[anamax]

> actual murders per capita is not significantly higher now than it was in the 1960's

As of 2010, US murder rates are significantly higher than they were in 1960. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crime_in_the_United_States

Violent crime increased significantly in the 60s, 70s and 80s, peaking about 1990. Since then they've dropped somewhat, but we're still at somewhere around 1975 levels.

[CapitalistCartr]

The actual article you linked to says, "Overall, the crime rate in the U.S. was the same in 2004 as in 1969, with the homicide rate being roughly the same as in 1966." As the subject is the homicide rate, that seems the most relevant datum.

[Retric]

The largest difference between 1960 and now is reported sexual crimes. Unfortunately they are so under reported it's hard to compare different time periods.

Edit: The year 2005 was overall the safest year in the past thirty years.

PS: You can get an idea based on the % of serial rapist victims that report at a later date, but that's extremely unreliable.

[anamax]

30 years from 2005 is 1975....

1969, let alone 1975, was considerably more violent than 1960.

Go to http://bjs.ojp.usdoj.gov/dataonline/Search/Crime/State/State... select all states and violent crime rates and the push "get table".

You'll see that the murder rate in 1960 was 5.1. By 1969, it had jumped to 7.3. By 75 it was 9.6. It peaked at 10.2 in 1980 with a lesser peak at 9.8 in 1991.

By 2005 the murder had dropped to 5.6. (FWIW, 2004 was 5.5) 2008 was 5.4, which is still above 1960's 5.1

[Retric]

Above the rate for the year 1960, but not the rate for the decade 1960's. Still, 5.1 vs. 5.4 for such a rare and random event is not particularly meaningful. Also you need to adjust the numbers to compare the same thing. EX: If you compare manslaughter between 1961 and now a similar drunk driving accident would have a different outcome.

PS: I work with these numbers all the time. Murder is for lack of a better term the least reactive crime type, compared to say assault it far less influence by things like age, education, and gender etc.

[anamax]

> Above the rate for the year 1960, but not the rate for the decade 1960's.

My point is that the rates were changing so much during the 60s and 70s that speaking of averages loses too much information. 1960 and 1969 were very different as far as violence in the US is concerned.

> 5.1 vs. 5.4 for such a rare and random event is not particularly meaningful.

It's frequent enough to be statistically significant. We're not talking about the difference between 1 and 2 incidents in a population of 1M, we're talking about 10k incidents in a population of 180M.

The advantage of talking about murder (which includes manslaughter) as opposed to rape and drunk driving is that reporting isn't a big problem - the only argument is over the circumstance of death.

[Retric]

Do you really think the probability of someone that caused a fatal accident with a low BAC being charged with manslaughter was the same in 1960 and 2005?

As to being significant looking at different crime rates you tend to see similar trends but the "peak" year is often different. You can try to interpret it to mean something, but the reality is your looking at an imprecise estimate of an imprecise estimates of a highly random event it's really vary random after the first digit.

  1991 Forcible rape 106,593 
  1992 Forcible rape 109,062
  1991 Robbery 687,732
  1992 Robbery 672,478

Now look at which crimes rates up vs down from 1992 to 1993 etc.