Without evidence of benefit, an intervention should not be presumed to be beneficial or safe.

- Rogue Medic

What am I thankful for this Thanksgiving?

 

The violent crime rate continues to drop. In America the violent crime rate is less than half of what it was in 1992.

Not just the violent crime rate, but also the total number of violent crimes continues to drop. According to the FBI, 1,932,274 violent crimes were reported in 1992, but that number had decreased to 1,165,383 in 2014 – a decrease of 766,891.

There were 40% fewer violent crimes reported in 2014 than in 1992.

During the same time the US population has increased by over 60 million people. This is nowhere near perfect, but the trend has been a pretty steady decrease in the total number of violent crimes and the violent crime rate since 1992.

I became a paramedic in 1992, so the cause and effect should be obvious to everyone.
 

US Violent Crime rate - 1960 - 2014
 

The data are from the FBI.[1],[2]
 

While the violent crime rate is not as low as it was in 1960, the murder rate was the lowest in 2013 and 2014.
 

US Murder Rate - 1960 - 2014
 

The data are from the same FBI sources.[1],[2]
 

If you think that those were the good old days, half a century ago life expectancy and quality of life were much worse than they are now. They was even worse a century ago. They were even worse the century before that. And so on, back to the agricultural revolution about 10,000 years ago.

Happy Thanksgiving!

Footnotes:

[1] Uniform Crime Reporting Statistics
National or State Level
FBI
Web page.

National or state offense totals are based on data from all reporting agencies and estimates for unreported areas.

The 168 murder and nonnegligent homicides that occurred as a result of the bombing of the Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building in Oklahoma City in 1995 are included in the national estimate.

The 2,823 murder and nonnegligent homicides that occurred as a result of the events of September 11, 2001, are not included in the national estimates.

The 2012 data is not from this source. It is from the revised data in the table in footnote [2] below. The violent crime rate was revised up from 386.9 per 100,000 population to 387.8 (an increase of 0.9). The total number of violent crimes was revised up from 1,214,464 to 1,217,057 (an increase of 2,593 reported violent crimes).

[2] Crime in the United States, 2014
Table 1
Crime in the United States
by Volume and Rate per 100,000 Inhabitants, 1995–2014
FBI
Web page.

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  1. […] in America from 1960 to 2012 (the most recent data available from the FBI when I made the graph for Thanksgiving in 2015). The 2012 murder rate was 4.7 per 100,000. 2013 and 2014 were lower, both at 4.5 per 100,000. […]