long sought specific genes for diseases, have come to realize that many traits and illnesses may be “omnigenic”—determined by countless genes. The sociologist David Matza summed up the difficulty, in 1964: “When factors become too numerous, we are in the hopeless position of arguing that everything matters.”

Weep, Weep For Sad And Friendless Wayne LaPierre, He's Having A Real Hard Time

 islander wrote:
 

well you know...impeachment time.  and the markets up, and that guy hit the other guy with a helmet

 islander wrote: 
As long as these bastards are giving these other bastards millions of dollars a year then nothing will change in this fine land we call America. Sadly. No excuses...Vote all these folks out that took the gun people's money for they each and everyone have blood on their hands that can never be washed away.

A 16 year old kid kills two, injures 3 others and then himself in a span of 16 seconds. It barely makes the news on the day it happens and isn't even front page on most major news sites the day after.

We are done.  Forget Trump, forget partisanship, forget climate change and economic arguments. We are at peak apathy and we deserve whatever is next.

Dick's Sporting Goods destroyed $5 million worth of assault rifles, CEO Ed Stack says

Religious Conservatives Argue Adam And Eve Would Never Have Been Banished From Eden If They’d Had Guns

 westslope wrote:
 

Indeed. Here in Texas, Ford F-150's should have special permits...

 kurtster wrote:
 

Thus I can't shake the feeling that some that missed it by the hair on their chin (pun intended) now tend to romanticize and glorify guns and gun culture. Remember Eric Cantwell in Charlottesville for the White Supremacist march? Before the march he filmed himself with his suitcase arsenal complete with tough guy rhetoric. But after the march, when a young woman lost her life and the city realized the danger and sought the marchers, we find videos of him locked in his hotel room, terrified and sobbing that the police were downstairs waiting for him. How quickly his demeanor turned when the stakes got very serious and very real. That what leads me to think too many are 'caught up' in the hegemony and disassociated from the reality.

 islander wrote:
 

Ultimately I did not hurt or kill anybody.  Not sure that qualifies me.

Funny.  Globe-trotters  — young and old — from all over the world understood the strategy.  Only Americans would express absolute shock that I did not carry a gun......

The really brave Americans and Canadians are the ones that will cross busy intersections while texting or deeply absorbed in conversation....

 islander wrote:
 
I read Rambo's back too. Fighting the invaders...

 westslope wrote:
 Snake...

 islander wrote:
 

islander:  I am not an American.  Celebrity narcissism is not my thing.

So, please, explain the reference.

 westslope wrote:
 

You know that Snake Plissken is just a character in a movie right?

Nurse Jenny will be here soon with the bingo cards and markers.

kurtster,

Interesting anecdotes.   I know what it is like to enter a new room and put my back against the wall with a good view of the entrance.  

An Argentinian federal police office shot about metre to my right just to grab my attention, and then invited me over a meal at the end of our conversation.  A young man put a knife on my throat in downtown Bogota, Colombia.   

In general, there is nothing like a poor, uneducated peasant soldier pointing a G3 rifle at your chest to make you feel nervous.

I have implicitly threatened to kill people but never had to do so.  Proud of that one.  After half a decade of walking about South America and Africa, I came away with no knife scars or bullet holes.    I packed a short skinning blade, nothing else.  Aside from the impossibility of crossing borders, I would have been killed if I had carried a firearm.  

In August of 1981, I flew into NYC from Jo'Berg and on the bus from the airport into the city, and without a second thought read the street.    Well enough to maintain a running commentary if I had been called upon to do so.

Though to tell you the truth, after getting back and working briefly for United Farmers of America AFL-CIO in LA, I felt more nervous in East LA than I did in downtown Panama City or Colon.

more later....

 Isabeau wrote: 
Hi

I'll take number 1 for now being a member of the Conscription Culture, those born before 1956.  Those who were born into a culture knowing that come age 18, you had to come to terms with how you would deal with the reality of being drafted, regardless of your personal views and forced to fight to kill and to defend yourself.  That all by itself meant skin in the game, you had to or better pay attention to life all around you because you had a decision to make come your 18th birthday regardless if you were ready or not, so you better be ready ...  Just how precious was life to you, the individual ?  And how do you feel about all (as in your fellow human beings) others in the same terms ?  And life that you may be responsible for bringing into this world. 

Then how strongly do you feel about your newly formalized standards ?  Are you going to roll the dice and accept being called up (2 years), enlist (4 years), go to school and delay, leave the country or go to jail if that is where it led ?  You lived with this hanging over your head until you reached age 26 and never had a deferment.  32 if you had a deferment.  Maybe this had an affect on self moderation and inhibiting violent reactions to keep your record clean in case you were drafted.

The smoke, smell and dust from WWII was still in air through the 50's.  Korea was ugly and scary.  M*A*S*H* came too late for us.  Viet Nam was still two words in the 60's.  People born since no longer had to pay attention as much and face that decision.  A paradigm shift and change in perceptions.  The year it became official was 1973 when the draft was officially ended.

