In 1950 the murder rate per 100k people was 5.1 it's now 5.3 it's been approaching 50s level of homicides for about 20 years now.
I can't vouch for the reliability of this source[1], but it will serve for my example here. The murder rate in the US was 5 and 5.1 in 1960 and 2019 respectively. The aggravated assault rate was shot from 86 to 250.
Life didn't get safer, we just got better at saving lives.
Then again, this looks like its probably based on UCR data, which is sent to the FBI from local/state law enforcement. I imagine there are certain demographics, especially in 1960s America, that didn't get crimes against them reported with full accuracy.
There are lies, damn lies, and statistics. Especially regarding crime. "Gun violence" can include suicide in some reporting systems, and not in others. Some will put a shooting at a bank robbery in with the same category as a single mother shooting an intruder in her home, and some wont.
My point is that the subject of safety is far more complicated than "See, less people are dead, it's safer". Imagine a special forces team of 20 conducts 100 hostage rescues in a year, gets in a firefight in every one, takes multiple injuries, but no one dies. Now imagine the logistics unit of 20 that performs maintenance, paperwork, administrative functions, etc, at a forward operating base has one of their members crushed by a vending machine.
1 in 20 people in logistics died, 0 in 20 in the special ops team died. Most people would not reasonably argue that the logistics team was more dangerous.
I picked murder because I thought it would be more straight forward because people are pretty clear about who was killed whereas rapes and assaults might go unreported especially if the victins were minorities.
I think it's pretty clear that it wasn't particularly safe to be anything but a straight middle class+ white person in the 50s.
>= 90% of the US population in the 1950s were middle class white people. Ignoring that, the national aggregate crime rate was lower for non middle class white people then as well. On what are you basing that claim that it wasn’t safe for them?
A substantial minority of that segment now shrunk to more like 17% wish they could have the 50s back for some reason despite how bad the total picture was for most people.
Do you have a cite on the 1950s being substantially safer? Please note an actual and official source of data wherein data collection is to a uniform standard over the time frame discussed. For example a system where figures are collected from some areas and not others and coverage increases towards 100% over time will show an increase in crime rate even when there isn't one. Conversely a system where crimes against minorities aren't investigated or punished will see fewer crimes reported even when reported crimes are faithfully counted.
An example of a bad source is disastercenter.com which doesn't obviously cite how its data is collected, whose frontpage says nothing about who runs it. It is at best a summery of other sources which you aren't at liberty to inspect. Wherever they get their data might be a good source but its impossible for me to ascertain this.
My claims of the safety in america are based on aggregate crime rate statistics since the 1960s from the FBI UCR. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crime_in_the_United_States#Cri...
So now you’re rejecting official data without any evidence to support your skepticism. Interesting.
You still have yet to provide any basis for the claim that 1950s america wasn’t safe for non middle class white people. Why not?
If you can't vouch for a source then using it to make a point is wasting your time and mine.
I'm not asserting whether things are safer or not. Im asserting that judging "safer" cannot be accurately done with metrics such as "murder rate".
"A group of 34 of America’s biggest cities suffered a 30 percent total increase in homicides in 2020, according to a new survey published Monday"
5.3 + (5.3 * 0.3) is not approaching 5.1.
- it represents a small increase in the 2020 homicide rate that doesn't change the national situation. The proper topic of our discussion.
- Given a 27 year trend line an increase at a time when our nation is going through a time of extreme crisis logically represents an aberration not a trend.
America isn't meaningfully more dangerous on average than it was in the 50s although it was in the 50s and is now more dangerous than some of our more civilized neighbors.
* Edited for clarity and correctness*
https://www.voanews.com/usa/us-homicides-rose-2020-study-fin...
The lead author things the pandemic is a significant factor.
> One lead author of the study told the Associated Press he believed part of the problem was the pandemic forced police officers off the streets all around the country.
> Even when on the job, social distancing requirements kept officers from interacting closely with the community. He said, “That really reduced the ability of law officers to engage in the kinds of proactive policing that can reduce crime.”
> The study found that the pandemic “has disproportionately affected vulnerable populations, placing at-risk individuals under additional physical, mental, emotional, and financial stress.”
Are we to believe your grasp of the topic is better than the researchers who conducted the study.