Originally Posted by bartholemues

Fair enough, I'm sure there are plenty of places where crime has increased even in the face of an overall decrease.

Your personal experience not withstanding, this article on the subject in general makes an interesting read: The world is not falling apart: The trend lines reveal an increasingly peaceful period in history..

Originally Posted by robin1234

Wouldn't it be more effective to do that thing they do with black flies and mosquitoes etc. Get sterilised, and have sex with multiple other people so they are actually wasting their vital energies and never manage to procreate.

Originally Posted by Giantaxe

True, but remember that the plural of anecdote is not data, even when it's morpeth spouting.... and with the fall in crime being so marked since the 70's and '80's, I wonder how many areas of the country have actually seen an increase? Chicago, presumably, but I am sceptical that the list is very long.

Of course people's perceptions can be very different to that reality:

"Despite double-digit percentage decreases in U.S. violent and property crime rates since 2008, most voters say crime has gotten worse during that span, according to a new Pew Research Center survey."

"These polling trends stand in sharp contrast to the long-term crime trends reported by the FBI and BJS. Both agencies have documented big decreases in violent and property crime rates since the early 1990s, when U.S. crime rates reached their peak. The BJS data, for instance, show that violent and property crime levels in 2015 were 77% and 69% below their 1993 levels, respectively."

Voters’ perceptions of crime continue to conflict with reality | Pew Research Center

Originally Posted by fakey

A few minths ago my girlfriend & I had a day out in Bushwick Brooklyn. We ate some great food, went to an art gallery & then relaxed for a while in Maria Hernandez park, surrounded by kids playing in the sunshine & old dudes playing chess.
Maria Hernandez, who the park is named after, was a community work who was shit dead at that intersection, in the eighties, at the height of the crack wars, when the whole area was absolutely a no go area with (I believe) an annual murder rate in the hundreds.
When I came here in 1997 nuch of the US was seen as this really violent place & somewhere to avoid. Apart from some parts of
Chicago, I don't think thats true so much any more, is it ?

Originally Posted by Giantaxe

California-formulated gasoline has apparently had a huge impact on reducing smog here.

California won't repeal its environmental regulations, but I suspect that Trump will try to impose rolled-back federal fuel economy standards on it, leading to a court fight.

Originally Posted by Sugarmooma

There are a lot of areas in Houston to avoid . Drive by shooting and gang fights are as bad now as they were back in the late 80's when we first arrived.

Originally Posted by fakey

Sure - there are definitely always exceptions to any rose tinted view of anything. But - Houston aside (which tbh I know nothing about) - many (most ?) of the cities that were allegedly out of control 2 decades ago now aren't.

Originally Posted by Sugarmooma

It may have improved slightly but after the influx of the many homeless from New Orleans when Katrina hit in 2005 the gang rivalry got really bad and the murder count went back up

Originally Posted by zzrmark

As the topic appears to have moved towards Trump, and this is kinda on topic, did no-one else notice their President exercising his 1st amendment rights at the WH Easter egg roll, at least he was, until FLOTUS jabbed him and he moved his hand up to cover his heart whilst the national anthem was being rolled out?

Originally Posted by fakey

Sure - there are definitely always exceptions to any rose tinted view of anything. But - Houston aside (which tbh I know nothing about) - many (most ?) of the cities that were allegedly out of control 2 decades ago now aren't.

Originally Posted by Lion in Winter

I suppose it depends on your definition of out of control. The body count is spectacularly high and by and large follows urban poverty. Also of note, 42% of murder victims were killed by family and "friends", not strangers.

Originally Posted by Giantaxe

According to this graph the murder rate improved immensely between the early '90's and the time of Katrina (scroll down to the "Homicides per 100,000 population" graph and select Houston from the drop-down list. Katrina may have then been the cause of an increase for a few years, but by 2010 the murder rate was markedly lower than before Katrina:

http://www.economist.com/blogs/graph.../daily-chart-3

Originally Posted by Sugarmooma

I guess I should have phrased it as "crime" not just murder. Stabbings, shootings and violent crime increased.

Originally Posted by Sugarmooma

And if you listen to the Houston news each night it is very hard to believe the murder rate has decreased.