to think steralisation should be enforced

[claw3]

on anyone who abuses children?

Cory - Not sure to be honest, read it somewhere and just for the record, i dont read the DM!

You "read it somewhere".

Gosh.

see page 9 for homicide rates

@ SD

Note those figures do not take into account population increases so I don't think you can possibly conclude that rates have doubled.

In fact, if you factor in the population changes then it would appear that murder rates have dropped.

I never mentioned the DM, did I?

No, the reason I asked is that I think if we are going to compare, it has to be in real terms.

That is:

it has to be in proportion to the population

the same crimes have to be counted as murder (e.g. in Victorian times, they had a different attitude to injuries from DV and injuries inflicted on servants by their masters)

juries have to use the same criteria for convicting
(as I mentioned before, in the hanging days juries were less willing to convict for fear of making mistakes- you could easily see that it would affect the murder statistics if a jury is predisposed to find an innocent explanation at all costs)

you cannot count the war years, as a sizeable proportion of the men between 18 and 45 (the ones most likely to commit violent crime) were fighting abroad, and I believe crime rates did indeed go down

as we speak, there are changes in the way we view such things as the burden of proof and the presumption of innocence. This is likely to affect the statistics and make comparisons harder.

But even so, I would want proof that the murder rate did indeed go up when hanging was abolished, because this is not what I have heard. If you find anything, I shall be interested to read it.

well done, puzzle rock!

SD - Was posed as question rather than a statement!

Excuse me for making conversation

Puzzle - great stuff. Perhaps i should have said risen, rather than doubled.

claw, I understand how that seems like a solution but I agree with all the other posts that say it wouldn't happen.

We live in a basically free society and that means it's full of people doing things that lots of other people think are wrong. It goes with having a relatively free society.

The only kind of state that would enforce such extreme measures would be a fascist one. And once you start enabling the state to sterilise people, you're on the road to euthanasia for the 'wrong' humans in society.

Many people see baby P's mother as a product of her own past, not innocent of her actions but in many ways incapable of properly adult behaviour. Sure she was capable of lying and concealment but actually not able to be a parent. I think can take generations of terrible parenting to produce a monstrous trio like this. But what do you do? Sue their parents, families, carers, everyone? Just their mothers? What if their mothers were children themselves? Or drug addicted? Or drunk? Unfortunately nature makes all sorts of people fertile that we might wish she didn't and vice versa!

But the rate hasn't risen. The number of murders has risen but the rate has decreased
.

Puzzle - Homicide rates per 100,000 population 1.1 in 1976 - 1.4 in 1997. Not totally up to date, but as close as i could get.

one would also have to address the fact that noone knew of shaken baby syndrome etc in the 1950's, so any baby dead from mysterious causes would almost certainly be counted as dead from accident. These days, there is a much stronger feeling that babies shouldn't just die for no reason, so investigations are much more likely to be made.

interesting how they say that the amount of time served by life prisoners has risen by 30% in the 10 years between 1987 and 1997. so we're not getting softer and cushier all the time? also, that reconvictions are far less common for murder than for other crimes (actually, I could have worked that one out for myself)

also, that how you count a crime makes such a massive difference. In Scotland (and I believe in England in earlier days) if I were to go in and shoot an entire school class that would count as one incident. In England it would count as 30 separate murders. You could see how that would affect the statistics

claw - given that the death penalty was abolished in 1965 (feel free to correct me, anyone?) I don't think that the rise in murder rates that you quote below is down to the abolition of capital punishment!!

Also, anyone who thinks that prison is a cushy number has obviously never met anyone who's spent any length of time in a correctional facility!

Claw - where are those figures from please?

claw3 on Wed 19-Nov-08 09:36:20
Puzzle - Homicide rates per 100,000 population 1.1 in 1976 - 1.4 in 1997. Not totally up to date, but as close as i could get.

That is such a tiny difference that it may not represent a rise at all, merely a fluctuation from year to year.

As the Home Office report makes clear, the changes in how you count homicide (i.e. how many homicides you count the same incident as) has changed and this alone would be more than enough to account for the difference. Take into account the fact that the detection rate has risen, particularly when it comes to infanticide, and I don't see how those figures prove a rise at all.

There is also the fact that some infanticide convictions in recent years have been rescinded after quite a long period, and it is not clear whether this would have been reflected in the statistics.

We still have very much lower murder rates than countries with harsh penalty systems such as Russia.

What you also have to be aware of is that the homicide statistics cover a wide range of crime, from a stepfather abusing a baby to a punishment murder of members of an international gang. What does seem to have happened in recent years is that there has been quite a lot of international gang violence, which pushes the statistics up, but that domestic murder has not actually gone up. The big problem is that a lot of civil conflict around the world has left vast stores of illicit weapons floating about. So castrating domestic abusers may well not make any impact on the homicide statistics at all.

Puzzle - from the link that you gave.

Cory - The population of Russia is over double that of the UK (approximately), so that could account for the lower rate.

A lot of what you say makes senses. I do however feel that crime in general is on the increase and people are getting off lightly, whether that be child abuse or any crime.

Claw3

Rates are worked out as the number of murders in relation to the number of people in the population.

So when comparing the number of murders in Russia and the UK, you wouldn't just compare the number, but the rate compared with the population.

I'm sorry if I sound patronising, but it doesn't sound like you've grasped it (despite quoting rates per 100,000 in the UK earlier).

Here is a list of the murder rates indifferent countries for you to peruse. Note where Russia is on the list compared with the UK.

World murder rates

claw3 on Wed 19-Nov-08 10:50:09
"Cory - The population of Russia is over double that of the UK (approximately), so that could account for the lower rate."

That doesn't account for a crime rate that is over 7 times higher, though.

claw3 on Wed 19-Nov-08 10:50:09

"I do however feel that crime in general is on the increase and people are getting off lightly, whether that be child abuse or any crime."

Yes, but laws have to be made using hard facts, not feelings. There is no evidence that child abuse is on the increase, or indeed murder in general. And the Home Office report shows that prison sentences for homicide were increased by 30% over a 10 year period. So people are not getting off more lightly, they are getting longer sentences.

We are also sending more people to prison now than we did in the '70'. Some of them are in for things that are not actually against the law, i.e. breach of ASBOs. But once they have spent a few times away from all honest people and in the sole company of crooks- they do often develop a different attitude towards crime.

The re-offending rate for murderers is quite low, probably because most murderers only really want to murder one person in their lives and once they have done that, they don't go on to murder again. And mass murderers usually do get very long sentences.

The re-offending rate for other crimes is much higher, and there is no evidence at all that suggests that having been to prison will have a deterrent effect.

Nelly - not patronising at all. I should make myself clearer.

Double the population as in harder to police etc.

So, reading Nelly's new list, that would be 20 per 100 000 inhabitants in Russia and 1.4 per 100 000 in the UK. Quite a difference!

Finland, with their state of the art school system etc has twice the rate of the UK. (one suspects the vodka and the long dark nights).

The US has three times the murder rate of the UK.