Catholic News Service Confirms: High Homicide Rates due to Bad Criminal Justice Systems

Gun Watch ^ | 5 February, 2015 | Dean Weingarten

[marktwain]

In January of 2013, I wrote an essay on European Murder rates compared to the United States.  In it, I came to the conclusion that culture was the most important driver of homicide rates, and that the presence of guns was a minor factor.   It has been one of the most popular essays that I have written.   As I have pursued the subject further, the predominant and most important part of the "culture" predictor of high homicide rates appears to be a lack of faith in the criminal justice system.

I have found that the same conclusion was reached a couple of years before I did, in 2011, in an article published in the Catholic News Service.   Here are some excerpts from the article:

His concern about the problem led him to study factors contributing to violence in countries around the world. In a statistical analysis, he and co-author Julio Cole found that some of the factors often blamed for rising violence -- poverty, increasing urbanization, even income inequality -- were not significant.

The study was done in 2009, but appears to have been ignored by the old media.  The most significant factor found was the effectiveness of the criminal justice system:

In his 2009 study of worldwide homicide rates, "the strongest variable is governance," particularly the effectiveness of the judicial system, Marroquin told CNS. The implication for policy makers is that scarce resources might best be used to reduce corruption and increase effectiveness in a country's legal system, he said.

He found that the homicide rate of non-Hispanic blacks in the United States is close to that of areas in the Americas where ineffective criminal justice systems reign:

In comparison, the rate in the United States is 9 per 100,000 -- which is still higher than the rate in other developed countries, according to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. That figure can be misleading, however, because the rate of 58 per 100,000 among non-Hispanic blacks is closer to the level in other parts of the Americas.

While the researchers sought to find a connection between guns and violence, there simply wasn't any data to show it:

But efforts to calculate the impact of factors such as guns and drug trafficking are stymied by a lack of data, Marroquin said.

That does not mean that there is no effect of guns in a population. But it seems likely that if there is an effect, it is small, and may be in either direction, depending on how the criminal justice system in the area deals with it.

 Venezuela's homicide rates have tripled, while the government claims that poverty has been cut in half.  Severely restrictive controls on citizen's ownership of guns have been put into place.   However, few people now trust the criminal justice system. 

 ©2015 by Dean Weingarten: Permission to share is granted when this notice is included.
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[marktwain]

Cultural acceptance of the efficacy of the criminal justice systems seems to be the key to low homicide rates.

[jsanders2001]

Not poor upbringing? That’s Numero Uno.

[chajin]

There was a similar article in the Review section a week or two ago in the WSJ.

[dforest]

The Catholic Church has jumped into bed with the NWO. Not all Catholics, but the ones who got rid of the real Pope for this Communist clown Francis.

[marktwain]

It is hard to separate out the poor upbringing part. Iceland has lots of children born out of wedlock, and a very low crime rate.

The lack of a strong father in the family has a very high correlation to high crime rates in the United States. In other parts of the world, like much of Africa and South America, it is hard to assess how many fatherless families there are.

[marktwain]

I would like to read it. Any idea of a title to search for, or an author?

A quick search does not turn it up.

Thanks

[chajin]

It was called "The Underpolicing of Black America," by Jill Leovy, from two weeks ago. I have a subscription to WSJ so this link may or may not work: here

[marktwain]

Thanks. Written with a politically correct slant, but basic facts are the same.

[ronnie raygun]

Catholic church on board with social justice, Innocent armed black children with guns falsely accused of crimes because of the color of thier skin. Does anyone remember the catholic schools and the nuns in the classroom when you missbehaved? they dont