A friend of ours was surfing the net and came across this interesting tool, check it out at: http://bangor.areaconnect.com/crime/compare.htm
Basically, it compares crime rates in America's cities.
Did you know that Charlotte outranks New York city for crimes per capita?
http://bangor.areaconnect.com/crime/compare.htm?c1=Charlotte&s1=NC&c2=New+York&s2=NY
hmm...
grace,
Heather
Tuesday, August 08, 2006
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9 comments:
Funny, I looked it up on that night and Asheville also has a larger crime rate per capita than New York...scary.
An interesting fact about New York's crime rate I read in a book called "The Tipping Point" is that in the mid 1980s two criminologists, James Q. Wilson and George Kelling shed light on New York's crime situation. They brought forth the "Broken Window" theory which says that crime is largely affected by the environment it is found in. If someone walks by a broken window and it is left unrepaired people will conclude that no one cares and no one is in charge. Soon, more windows will be broken and a sense of anarchy will prevail sending the signal that anything goes. In a city, relatively minor crimes such as public disorder, graffiti, and aggressive panhandling, are all equivalent to broken windows - invitations to more serious crime. George Kelling was hired by the New York Transit Authority as a consultant. They then in turn hired a new subway director, David Gunn to oversee the rebuilding of the subway system. Many subway advocates told Gunn not to worry about the graffiti and focus on the larger questions of crime. Why worry about graffiti when there's a much bigger problem at hand. Gunn insisted, "The graffiti was symbolic of the collapse of the system. When you look at the process of rebuilding the prganization and morale, you had to win the battle against graffiti. Without winning that battle, all the management reforms and physical changes just weren't going to happen."
So the story goes on that the graffiti clean up took from 1984 to 1990. Before graffiti had a chance to dry on the trains, the city was there to clean it off. And in the early 90's with the help of a new head of transit police, he applied the same discipline towards minor crimes such a public drunkeness and littering being committed. If you peed in the street you went to jail. And the crime rate dropped drastically. They concluded that it all pointed to the same cause - minor, seemingly insignificant quality-of-life crimes, were the "Tipping Points" for violent crimes.
Sorry for the long comment. I thought this story was fascinating.
I read an interesting story behind the drastic drop in the crime rate in New York City in a book called 'The Tipping Point.' It was started by a theory called "Broken Windows" theory. The theeory is this: If a window is broken and left unrepaired, people walking by will conclude that no one cares and no one is in charge. Soon, more windows will be broken and a sense of anarchy will spreaed from the building to the streets sending the message that anything goes. They agreed that violent crime was a direct result of it's environment. In this case, they cracked down on getting rid of all graffiti on subway trains. This continued from 1984 - 1990. Then, the subway security started cracking down on the "minor" crimes that were committed. Then when Giuliani was elected he made a blanket request for the CITY police officers to enforce punishment for quality-of-life crimes such as public drunkeness, or people who threw empty bottles into the sttreets. If you peed in the street, you went to jail. And New York saw a drastic decrease in their crime rate. I thought it was a fascinating story.
Sorry Heather for commenting on that twice! I thought the first time I lost what I had written!
scary! my prayers are with you
love you and did not know that
** Charlotte led other comparable cities in murder rate
** per capita and church attendance per capita.
** What would statisticians make of that?
The beauty of statistics is that you can make anything you want out of it :)
1. Christians love each other to death
2. All the murders make people think more about eternal issues and lead them to church
3. Having so many Christians and churches around them, people are forced to choose between good and evil rather than stay "warm" and those that choose evil feel compelled to "go all the way" to the evil side
etc.
On a more serious note, you guys are doing a great job and we are quite impressed and humbled by it.
Hey, 'thinker's got a pretty cool blog! Lots of good food for thought!...to the point where I wonder if my brain is getting fat! Much love, everyone!
Can u check what South Australia is compared to whatever country/ province coz the tool doesn't work at my higher education place :(
Rhi,
unfortunately, this crimerate toolbar only has to do with US cities. You could probably google a national one, though. Just look for crime stats in your area!
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