Baltimore 1911: 5.8 Baltimore 2006: 43.3
Philadelphia 1911: 4.4 Philadelphia 2006: 27.7
New York 1911: 5.9 New York 1990: 30.7 New York 2006: 7.3
Newark 1911: 4.0 Newark 2006: 37.4
Chicago 1911: 9.0 Chicago 2006: 16.4
Washington DC 1911: 7.8 Washington DC 2006: 29.1
England & Wales 1910: 8.1 England & Wales 1997: 14.1
In many of our great cities, murders increased by an order of magnitude. Only in New York, where the finance boom priced out the poor are homicide rates down ( the crime all went to Newark and other ring cities, which is the phenomena I pointed out in my original post).
Pinker may be right about the middle ages to 1900. But he's dead wrong about the 20th century. The 20th century saw a millennium of progress get wiped away. Europe had two world wars that displayed levels of barbarism unseen since the Mongol invasion. Population explosions in Latin America, India, and Africa resulted in masses of people living in violent, malnourished, overpopulated slums. The great cities of the United States collapsed into burned out, dystopian ruins, which look like something out of the late Roman empire ( see The Ruins of Detroit for a small taste - http://detroityes.com/home.htm - but it is the same story in many other cities). What the hell happened?
Source for 1911 stats: http://query.nytimes.com/gst/abstract.html?res=9F07E5D91E3FE...
For 2006 stats: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_cities_by_crime_r...
And stats from England: http://www.parliament.uk/commons/lib/research/rp99/rp99-111....