Why Texas Has So High Crime Rates ?? (Houston, Dallas: affordable house, neighborhoods)

[deeptrance]

Originally Posted by RallyMonkey

"...Some of the findings of other studies are as follows: 1) assaults are highest in the summer months and lowest in the winter months; 2) family disturbances are positively correlated with ozone levels; 3) assaults are negatively correlated with wind speed and levels of humidity (most assaults seem to occur on dry days); 4) fewer violent crimes are reported in very cold days (e.g., the crime rate in New York City was very low during the blizzard of 1996)."

This is interesting stuff. It's easy to observe that people are much more aggressive and hostile in traffic on hot days in Texas, for example. The heat gets us agitated and that raises stress hormones.

I think there is an additional explanation for the correlation between latitude and crime rates, which is that income disparity is higher in the lower latitudes and the gap between rich and poor has been shown to be a major contributor to crime. Masses of poor who see gluttonous displays of wealth are more likely to lash out in anger, or simply try to get some of what they need, through violent action.

The states with low crime rates tend to have higher levels of equality in education, social welfare, access to resources, etc., and the same applies to the north-south differences in Europe.

But there is no question that clashing cultures engage in more violence. As much as I want to live in a diverse world where we all get along and celebrate our differences, cultures clash and this leads directly to many social problems, some of which are acted out through violent crime. It's easy to impose a uniform standard of morals and lifestyle on homogeneous populations, so naturally you see less inter-cultural conflict in isolated little countries in northern Europe. This will change as millions of desperate migrants from Arab nations flood into every part of Europe. I don't think the current smug assumption of non-violence and tolerance for diversity will last much longer in the EU, as we can already see in the growing number of protests and riots sparked by clashing civilizations.

[speedoflight]

Been a very long time since I've been on this thread. Firstly, I did not set up any stats for I was NOT the statistician who collected/compiled these numbers. I merely reported them back from a Web site I was at. Big difference!!

The thing with stats is that they're just numbers. The numbers reflect crime stats that have been recorded over a period of time for a particular type of crime. So how you choose to decipher them is totally up to you. They do answer some basic questions - do large Texas metropolitan areas have a lot of crime. The answer is yes. Why is this so? Could be a myriad of reasons that unless you do an in depth analysis and research, you can't really know why. It could even be as trivial as that Texans tend to report crime more than their counterparts in other states. Again, that's a conjecture with no solid proof of course. Here's another stat to throw at you - Texas has a very high inmate population in the nation. What do you make of that? Again, without the research to capture as to why this is so, we can only speculate. To say that it is so because Texas is very tough on crime, well, that could be one of the reasons but it doesn't answer the question as to the cause/reasons for the crime and thus the criminals. Are Texas cities places where criminals are more attracted to?

In order to really understand crime stats, you have to do your analysis far beyond the numbers themselves into the demographics, laws, politics, etc. It could range from low income, low education, tough cops, etc. Statistics should not throw people into a defensive mode but to ask oneself as to why one metro area of equivalent size could have far less crime than another. What are the conditions - demographics, political, cultural or economic.

Someone else here said that it could be due to latitude/weather. I can't speak for Texas but can tell you about CA. Southern CA is far denser in population than Northern CA. The only difference being San Francisco (Northern CA). SF is a famous city but a very small city. It is less than 49 square miles and therefore is very dense. You'd find that it has more crime per square mile than LA because of that but it does not mean that LA is safer because I think you will be hard-pressed to find a Californian who can say that. Warmer places tend to attract more people to them simply because it's easier to live in warmer places. Even animals in the wild gravitate to warmer areas. While there is life in the extremes of Antartica, there is far more life to be found in the equatorial regions. You get the picture...Perhaps if you drew a horizontal line right down the middle of the US and divided it into two halves and measured the population, you'd find that the southern half has more people than the northern half because of climatic reasons. More people = more crime. That's common sense.

Every metro area has its bad spots and great spots. You learn that as you live in a place. LA, with all its crime has some great places to live (if you can afford it of course). So crime stats or whatever stats that are given to you should not be the determinating factor for you personally. If you're planning on moving - What you need to do is go and see the place and feel it out for yourself. We all have been to towns and neighborhoods where we feel the negative vibes and know it's bad and you did not even need any stats to tell you that!

Originally Posted by txsn

Just a side note... you set up all your stats by saying this city is __X larger than they other then give statistics that are per 100,000... These stats are already 'level' so LA being 3X bigger makes no difference. It just makes the smaller city sound worse than it really is. By the way.. like others have stated, most these numbers are based on the central city in which the metro area gets its name... the overall crime stats(burbs, etc) would be lower...

[cdelena]

Originally Posted by speedoflight

Texas has a very high inmate population in the nation. What do you make of that?

It says there has been and continues to be a lot of crime and it propagates... those prisoners will be released, most without education or training except they learned more about crime while incarcerated, and will turn to drugs and crime again.

