FBI: Violent crime in U.S. on rise in 2005

[yukoncpa]

Today’s Freakonomics blog addresses both the FBI’s report and the abortion issue. Link

[hmkpoker]

How exactly do you plan on empirically linking the War on Drugs to flucuations (some positive, some negative) in murder rates in different cities?

How do you know it wasn't the result of, I dunno, new programming on the Disocvery Channel?

[adios]

I wrote:

[ QUOTE ]
Is the "war on drugs" having an effect on these cities?

[/ QUOTE ]

You responded:

[ QUOTE ]
How exactly do you plan on empirically linking the War on Drugs to flucuations (some positive, some negative) in murder rates in different cities?

[/ QUOTE ]

I respond:

I didn't empirically link the War on Drugs to fluctuations. Try taking a remedial course in reading.

[Cyrus]

From the freakonomics blog :

[ QUOTE ]
I think it is interesting to read what the FBI news release actually says :
<font color="white"> .</font>

Preliminary figures indicate that, as a whole, law enforcement agencies throughout the Nation reported an increase of 2.5 percent in the number of violent crimes brought to their attention in 2005 when compared to figures reported for 2004. The violent crime category includes murder, forcible rape, robbery, and aggravated assault. The number of property crimes in the United States from January to December of 2005 decreased 1.6 percent when compared to data from the same time period in 2004. Property crimes include burglary, larceny-theft, and motor vehicle theft. Arson is also a property crime, but data for arson are not included in property crime totals. Figures for 2005 indicated that arson decreased 2.2 percent when compared to 2004 figures.
<font color="white">. </font>
So the actual increase in violent crime from 2004 to 2005: 2.5%. Given that violent crime has fallen 40-50% since its peak, this hardly seems like reason to panic. And I find it very interesting that none of the headlines I could find made any mention of the fact that property crime fell 1.6 percent. I guess after so many years of falling crime, more falling crime just isn’t newsworthy.
<font color="white">. </font>
While the pundits are eager to start explaining the many reasons for this “sharp rise” in violent crime, my view is that all of this is nonsense. Prison populations are growing slightly, and my guess is the number of police is growing slightly as well. By now we have gotten almost all of the expected benefits of legalized abortion and crack-related crime is flat. Other demographic shifts are too small to matter on an annual basis. So all in all the factors that I believe to influence crime basically predict no big shifts in crime one way or the other. Given the inherent variability in crime, it is not at all surprising to see shifts up or down a few percent.

[/ QUOTE ]

Link

[matrix]

The prohibition ended because the Govt realised that the evils of alcoholism were lesser than the evils of the crime that came about as a direct result of prohibition.

The sooner the powers that be realise that the evils of drug addiction are less evil than the evils of drug associated crime the better.

Does the Government *really* make so much money out of selling drugs to it's citizens that it would make less money in making them legal and taxing them?