I pay more attention to Latin America than most folks because Handsome Hombre, my son-in-law, is from Latin America.
I got a bee-in-my-bonnet to look at murder-rates by country and then compare them to how much social freedom the countries have. That seemed like a good test of the theory that crime is higher in more repressive societies.
In order to provide contrast, I picked the three countries with the highest murder-rates and the three with the lowest rates. I found that information on Statista
As a proxy for social freedom, I used the EIU Democracy Index for 2022.
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| Murder rates for 2022 underlined in red. Democracy Index highlighted with yellow. A low DI indicates that a country is authoritarian and represses their citizens. |
At first glance it appears that there is no relationship between social freedoms/democracy and murder-rates.
Two of the three countries with the highest murder-rates have fairly high Democracy Indexes (A little bit lower than Belgium) while two of the three countries with the lowest murder-rates have poor Democracy Indexes.
Chile is one of the outliers. It went through a period between 1973-1990 when it was very authoritarian and now it is much less authoritarian and has low murder-rates.
Venezuela is the other outlier. They are a socialist country that is imploding.
In other news:
My laptop is in the process of puking. That is part of the reason why posts are few and far between.
Budget for a new laptop is expected to show up in early February.
I don't suppose comparing crimes rates (for serious crimes: murder, rape, etc) per capita for European countries when they were virtually 100% composed of Ethnic Frenchmen, Germans, etc., to the per capita rates after they started massively importing non-whites, and then comparing the new rates to those of the countries of the non-Europeans' origin, is something you'd be willing to even consider, is it?
ReplyDeleteSorry, posted the first comment before making my second point. That might give you an idea of whether your original analysis was putting the cart before the horse: perhaps rather than repressive regimes and their machinations causing crime, both high crime and repressive government are correlated because both tend to rise from a population that has ON AVERAGE lower IQ and impulse control levels. It might be that, the lower both are on average, the better repressive force looks as a means of imposing order--as opposed to a nation with high IQ, high impulse control citizens who form order almost naturally and without coercion and who would find repressive force an unneeded and unjust imposition on their lives; similarly, nations with low average IQ/impulse control/high time pref levels would be more prone to dictatorships as many of the subgroups within those nations would be less likely to find something inherently wrong with using force to get what they want now, the long-term consequences be damned.
ReplyDeleteJust something to ponder.
There could be a pendulum-like dynamic going on.
DeleteEver-rising crime causes the populace to demand a crack-down. Crime drops as the worst thugs are packed into prisons or given flying lessons.
If the populace is lucky, the government does not cling to its supra-constitutional powers after the need passes.
Warm-fuzzies get back into office and crime starts rising again.
Look at what the warm-fuzzies are doing in the States, you would almost come to the conclusion that they want to provoke an authoritarian regime...with them at the head of it, of course...for our own good.
Maybe that is why they hate Trump with the heat of a thousand, white-hot suns. They are afraid he will slip inside their plans and be running the show when people demand a crack-down -OR- that he will deflate the crime with simple, common-sense changes thereby thwarting their evil plans.
BJ's Warehouse has some pretty good deals on laptops just now.
ReplyDeleteHumans are hardwired to take the easy way whenever possible. For many the easy way includes engaging in criminal misconduct. Without meaningful personal consequences for actions that are proscribed many people will choose to engage in such actions. Crime essentially results from the lack of consequences, a lack of punishment. So crime is not caused by repression. It's a result of the lack of being concerned over being punished. If punishment is certain crime is minimized. If punishment is unlikely then crime will be rampant. This is NOT complicated.
ReplyDeleteStatistical analysis is as much an art as it is a science. Given the exact same data, people can extrapolate vastly different conclusions. Also: garbage in = garbage out.
ReplyDeleteThis comparison uses something called a “Democracy Index”. With these things you have to roll up your sleeves, get dirty, and start checking their work. What do you consider an authoritarian state? How do you define the term ‘murder’? Are you talking premeditated homicide, or are you including manslaughter? Is your data empirical or subjective? Who was in charge of compiling the data? The scam “studies” are fascinating in the way they set up fake experts and authorities to draw their data from. You have to go through them with a fine tooth comb.
I am not convinced I have the right of it… but I am coming to the conclusion that the best justice system out there is Sharia Law. (For the sake of argument, let us ignore how it handles women, jews, and foreigners): In Sharia law, crime and punishment are spelled out by God. You do crime X, you draw punishment Y - no exceptions, no plea bargaining, no courtroom theatrics, no activist judges. Your judge is a respected mullah or Imam who is sworn to a life of poverty. He belongs to God, he answers to God, you can’t buy or sell him out of pocket change as you can with ours. There are horrible punishments spelled out for him should he violate God’s trust or compromise his position. You will get the same justice a billionaire would.The system works too; they don’t have drug problems in Saudi Arabia because dealers get publicly beheaded when they’re caught. Not saying it’s perfect…but it’s something to consider as our judiciaries in the west slowly implode… can you imagine our crime rates if drugs weren’t involved?