eion wrote:LaCroix has yet to provide any sourcing for his assertion that criminals in the US are raised to be criminals whereas criminals in Europe are just people who make bad choices.
You don't think they have street gangs and organized crime in Europe?
Of course we have, but there is quite a difference concerning size and the degree of violence comparing to US gangs... Our gangs are
http://euc.sagepub.com/content/3/4/413.abstract
Street Gang Violence in Europe
Malcolm W. Klein1,
Frank M. Weerman2 and
Terence P. Thornberry3
+ Author Affiliations
1University of Southern California, USA
2Netherlands Institute for the Study of Crime and Law Enforcement, The Netherlands
3University of Colorado at Boulder, USA
Abstract
Levels and descriptors of violence among European street gangs are summarized from studies reported primarily under the aegis of the Eurogang Program initiated in 1997 and continuing still. European gang violence is placed in the context of its American counterpart, of European non-gang youth violence, and of the definitional and structural components of the Eurogang Program. European gangs in over a dozen countries reveal a wide pattern of violent behaviour and levels of violence that are far greater than among non-gang youth, but largely less serious than in the USA. Some of these latter differences may be attributable to the recentness of the European gang development, the lower levels of firearms availability, and lower levels of gang territoriality in Europe.
Excerpts to be found here: (I've got no abo on the crime journal...)
http://www.angelfire.com/planet/crimean ... Europe.pdf
US context:
It is useful to ask how much violence is committed by American
gang members. The longitudinal study by Thornberry et al. (2003) in
Rochester provides a recent answer: the lifetime prevalence of overall
violence for male gang members is 90.6 percent, compared with 46.4 percent
for non-members.
The rates are: gang fights (82 percent), hidden weapon (76 percent), assault
(50 percent), robbery (28 percent) and shooting at someone (27 percent).
The youth reporting these acts were in 8th grade (i.e. on average about
14 years old). Life-time prevalence rates would obviously be even greater at
older age levels.
Europe context:
... in five reports, ‘violence’ included
violence against property, such as graffiti, vandalism and arson.
On average, the six countries reporting the six items of violence against persons
yielded ‘life-time prevalence’ of 32.1 percent, whereas the five countries
including violence against property averaged a rate of 54.7 percent. Clearly,
the inclusion of property crimes is a difference that makes a difference.
A similar disparity occurs for ‘last year prevalence’ rates. The average
in personal violence is 17.8 percent, compared with 32.4 percent in the five
countries with combined person and property violence. In this paper, we
are concerned with violence against persons only, as this is the form of
violence included in most American research and in all of the Eurogang
reports we will discuss. For comparative reasons, Junger-Tas et al. included
ISRD data from Omaha, Nebraska, where person violence yielded a lifetime
prevalence rate of 48.2 percent and a last-year prevalence rate of
34 percent.
If we recognize the effect of adding property violence, and look at the
person rates presented above for both ever and last-year prevalence, it
seems fair to suggest that European self-report violence for the ages of
14–21 is quite modest.The Omaha comparison certainly suggests that.
Across all reports, the male to female ratios of violence are in the
neighbourhood of four to one where reported. The peak age bracket for
violence is 14–15 in five countries, 14–17 in three countries and 16–17 in
three countries. There were no reports of violence peaking at 18 or older.
So, gang violence in Europe is only half as bad as the gangs of Omaha, Nebraska, (A known crime hotspot...
) and European teens seem to 'grow out of it' once they grow up...
At the time of the ISRD research, European youths
aged 14–21 were not engaged in very troublesome rates of violent offending
(although male rates were certainly higher than female rates).
Oh, and these rates are made with this list of offenses:
• carrying weapons
• threatening someone
• engaging in riots or group fights in public
• beating up a family member
• beating up a non-family person
• hurting someone with a weapon
So the European violent offenses include domestic issues and simple threats...
A minute's thought suggests that the very idea of this is stupid. A more detailed examination raises the possibility that it might be an answer to the question "how could the Germans win the war after the US gets involved?" - Captain Seafort, in a thread proposing a 1942 'D-Day' in Quiberon Bay
I do archery skeet. With a Trebuchet.
