http://pricetheory.uchicago.edu/levitt/Papers/LevittUnderstandingWhyCrime2004.pdf
Posted on 01/01/2007 6:16:22 PM PST by Nexus
BAGHDAD, Iraq - Government officials on Monday reported that 16,273 Iraqi civilians, soldiers and police died violent deaths in 2006, a figure larger than an independent Associated Press count for the year by more than 2,500.
The tabulation by the Iraqi ministries of Health, Defense and Interior, showed that 14,298 civilians, 1,348 police and 627 soldiers were killed in the violence that raged in the country last year.
The Associated Press accounting, gleaned from daily news reports from Baghdad, arrived at a total of 13,738 deaths.
The United Nations has said as many as 100 Iraqis die violently each day, which translates into 36,500 deaths annually
in 2004 EVERY ONE of these American cities had a murder rate higher than Iraqs;
St. Louis, MO, Detroit, MI, Flint, MI, Compton, CA, Camden, NJ, Birmingham, AL, Cleveland, OH, Oakland, CA, Youngstown, OH, Gary, IN, Richmond, CA, Trenton, NJ, Reading, PA, Miami Beach, FL, Albany, NY,Richmond Va, Kansas City Mo,Atlanta Ga
That is about the same number as those murdered in the United States in one year.
http://www.disastercenter.com/crime/uscrime.htm
Oh Dear!!! We Must Re-Deploy from Baltimore Immediately!!!< / sarc
As a Detroit area resident, I'm quite upset. We took pride in being the murder capital of the world and now others are stealing our thunder. The way the Lions suck, we need to be #1 in something.
As a Detroit area resident, I'm quite upset. We took pride in being the murder capital of the world and now others are stealing our thunder. The way the Lions suck, we need to be #1 in something.
If you want to compare cities, you could compare the murder rates in Baghdad and Basra against Baltimore, Wash DC, Atlanta etc.
I believe a city would always have a higher murder rate than for a country in total. Obviously, comparing the numbers against an American city makes the numbers for all of Iraq look better but what does it look like if you compare the murder rate of Iraq to the murder rate of Spain, Australia, the USA and/or Russia?
To follow up on that:
The national average (US murder rate per 100,000) in 2000 was 5.6 per 100,000.
The state average for Maryland was 9.9 (see how much the numbers change when you include more than just a city?) and Baltimore is in Maryland.
California's figure for the same time was 6.9 per 100,000.
Without even checking any data I am certain that every US state has a lower rate of murder than its capital city. I would think this would hold true for countries as well. The UK's murder rate, for example, should be lower than the murder rate in London.
This means there are a lot of murders occurring in Iraq with presumedly a much larger percentage occuring in Baghdad. Much more than you can compare to a comparably sized American city.
Here's a nice link- http://www.infoplease.com/ipa/A0004902.html
On the contrary, it is an excellent comparison; war-torn Iraq vs. our liberal crown jewels of safety and security.
If you had children, you wouldn't ask that question.
As a resident of Baltimore with two trips to Iraq under my belt, I have to say that this is hands down the dumbest comparison made in 2007 thus far. Anyone who's ever driven on Route Irish and Pulaski highway can tell you where they'd feel safer.
For one thing, incompetent as they are, the Baltimore city government has a pretty good grasp on how many people are dying, and where. In Iraq, neither their government, our military, the AP, or the terrorists have any reliable numbers.
Also, the violence there isn't crime, per se. It's not some thug getting shot over a drug deal. It's focused, targeted killings meant to produce a social and political effect. Either by killing law enforcement officers, or killing other ethnic groups, the intent is to destabilize, and cause precise effects like ethnic cleansing.
If, say, the black population of your town rose up, and started invading white neighborhoods block by block, killing those who wouldn't leave, and moving in black families, as well as killing any white cops they could get their hands on, the raw numbers wouldn't tell the entire story, would they? If Hispanic militias started taking over the local police and government, and killed black or white person that objected to their rule, the raw numbers wouldn't tell the whole story.
To that end, if we're going to laugh when the MSM makes asinine comparisons like "U.S. casualties in Iraqi war now higher than 9/11", we need to avoid making them ourselves. Iraq is a complicated situation, and broad analogies between victims of sectarian violence in Baghdad and Baltimorean drug dealers are probably best avoided.
What is wrong with his math? I calculated it using the provided figures as 56.5 deaths per 100,000 per year.
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