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I have been looking up crime statistics from different states and it looks like the crime was pretty low in the 60s and the shot up through the 70s and 80s and then dropped down from the 90s until now.
Anger. Americans were very angry, over the way they were lied to about the Vietnam war and the massive persecutions over the phony war on drugs and the failure to honor civil rights and the great society, and a lot of other things.
I have been looking up crime statistics from different states and it looks like the crime was pretty low in the 60s and the shot up through the 70s and 80s and then dropped down from the 90s until now.
What would have caused the higher crime rates?
Multiple reasons:
- peak of Baby Boomers in their teens and early twenties (peak criminal years), with large family sizes in relatively small communities of overcrowded homes and schools
- large domestic migrations occurring resulting in displacement and movement of millions of people (black southerners moving north to cities, city whites moving to suburbs) - gangs and disturbances common - and overall decay and filth in cities as people and capital fled to the suburbs
- volatile political and social atmosphere (war, civil rights, etc) with riots in cities common in late 60s, effects carried thru the 70s
- huge rise in illegal drug availability and use, and concurrent alcohol abuse
- disintegration/transition from nuclear families to divorced/separated families took off in earnest
- disintegration of earnings (thru inflation) resulting in more 2-income families, fewer at-home parents monitoring kids, slip of working-class wages to below middle-class wages
- dissolution of state mental health hospitals, releasing thousands of mentally ill people to live on the streets
Multiple reasons:
- peak of Baby Boomers in their teens and early twenties (peak criminal years), with large family sizes in relatively small communities of overcrowded homes and schools
- large domestic migrations occurring resulting in displacement and movement of millions of people (black southerners moving north to cities, city whites moving to suburbs) - gangs and disturbances common - and overall decay and filth in cities as people and capital fled to the suburbs
- volatile political and social atmosphere (war, civil rights, etc) with riots in cities common in late 60s, effects carried thru the 70s
- huge rise in illegal drug availability and use, and concurrent alcohol abuse
- disintegration/transition from nuclear families to divorced/separated families took off in earnest
- disintegration of earnings (thru inflation) resulting in more 2-income families, fewer at-home parents monitoring kids, slip of working-class wages to below middle-class wages
- dissolution of state mental health hospitals, releasing thousands of mentally ill people to live on the streets
Just off the top of my head
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That's very interesting, but do you think that those problems have been getting smaller or do you think that we, as a country are beginning to learn how to cope with the problems and it is just becoming a social norm?
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