Ed West over at "The Wrong Side of History" had an essay this summer The Power Law of Crime, which discusses how few criminals commit most of the serious crime.
Contrary to what received opinion in Britain believes, America is not a particularly punitive country; in fact criminals are often allowed to repeatedly offend until the inevitable tragedy happens.
The post cites analysis by the National Institute for Criminal Justice Reform which finds that ‘Overall, most victims and suspects with prior criminal offenses had been arrested about 11 times for about 13 different offenses by the time of the homicide. This count only refers to adult arrests and juvenile arrests were not included.’
In Washington DC, about 60–70% of all gun violence is carried out by just 500 individuals, and the same Pareto principle applies to shoplifting, the bane of big liberal cities like San Francisco or Vancouver, where 40 offenders were arrested 6,000 times in a year.
According to the New York Times, ‘Nearly a third of all shoplifting arrests in New York City last year involved just 327 people, the police said. Collectively, they were arrested and rearrested more than 6,000 times.’ That third is therefore committed by less than 0.004% of New York’s population.
This squares with what I saw on the forensic side of mental health. I believe it is true that even the best of us are capable of horrible crimes under the right circumstances. Yet usually... somehow... these never come to pass.
Yes, this is a bit related to "I Need Therapy," below.
4 comments:
“In Washington DC, about 60–70% of all gun violence is carried out by just 500 individuals.”
That sounds like an eminently solvable problem.
"Round up the usual suspects."
related, from PowerLine
https://www.powerlineblog.com/archives/2023/11/the-daily-chart-how-to-lower-murder-rates.php
"I believe it is true that even the best of us are capable of horrible crimes under the right circumstances."
Shakespeare's Othello and the Twilight Zone episode "The Monsters Are Due on Maple Street" are both stories of malicious temptation along those very lines. Temptation, because Othello and the residents of the 300 block still had moral agency. But it would be more bearable for them on Judgment Day than for their respective tempters.
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