Date: Sun, 5 Dec 93 21:41:11 MST From: [t j p] at [as.arizona.edu] (Ted Parvu) To: [net tank] at [cica.cica.indiana.edu] Subject: Crime: America Public Mislead As far as a stance on crime the public wants tough. Even though the stats show that crime has decreased over the past decade the public perception, thanks to politicians and the media, is that crime is worse than ever. I agree with Aldis that comparing repeat offenders of violent crime with simple pot smokers is a good idea. Exspecially with cases like this current little girl that was snatched from her home. The guy had been convicted twice before of kidnapping. I can't see how anyone would want this guy on the streets just because some poor pot smoking dead head was taking up his bed space in prison. I have included some articles that show crime is decreasing. I haven't figured out how to make Joe Public see this in a 30 second spot. If anyone has them I would like to see the stats on how much of violent crime is repeat offenders. -- Ted AP Online AP 12/05 18:00 EST V0403 Copyright 1993. The Associated Press. All Rights Reserved. WASHINGTON (AP) -- Even as public fear of crime pushed Congress to vote for harsher criminal penalties and more police, the number of serious crimes declined slightly, the FBI reported Sunday. Violent crime during the first six months of 1993 decreased 3 percent from the same period in 1992, while the number of property crimes dropped by 5 percent, according to preliminary finding of the FBI's Uniform Crime Reporting program. "The small reported declines may be positive, but I doubt most Americans will draw much comfort from them because the levels of violent crime and drug trafficking remain so staggering," FBI Director Louis J. Freeh said in a statement. The number of murders remained stable while all other reported violent crimes went down: Robberies by 5 percent, forcible rapes, 4 percent, and aggravated assaults, 1 percent. Reported property crimes, meanwhile, were down across the board, with burglary declining 8 percent, motor vehicle theft, 5 percent, and larceny-theft, 4 percent. Arsons, which decreased by 15 percent, are not included in the FBI's determination of the overall crime index. In Cincinnati, spokeswoman Lt. Cindy Johns said police have noticed crimes are more severe despite the fewer incidents. "Victims tend to be subject to more violence," she said. "What used to be hitting someone on the head and taking their wallet now has become taking their wallet and shooting them in the leg. It's still a felonious assault, but the level of violence is ever increasing." The FBI calculates only those crimes reported to police, and some criminologists have said people have stopped reporting some property crimes knowing that police don't have the time or resources to deal with them. Rapes are also largely unreported, studies have shown. The largest cities, those with more than 1 million people, saw the greatest declines in all reported crimes, down 7 percent, while suburban law enforcement agencies saw 5 percent declines and rural agencies experienced 4 percent decreases. Regionally, reported crimes in the Northeast declined 8 percent; in the Midwest, 7 percent; in the South, 4 percent; and in the West, 2 percent. ****** The following is an article I sent to my mail group sometime in late October. Please forgive my radical comments, I try to rile my group into discussions in any manner I can. I had also just read about Janet wanting to put the national guard on D.C. streets and had just seen a news piece on the national guard storming housing projects in Peurto Rico to win the WOD. I also saw the impending passage of the Brady Bill, I was a little pissed. :-/ Ted ------------- Now this article brought up some points that I find VERY disturbing. I just read another article in the Sunday paper as well. "Overall, in 1981, the U.S. Bureau of Justic Statistics counted 41.2 million crimes. In 1991, that figure was down to 34.4 million, third-lowest in the past two decades." James Lynch, an American University demographer and crime specialist states, "it always amazes me that people think there is a crime wave. There just isn't." Well I have been duped. Suddenly it all makes sense. I kept wondering why politicians were coming up with crime measures that would not solve the advancing crime wave. Reason, there is no crime wave to fix. Thus it is simply a hidden agenda that they are attempting to fulfill. That agenda is to disarm the populace and place the military in the streets to uphold strict totalitarian rule. Don't let those bastards get away with it. Show them that you are not sheep to be led. You are the master of your own destiny and they better damn well get out of your life. ****** AP Online AP 10/26 14:27 EDT V0547 Copyright 1993. The Associated Press. All Rights Reserved. By The Associated Press With Americans everywhere worried about crime, ballot measures in Washington and Texas suggest that locking up more criminals is the answer. Curiously, crime rates in both states are flat or falling. "This is bad policy but good politics," said Larry Fehr, executive director of the Washington Council on Crime and Delinquency, who noted violent crime in his state has been fairly constant over the past decade. "It is bad policy because it will not deliver what it promises to deliver -- greater public safety," he said. Washington Initiative 593, commonly known as "Three strikes, you're out," proposes life sentences -- and no parole -- for anyone who racks up three convictions for felonies the authors of the initiative rated the worst. Among the more than 40 are child molesting, murder, violent theft, sexual assault, assault with a vehicle, extortion, procuring sex, drug dealing and arson. In Texas, a prison building boom is enlarging a penal system already among the nation's largest. Voters will be asked to approve $1 billion in bonds to make it bigger yet. The overall rate of crime in the United States has been flat for decades, said criminologist Alfred Blumstein, dean of the Heinz School of Public Policy and Management at Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh. Crime rates, while high, "have not been growing dramatically, as most people seem to have the impression," he said. Still, crime is a concern. Lacking useful solutions, Blumstein said, the political system responds with longer and tougher sentences. People go for this. "The public is soothed, the politicians are applauded," he said. Washington's no-parole initiative was promoted by victims groups with generous backing from the National Rifle Association, which gave $90,000. "There is a general sense that we have to start somewhere," said Dave LaCourse of Bellevue, Wash., a beating victim and the measure's principal author. Opponents say I-593 goes overboard in a state where the crime rate in 1980 was 4.6 per hundred people, and barely higher last year, at 4.7 per hundred. Taking in an estimated 70 lifers a year -- the current state inmate population is 10,000 -- state prisons in 20 years would be caring for 750 aging inmates, a state Sentencing Guidelines Commission study estimated. Since 1987, Texas voters have approved three bond issues totaling $2 billion to more than double prison capacity to 128,000 beds by 1997. If voters approve next week's bond issue, the state is ready to break ground on 22,000 jail beds. Another 42,000 more could be built later. One estimate says that at the current clip, by the end of the century one in every 21 adult Texans -- about 700,000 people -- will be behind bars, on probation or on parole.