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Crime continues to remain a problem. Violent crime will always be upsetting. However, its time to recognize that "crime is NOT ballooning out of control". Beliefs that it is I believe are caused by the multiplicity of shows like "Nancy Grace", "Crime Solvers", and the existence of entire channels on tv devoted to true crime such as the ID Channel.
Yes. I would blame it on sensationalized news media reports - not only Nancy Grace but your mainstream ABCBSNBC jokers, newspapers trying to sell papers, when it comes down to it, they are just trying to sell soap. Getting people excited and worked up enough to watch so they can obtain advertising revenue...and some of it is also just blow-hard politicians with their own agenda.
Take gun violence for instance - there have been some public shootings that have made the news, and they were eventful but on the other hand they have been sensationalized beyond belief and expoited for agenda reasons, to the extent of blatant misreporting events. The fact remains - In the US - gun ownership is up, gun violence is down.
But the overall trend, all acrposs the country, has been downward, and that's been going on for DECADES at this point. You'll see a spike during a gang war or when there's a serial killer in your neighborhood, but overall people are coming up with better solutions.
But remember that on TV, guns work underwater. A lot of people who study up on what not to do based on TV shows get busted because they believe that what they saw was complete & accurate. It never is!
Windsor, Ontario, population 270,00 people, went two full YEARS, without a murder. Meantime, right across the river, in Detroit, the murder rate is sky high. WHY?
Ohio State University’s Randolph Roth, author of the magisterial 2009 volume American Homocide, is so convinced Obama’s election has fundamentally improved black people’s outlooks, in spite of what may be their actual circumstances, he published an essay last year explaining the crime drop with the title “It’s No Mystery.” “The inauguration of the first black president and the passing of the Bush administration re-legitimized the government in the eyes of many Americans during the first few months of 2009,” he writes. “African Americans and other racial minorities, who live disproportionately in America’s cities, were more deeply affected than anyone else, and it is likely that their greater trust in the political process and their positive feelings about the new president led to lower rates of urban violence.”
Windsor, Ontario, population 270,00 people, went two full YEARS, without a murder. Meantime, right across the river, in Detroit, the murder rate is sky high. WHY?
Good question, Jim. Its a question I wish more Americans would ask themselves.
I'm going to try to answer it because its always bothered me.
The truth is that even though Americans and Canadians speak English, we are both culturally quite a bit different. A starting point for this answer might be the values upon which Canada is founded. Isn't the founding motto of Canada "Peace, Order and Good Government"? By its very motto, Canadians seem more accepting of both government and they would seem to value harmony and cooperation. The focus in America has always been more on the individual and most particularly, on individual "Liberty". Liberty is basically a word that says each person gets to make most of the decisions that affect them personally by themselves.
I've been all around Canada. I've never been to Saskatchewan or to Manitoba, but I've been to all the other provinces. I enjoy Canada among other reasons, because when you go places you see Canadian people line up in an orderly fashion whether it be at the movie theater or in a store checkout line. Generally speaking, Canadians obey traffic ordinances without heavy-handed law enforcement. In America, even these activities may result in a certain amount of conflict. Or, heaven forbid you get caught here in a traffic jam. The amount of horn-honking and yelling would make a sailor blush. Violence is not seen as a solution to problems in Canada. Unfortunately, many people in the USA do see it as a solution or at least perceive it as unavoidable.
The Royal Canadian Mounted Police are a vaunted institution in Canada and I gather they were an effective law enforcement agency over 100 years ago. Americans have struggled with the notion of centralized law enforcement because many see it as a tool of a powerful and dangerous government that will use it to take away their freedom. Our own, FBI, has suffered from scandals and its first director, J. Edgar Hoover, was not a good man who used the agency to abuse the freedom of hundreds of people who were breaking no laws at all.
I believe we have things moving in the right direction. However, it will probably be a century or more (if than) before crime is as low as it is in Canada.
A couple of things worth pointing out: Canada has very low violent crime and they have no death penalty. I would also imagine that life sentences without parole are fairly rare as well. Perhaps, the truest statement is that a harsh society needs harsh punishments. Societies that are less harsh do not need such penalties.
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