The strategy in Texas has been to just keep building prisons, but perhaps a change is overdue. It seems we take those guilty of non-violent crimes and put them in a system that turns out more desperate criminals. And take violent criminals into a bad situation and turn them out with even less chance than they went in.

I am not an ACLU supporting liberal but even I can see this is a system that is building an under-class with no opportunity. IMO crime will continue to increase in Texas until changes are made in the justice system.

[deeptrance]

Thanks to speedoflight and cdelena for reviving this interesting thread with intelligent comments.

I totally agree that the Texas attitude towards dealing with crime is far too simplistic, dominated by a "lock 'em up and throw away the key" attitude that is only exacerbated by the for-profit prison system and a corrupt legal system that has a long track record of incarcerating innocent people (especially those of the African-American ethnic minority.)

There is also this to be considered: Every state that has large numbers of immigrants will have higher crime rates. This isn't because "immigrants are bad", it's more complicated than that. High rates of immigration, even from other states, contribute to instability and a sense of anonymity.

I'm convinced that a the lack of cohesive stable communities is a major influence on crime rates. We evolved as a social species within tribal or communal systems where everyone knew each other's business and cared about each other. We saw an explosion in crime in the USA during the 1960s and 70s in large part because of increasing mobility and anonymity and a breakdown of social norms.

Now, I'm an old hippie and I was all for the changes that the 1960s brought, but I cannot be intellectually honest if I say that those changes didn't come with some negative side effects. When I was 12 I could ride my bike all over town until after sunset without my parents worrying. Only 10 years later, the USA had changed so much that it would be considered negligent to allow your kid to ride around without the parents knowing where they were at all times.

Things changed. And the things that changed are far more pronounced in areas where the population is constantly growing with lots of "strangers", leading to social instability.

There are so many other factors, as speedoflight pointed out. Stats are raw numbers that mean whatever you want them to mean. It takes a lot of hard work and logic to sort out the causes and effects that lead to those stats.

[itchy_nose]

well if you want to see crime ratings, maybe this site will help.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_..._by_crime_rate

It is based on Federal Bureau of Investigation Uniform Crime Reports statistics that initially became available in September 2006. This list is based on the reporting agency.

You can also choose the population of the city you are checking out. I was looking at Harlingen's crime rate compared to the other cities in Texas as well as in USA. It ranked 216 out of 265 cities for the 60,000 to 100,000 population. I was surprised that compared to the other cities, the rank was quite low. I was expecting it to be really high based on the comments from here.

FOR the 250,000 and above population. Dallas ranked 17 and Houston 18 out of 68 cities but then that wasn't surprising because most of the main cities' crime rates are usually high.

[KewGee]

I so agree with the heat aspect. It can make the sane crazy!

Seriously though and as one poster has mentioned many times on one of these threads, poverty seems to go hand in hand with crime.

During a three-year study, these states ranked highest in poverty and in this order, 2002-2004:

New Mexico / Missississippi - tied

Louisiana

Texas

Arkansas

Alabama / Kentucky - tied

West Virginia

Tennessee

And since Katrina, TX has acquired over 250,000 people from LA, so I suspect Texas has increased in poverty since this data was collected.

[WindDrake]

Originally Posted by LastDallasNative

Criminals here in Texas take risks - they don't know who is carrying a concealed gun.

It is fun to keep them guessing.

Yes it is.
Just remember it is illegal to shoot them in the back,
so shoot them in the leg until they turn around.

(heard from a commedian but too tired atm to remember who)

[Nick Hood]

austin is one of the safest cities in america with a population over 500000 I would sugest living there expecially a suburb of it such as round rock

[countdown city]

Originally Posted by cdelena

It says there has been and continues to be a lot of crime and it propagates... those prisoners will be released, most without education or training except they learned more about crime while incarcerated, and will turn to drugs and crime again.

The strategy in Texas has been to just keep building prisons, but perhaps a change is overdue. It seems we take those guilty of non-violent crimes and put them in a system that turns out more desperate criminals. And take violent criminals into a bad situation and turn them out with even less chance than they went in.

I am not an ACLU supporting liberal but even I can see this is a system that is building an under-class with no opportunity. IMO crime will continue to increase in Texas until changes are made in the justice system.

They took care of those problems it's called minimmum secerity prison also prisons do educate their prisoners I know cause my father was in prison for 20 years and has a college education cause of it. But the new education can have a opposite effect and inturn can make criminals more dangerous then they were before cause now they got brains to find ways how to do something stupid and get away with it.

[bingo08]

Originally Posted by GoPadge

Over the yeras, many of the affluent have left the "main cities" and moved out into the suburbs. So while the city of Dallas has a high crime rate, (and lower median income and eduction level), outlying cities such as Highland Park, Richardson, Plano, Garland, etc have much lower crime rates (and higher incomes and education levels).

You are so right.