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PaperclipPerfector  1yr ago (text post)   32785 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of June 12, 2023

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Homicides are usually recorded and so serve as a good proxy for wider violent crime rates, and homicide rates are much higher in the US.

Medical workers who kill patients are some of the hardest murderers to catch, but major cases have been found in the US and Europe, there doesn’t seem to be much difference.

Homicides are usually recorded and so serve as a good proxy for wider violent crime rates, and homicide rates are much higher in the US.

That doesn't really follow. A subset of something being more easily tracked does not necessarily mean it is a good proxy for the wider set. Sometimes the opposite, a.k.a. the streetlight effect.

This is extra true of those murders which, especially in the southeastern US, have little connection to other crime. Most murders there are a personal feud sort of thing, or a "you fucked my girlfriend" sort of thing. Totally expected and seen as very reasonable in local circles. Very different than gang activity, robberies that go wrong, etc.

the homicide clearnace rates in the USA have been plummetting since the 1970s. That's because easily solvable intra-family murders have been replaced with nigh unsolvable gangland killings. Therefore what you are saying is far less true today than it was 50 years ago. If anything we should say that murders are not a good proxy for violent crime rates because they probably underestimate wider violent crime rates.

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