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The U.S. News and World Report ranks NM dead last among all 50 states in terms of safety: https://www.usnews.com/news/best-sta.../public-safety. NM has the highest crime rates in the nation. Why is that? What is the state doing to make it so bad?
Public safety makes up 50 percent of the Best States for crime & corrections ranking. This subcategory evaluates both the violent crime rate and the property crime rate in each state, as measured by the FBI in 2016. Interestingly, less crime doesn’t always lead to less people in jail. Rhode Island and Pennsylvania both rank in the top-10 Best States for public safety and in the bottom 10 for corrections, the other subcategory used to determine the Best States for crime & corrections. Though some major cities, such as Chicago and Baltimore, have seen drastic increases in homicides in recent years, overall violent crime and property crime rates remain near historic lows.
More goes into crime statistics than raw numbers. For instance, those are nearly always caculated as per 100,000people. So one crime committed where there are 400,000 people looks worse than 2 crimes where there are a million people. And 1 crime in a place with 10,000 people would be given the same statistic as 100 crimes in a place with a million.
Then there's reporting. A few years ago several large cities redefined what they report as homicides. Immediately their violent crime statistics dropped. They didn't have any less crime. They just reported it differently. I mentioned homicides, but they redefined quite a few other things at the same time, too.
Those types of things may not be all of it. But they sure go a long way toward skewing the numbers in favor of places with much higher and worse crimes.
Last edited by phydeaux3; 04-16-2019 at 11:21 AM..
Reason: Mistake
Simply put, there's a lot of desperate people that live here. There is more visible poverty here than any place I have ever seen, in terms of overall percentage of the whole when it comes to neighborhoods. I live in a neighborhood that has for deterrents, dogs that remain outside all day and night (referred to here as an 'inexpensive security system', no joke, that was a recent radio ad for the local humane society as to the advantages of adopting a dog) video surveillance cameras, motion detectors, as well as police that regularly patrol the street at night (as witnessed by my same camera). Yet, this presence does not deter regular attempts for predators to lift items out of cars and front lawns, as well as break-ins.
I used to live in Southern New Jersey before I moved here. You could have put a sign on my front lawn there, that stated I was at work during the day, with my doors unlocked, and no one would think to steal. The town I used to live in had one property crime in an entire year. That is not the norm, by the way.
An additional thought, since I am on the subject of New Jersey. There are 566 municipalities in that state. New Mexico has a fraction of that number in spite of the state being 14 times larger in land area. That means there is a much lower presence of law enforcement. This could be an additional contributing factor.
The U.S. News and World Report ranks NM dead last among all 50 states in terms of safety: https://www.usnews.com/news/best-sta.../public-safety. NM has the highest crime rates in the nation. Why is that? What is the state doing to make it so bad?
I think a lot of it due to the widespread poverty and lack of opportunity so they turn to illegal ways of making money such as the drug trade.
New Mexico was once described to me as a "rural slum". I live there for a couple of years back in the early 2000s in Gallup. Yes, it was a rural slum. Lots of poverty, lots of alcoholism, lots of drug use, lots of prejudice, and lots of lost hope for any future, especially for Native Americans. Folks just gave up and tried to live day to day.
The U.S. News and World Report ranks NM dead last among all 50 states in terms of safety: https://www.usnews.com/news/best-sta.../public-safety. NM has the highest crime rates in the nation. Why is that? What is the state doing to make it so bad?
There are 24 threads related to crime in the New Mexico forum. These are the threads related to New Mexico state, (they exclude city names in the title):
NM has historically been one of the poorest states and probably has always been at the bottom of the safety ranking for that reason. The poorer you are, the harder it is to insulate yourself from crime.
On a positive note, we are the only state with no hate groups in 2018, according to the SPLC. Texas had 73; Arizona 20; Colorado 22. What can those states learn from New Mexico?
Any thinking person who looks at the published rankings for a few minutes should realize that there is something very odd and just plain misleading about the listing. Even the FBI warns against comparing one jurisdiction against another. There are too many variations among the states and their criminal justice practices and reporting. Comparing the actual numbers (not ranks) from one state over several years is a valid use of these statistics to see trends. In this case the sole reason for publishing the rankings is to sell advertising and magazines. It is not enlightening or informative.
So one crime committed where there are 400,000 people looks worse than 2 crimes where there are a million people.
No it doesn't. It looks exactly the same. One crime/500,000 people is equivalent to two crimes/a million people. Your probability of exposure to crime is identical in both cases.
To answer the OP: New Mexico historically has had problems with poverty, gangs, crime, which on a per-capita basis are higher than the national average. In New Mexico these issues tend to be spread out more. Other cities in the U.S. also have a lot of crime, but they tend to be concentrated more in specific places like inner-city ghettos.
So that's one difference. A second difference is that historically there has been a lot of apathy from the police in NM in the way they deal with crime in Hispanic and Indian communities. The police don't care and as a result they don't exert as much effort in maintaining public safety in those areas. Which means that crime is allowed to run its course. In other U.S. cities you hear about police apathy in minority communities. Well, NM is kind of like a "big minority community" - Hispanics and Indians are spread throughout the state and make up a large portion of the population.
In the United States, places where you see a lot of public safety are where the white people are and where the money is.
Quote:
Originally Posted by C24L
I think a lot of it due to the widespread poverty and lack of opportunity so they turn to illegal ways of making money such as the drug trade.
Why did you give a "thumbs up" to the drug trade?
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