Wednesday, November 18, 2009

What Global Homicide Rates Are Telling Us...






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A quick look at the countries with the top 15 murder rates in the world today tells an interesting tale.

The world’s top 15 violent places are;

Colombia 61.1 per 100,000 people
El Salvador 56.4 per 100,000
Cote d'Ivoire 45.7 per 100,000
South Africa 39.5
Lesotho 37.3
Angola 36
Burundi 35.4
Congo, the Dem Rep of the 35.2
Sierra Leone 34

Jamaica 33.7
Venezuela 32.5
Brazil 30.8
Belize 30.1
Russian Federation 29.7
Central African Rep 29.1


OK, right off the bat, you can see that 7 of the top 10 and 8 of the 15 nations with the world’s highest murder rates are located in sub-Saharan Africa, a region beset by racial and tribal/ethnic violence.

The top two (Colombia and El Salvador), like numbers 11, 12 and 13 (Venezuela, Brazil and Belize) are all suffering through waves of violent Leftist guerilla terrorism and massive drug cartel wars!

In most of the rest of the cases, certainly in almost all those outside South America, the widespread violence is due to primarily to ethnic/racial strife.

In the Russian Federation, at least according to Amnesty International, “Racist attacks and killings of foreigners and ethnic minorities are reported with shocking regularity in Russia and disturbingly, their frequency seems to be increasing.(1) Victims whose cases have come to the attention of Amnesty International include students, asylum-seekers and refugees from Africa and Asia, as well as people from the south Caucasus, from South, Southeast and Central Asia, from the Middle East and from Latin America. However, citizens of the Russian Federation are no less at risk of physical attack. Anyone who does not look typically ethnic Russian, for example, individuals from ethnic groups of the North Caucasus, in particular Chechens, as well as members of the Jewish community, Roma and children of mixed parentage are at risk. Even ethnic Russians who are seen as sympathizing with foreigners or ethnic minority groups, for example, fans of rap or reggae music, members of other youth sub-cultures, and campaigners against racism, have also been targeted as they are perceived as "unpatriotic" or "traitors". Attacks have been reported in towns and cities across the Russian Federation.”


The countries with the lowest violent homocide rates also tell an interesting story.

Of the countries with the lowest 10 murder rates;

Qatar 0.8
Austria 0.7
Egypt 0.7
Fiji 0.7
United Arab Emirates 0.7
Hong Kong 0.6
Japan 0.5
Morocco 0.5
Singapore 0.5
Luxembourg 0.4

Well, clearly 4, or 40% of them are Middle Eastern, Muslim states and three others (Singapore, Hong Kong and Fiji) all employ equally draconian punishments for crime.

I guess draconian punishments really ARE viable deterrents to violent crime after all!

In fact I could only find three Muslim nations with murder rates higher than the United States’ 5.6 per 100,000. They were Indonesia (with the highest murder rate for a Muslim country at 8.9/100,000, Iraq with 6.7/100,000 and Albania with 6.6/100,000.

Another among those nations with the lowest murder rates in existence is also one that consistently ranks among the freest economies in the world – Hong Kong!

Another thing that the lowest 10 also have in common is a set of nearly homogeneous populations, which, of course, serves to limit that pesky “ethnic/racial violence.”

In other words, it would seem that a homogeneous population is generally a less violent one, as are nations that mete out draconian punishments for violent crimes...and economic Liberty and the prosperity it delivers also seems to reduce violence, as witnessed by Hong Kong’s infinitesimal 0.6/100,000 violent crime rate and its corresponding 6.0 Misery Index!

9 comments:

Robert "the infidel" Garding said...

Great post sir. I enjoyed reading about the nations that have higher murder rates than the US...but that is a bit of news that you will never hear from our own media....now is it?

Attorneymom said...

Hey JMK. I thought the following story would interest you.

JEFFERSON CITY, Mo. — On an Internet site, 15-year-old Alyssa Bustamante listed her hobbies as "killing people" and "cutting." It may have sounded like a teenage exaggeration, but authorities say she fulfilled her words.

http://www.ajc.com/news/nation-world/slaying-suspect-said-hobby-205554.html

Seane-Anna said...

Hey JMK! I agree with Robert. This is a GREAT post AND the fact that America is NOT one of the most violent nations on earth WON'T be item number one in the MSM. And those morons wonder why they keep losing viewers and readers.

JMK said...

Hi Robert!

It's even more amazing than THAT!

America's murder rate, at 5.9 per 100,000 is closer to India and India's and Chile's (both 5.5 per 100,000) than Mexico's (10.9/100,000)!

Moreover, a Swedish blogger Pela (http://gummihund.blogspot.com/) reports that violent crime in Sweden (a country about the size, population-wise of NYC) has a violent crime rate that rivals New York's!

JMK said...

That is an interesting story AM, but one without any "racial angle," or rationalization as to why the U of T story is so incredible.

This story highlights AGE and CRIME....in this case a 14 y/o murdered a 9 y/o...that 14 y/o is already lost....I'd fry her.

No questions asked.

Again, it doesn't defend your view that my highlighting the astounding attempted armed robbery by three UofT athletes, all getting a free ride through College and potentially a "winning lottery ticket" via the NFL draft!

Privileged, millionaires generally DON'T commit things like armed robbery."

JMK said...

"I agree with Robert. This is a GREAT post AND the fact that America is NOT one of the most violent nations on earth WON'T be item number one in the MSM." (SA)
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Absolutely right....and again, it's even better than that!

