crime rate in the district [columbia]

Post Reply New Topic

I read in a swedish newspaper a few days ago that during the first half of april there have been 9 murders just in Washington DC. That's 9 murders in 15 days! Here in sweden we dont see 9 killings in a whole year!

So why is the crime rate so extreme in the states?

Its not just that the usa have so many inhabitants, for example, the DC area have 5 million residents and Sweden have 9 million residents. I rest my case.

By all ways you can look at it, the crime rate is very high in the usa, why is this? Opinions?

This doesn't answer your question, but is more of a clarification. While the DC metro area has 5 million, there's only a little more than half a million residents in the actual city. Also, the murders usually happen in very specific places in the southeast DC.

I lived in Northwest DC and the crime rate there is incredibly low.

It's a big, loosely organized country. These things are going to happen. There are simply a few places here in which a culture of misconduct has taken root. In other parts of the country, you will find some of the safest places in the world to be. It's not that the US is perfect. There are just a few places in this country in which having so much as a bad attitude can get you run out of town. We need more places of the like, here.

Yes, the USA has an unusually high murder rate, but not as high as you think. It's only about 3 times as high as Sweden's.

There are a variety of factors involved, largely to do (I believe) with very poor inner city minorities and/or gang violence. The factors behind their current situation are historical and would require a more erudite treatment than I can offer.

yes, your opinions make sense, I guess its a complex issue. um, carry on.

Racial hate is usually a major issue in these matters...

I don't think that racism plays so much a role anymore. At one point, it may have been a factor, but nowadays...not so much. Racism is no longer popular, even among the working class. In fact, it's really a mega-way for one to come off as an idiot. American racists, these days, are the worst possible combination between elitist scoundrels and white trash. Specifically, they're bored, middle-class brats who have nothing better to do. They're ingrates if you ask me, and they would benefit greatly from a good whack in the head.

I'll spell it out.

DC has a large black population.

Here are some findings from "The Color of Crime", a study updated in 2005 and available here

Major Findings:
• Police and the justice system are not biased against minorities.

Crime Rates
• Blacks are seven times more likely than people of other races to commit murder, and eight times more likely to commit robbery.

• When blacks commit crimes of violence, they are nearly three times more likely than non-blacks to use a gun, and more than twice as likely to use a knife.

• Hispanics commit violent crimes at roughly three times the white rate, and Asians commit violent crimes at about one quarter the white rate.

• The single best indicator of violent crime levels in an area is the percentage of the population that is black and Hispanic.

Interracial Crime
• Of the nearly 770,000 violent interracial crimes committed every year involving blacks and whites, blacks commit 85 percent and whites commit 15 percent.

• Blacks commit more violent crime against whites than against blacks. Forty-five percent of their victims are white, 43 percent are black, and 10 percent are Hispanic. When whites commit violent crime, only three percent of their victims are black.

• Blacks are an estimated 39 times more likely to commit a violent crime against a white than vice versa, and 136 times more likely to commit robbery.

ok, thanks, I agree with your opinions and the study, that you have found.

Just 1 comment, I find it plausible to believe that white criminals get more "leaway"[by the court] than black criminals.

That is probably true, but it by no means accounts for the discrepancy in crime. We'll stick to murder rate here because it's the area that the US is really bad in, but in a densely populated city of high Latino or Black population in NJ the murder rate (well documented and thus less subject to bias) is going to be vastly higher than elsewhere. I have not researched the degree to which the murder rate correlates with race as opposed to say income (remember, cities are likely to be composed of minorities who are also very poor; you would thus have lots of opportunities to commit crime for people with little to loose; race could simply be a correlate of poverty which could be the real factor behind crime)

I will also point out that large black population by no means explains DC's crime rate. For example, in terms of income and ethnic make up the largest city in the state of NJ (Newark) and the third largest (Paterson) are both very similar, yet Paterson's murder rate is about 1/5 that of Newark's (Newark's being I believe comparable to DC and Baltimore). Gang crime dramatically inflates the murder rate for these cities while the median individual is probably no more likely to be a criminal.

Well, there have been so many legislative steps taken to scrutinize the legal lense -- especially with regard to racial equality -- that there isn't much wiggle room for the law to unfairly punish minorities.

What I disagree with is the ultra-liberal dream that every background of person in the world, given a fair chance, will be equally as likely to commit violent crime. That just defies logic on the face of it, as it is simply quite improbable. Not all racial fear is bias. A lot of it is based on experiences.

Only 9? That's nothing. One year, there were 300 killed in DC, which is not representative of the rest of the nation. It's mostly related to the drug trade, people kill other people for the right to sell drugs on that street. Crack was epidemic in DC for many years, it's only starting to come down now. To the racist above, correlation doesn't equal causation. Blacks have been handed a unique position in the US, uniquely bad, due to decades of racism.