So far as I think this through to answer is this is a significant point in time to look for a change in trends and thinking.  This is the before and after point.  Maybe that is the reason for why the mid through the end of the 70's was so happy crazy.  It was over, we could all relax at last and try and just get back to living and not worry about having to be drafted and all that goes with it.  Family life changed, too.  The point being that having to come to a conviction about how you are going to view the sanctity of life at a predetermined time is no longer forced.  That is a big deal.  Butterfly effect big.  Those that had to think about guns in their future with no opt out and those since where it is an opt in. ??

Eh ?  Does this make any sense ?  Is it relevant to what you were asking ?

To the couple of us who are of this generation, did I reasonably describe what turning 18 meant to you in terms of the draft and life in general ?

 steeler wrote:
 
 

Two points:

I have never owned a gun. Have never fired one. I would concede readily that I do not understand the mechanics (writ large) of guns. I do not believe any of what I just stated disqualifies me from engaging in the ongoing national discussion about guns and their impact upon and place In our society

Everyone is shaped, in significant part, by their life experiences. We all have them and they do have an impact upon the prism through which we view events and people. The trick is in giving proper credence to your own life experiences and those of others. Not an easy matter striking the proper balance.

@ westslope  this reply has sat in an open window for 5 days wondering if I should post it because of the possible flack I might get from all the drive by's here that usually hurl their vitriol at me for once again mentioning personal experiences as reference for my thinking.  I've decided that I don't care and that you deserve an answer to your thoughtful question.

 westslope wrote: 
Q & A  ... absolutely correct.  Also a job screening question on the turnpike.  What do you do if you see a $5 bill on the ground in the parking lot ?  The most correct answer is that you pick it up and put it in your pocket and continue on your way doing what you were doing when you found it.

Really, I have been studying human nature since being a kid.  I am a people watcher, period.  While everyone else is shuffling along looking straight ahead (or now into their cell phone screen), and nowhere else, I'm still looking up and down and sideways.  Berkeley was very fertile ground in the 50's and 60's.  I'm not yet too feeble or proud to bend over and pick up a penny, still legal here.  I've lived in areas that are major tourist destinations my whole life.  I have seen people from around the world function in strange new places away from home, out of their safe space, in and out of personal control, vulnerable and deal with the unexpected.  Disneyland was in my backyard in the 60's.  Sea World of Ohio and Geauga Lake Amusement Park were in the same town in the 70' to the 90's and now the RRHOF most recently.  I watch(ed) people deal with these predicaments and challenges and either solve their problems themselves, ask for help or give up, raise their hands and walk off cussing and blaming someone else for their inability to follow simple directions out on the turnpike.  Things like the quarter are what you think about as you study people and have a large population sample to work with.  I also study how people park.  Do they back in or pull in, back out instead of just going straight ahead when the space in front of them is open.  In my 20's I fed people off of the coffee truck, in my 30's I served travelers and truckers (I know the difference between a Budd and a Dayton wheel and could fix a flat truck tire with hand tools) on the big road between NYC and ChiTown and rented cars to them in Cleveburg.  In my 40's I was burned out with people and took to truck driving so I could just be alone from the insanity.  Then came random testing so I went back to school at the end of my 40's and have been selling glasses since.  Got sick then in my 50's.  And here we are.  I can almost always find a way to get along with nearly anyone from anywhere.  Street person to billionaire.  We do have a couple that shop at our store.  And everything in between.  But I am getting real tired of doing it.  People are getting meaner and nicer at the same time.  The swing is getting wider and trying to thread that needle with nice dealing with the public is just plain getting nucking futzer.  If I wasn't sick, I would get back out on the road in a heartbeat.  A factoid, I learned back in the 70's while driving the old roach coach, of those driving over the road back in the day with a college degree in their pocket, 75% had a psychology degree ...

I like you until you until you mess with me and I still try to sit with my back to the wall facing the front door, whenever possible.  It's the street person in me.  But I no longer go to places where you leave your wedding ring at home.  And I don't mean going out trying to pick up women.

Wrapping up this ramble and getting back to the thread topic, I carried a loaded gun when I drove the roach coach.  It belonged to the guy whose route I took over after he was robbed and shot.  I've been robbed at gunpoint and shot at (in jest, sorta).  I have not pulled the trigger on any gun in over 30 years.  I don't keep a gun or want to live any kind of life that requires owning a gun.  I just want to be left alone to grow old.  But I am not willing to give up my options just because of a bunch of well meaning **** are willing to sacrifice my rights for a self destructive path to the impossible just so they can feel like they tried to do something good.

@ izzy  That was a very thoughtful piece you wrote and I will try and come up with an equally thoughtful response.  May take some time, but you raised some very worthy points and questions.