America's violent crime rate is much lower than many of the pseudo-elites here would have you believe!

Again, America's 5.9/100,000 is closer to India's and Chile's (5.5/100,000) than it is to our neighbor Mexico's (10.9/100,000).

Matty said...

To answer the question posed by a couple of folks above: Why does the mainstream media not report on the "low" US murder rate? Because it ISN'T low, at least not compared to other developed countries. Comparing the US to war-torn or impoverished countries (or even Mexico, where drug-related violence is epidemic) makes no sense -- a better comparison is between the US and Europe. And it turns out that pretty much every country in Western Europe has a murder rate that is FAR less than ours. For example, in 2006, our rate was 5.4 per 1,000, while France, Belgium, spain, Sweden, Germany, Italy, Norway, Austria, Japan, etc. all had rates under 2.0 (and often under 1.0). In that light, the US is not doing so well.

JMK said...

"To answer the question posed by a couple of folks above: Why does the mainstream media not report on the "low" US murder rate? Because it ISN'T low, at least not compared to other developed countries." (Matty)
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The divergence in murder rates does NOT seem to fit on an “advanced vs. non-advanced nation” continuum, Matty. Certainly the Ukraine (8.0 - After Russia, the Ukrainian Republic was far and away the most important economic component of the former Soviet Union, producing about four times the output of the next-ranking republic. It also boast a relatively LOW unemployment rate with its relatively low unemployment rate - 4.8% in 2009 and 2.3% in 2007), Argentina (5.3 – which until right before WW I was the world’s fourth largest economy), Chile (5.5 – which is still, largely because of the Supply Side reforms introduced by “the Chicago Boys,” is known as the economic “jewel of South America”), Venezuela (32.5 – “the most advanced socialist nation on earth right now”), India (5.5 – a growing economic and industrial power, a place where tens of thousands of U.S. jobs were outsourced over the mid-1990s thru the mid 2000s), Costa Rica (7.3 - a country with tens of thousands of American ex-patriots and growing steadily), are all very much “developed nations,” while Samoa (1.1), Qatar (0.8), Palau (0.9) and Morocco (0.5) are hardly what anyone would call “advanced nations.”

No, these global murder rates don’t seem to fit into any advanced/non-advanced continuum, but instead, outside of war torn sub-Saharan Africa, to be a comparison of repressive vs. non-repressive criminal justice paradigms.

Now I can’t argue with the likes of Jared Taylor who’d point to the racial component across the board, with sub-Saharan Africa and the Caribbean nations having a HUGE share of the highest crime rates, while also noting that “the disproportionate black/white crime rates” here in the U.S. accounts for most of the disparity between us and say, Sweden or Switzerland,” as well as the growing violent crime rates throughout most of Western Europe.

By the numbers, Mr. Taylor’s analysis is largely factually correct, and certainly more thoughtfully constructed and well-reasoned than your own that poses this as “an advanced vs. non-advanced nation” issue.

Where I disagree with Jared Taylor is that while it does seem true that the more homogeneous a nation is, generally the lower that nation’s murder rate, it is NOT true that it is largely Western European and Asian (specifically Japan, where Mr. Taylor was raised, and Hong Kong) that have the lowest murder rates – FOUR of the nations among the world’s 10 lowest murder rates are Arab-Muslim states that treat all crimes relatively brutally by Western standards.

Fully 8 of the 13 nations with murder rates below 1 per 100,000 are brutally repressive states, including four Arab-Muslim states and three South Pacific states, which like Singapore (which is one of them) have inculcated some draconian penalties for all manner of crimes. In many of these places, even a small amount of recreational drugs begets long prison sentences and anything more (often termed “dealer’s weight”) warrants a mandatory death sentence.

What this report seems to point out is that while homogeneity is at least somewhat correlative to a nation’s murder rate, repressive criminal justice systems are even more so.

Perhaps we should rethink the inane proposition that brutal and draconian sanctions against violent crimes do not deter such crimes, as this data seems to prove otherwise.

JMK said...

"Comparing the US to war-torn or impoverished countries (or even Mexico, where drug-related violence is epidemic) makes no sense - a better comparison is between the US and Europe. And it turns out that pretty much every country in Western Europe has a murder rate that is FAR less than ours. For example, in 2006, our rate was 5.4 per 1,000, while France, Belgium, spain, Sweden, Germany, Italy, Norway, Austria, Japan, etc. all had rates under 2.0 (and often under 1.0). In that light, the US is not doing so well." (Matty)
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Interestingly enough, Sweden’s crime rate has been reported by a Swede (http://workingclassconservative.blogspot.com/2008/10/sweden-violent-who-knew.html) right here as being, in most respects, higher than New York City’s!

In 2003 NYC had 29,207 burglaries, Sweden had 122,700.

. NYC had 18,764 aggravated assaults - Sweden had 65,175.

. NYC had 1,789 rapes - Sweden had 2,565.

. New York City (NYC) had: 591 homicides - Sweden had 189.

It should be noted that NYC has almost 1.5 times the population than does all of Sweden.

Pela asks, “If Sweden were a city; where would you choose to live?

“And I promise you that the numbers have not gone down here since then!”

Pela notes:("About the murder rates- you have to keep in mind that it is very hard to get someone convicted for murder here in Sweden. Most killers are just sentenced for manslaughter and those convictions are not listed under homicides.")


That seems to be the case today throughout most of Western Europe and the violent crime rate throughout that region have increased along with its increasing Third World population.

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