Edit: It's likely that there are several violent places that don't make the list, specially in Africa, that most likely don't keep accurate records of murders.
According to a new study based on Mexico, 45 of them are located on the American continent, with 40 on Latin America, 4 in the US and 1 in Jamaica.
Five of the 10 most violent cities in the world are Mexican. 45 of the 50 most violent cities are located in the Americas and 40 in Latin America. The most violent subnational jurisdiction in the world for Honduras and 3 of the 10 most violent sub-national jurisdictions in the world are Honduran. 19 of the 50 jurisdictions world's most violent are located in Mexico and Central America. In Mexico, followed by "shaving" the numbers to pretend that there is less violence.
With a rate of 159 intentional homicides per 100 thousand inhabitants, the Honduran city of San Pedro Sula was the world's most violent city in 2011.
The number of cities on the index by country is as follows: 14 Brazil, 12 Mexico, 5 Colombia, 4 (It said 5 not on Latin America, but I think the last one is in Jamaica) United States, 4 South Africa, 3 Venezuela, 2 Honduras, 1 Jamaica, 1 Guatemala, 1 El Salvador, 1 Panama, 1 Iraq.
Edit: You can find the following table in a cleaner way in the above link.
Position City Country Homicide People Rate 1 San Pedro Sula Honduras 1.143 719.447 158.87 2 Juarez Mexico 1.974 1,335,890 147.77 3 Maceió Brazil 1.564 1,156,278 135.26 4 Acapulco Mexico 1.029 804.412 127.92 5 Central District Honduras 1.123 1,126,534 99.69 6 Caracas Venezuela 3.164 3,205,463 98.71 7 Torreón (metropolitan) Mexico 990 1,128,152 87.75 8 Chihuahua Mexico 690 831.693 82.96 9 Durango Mexico 474 593.389 79.88 10 Belém Brazil 1.639 2,100,319 78.04 11 Cali Colombia 1.720 2,207,994 77.90 12 Guatemala Guatemala 2.248 3,014,060 74.58 13 Culiacan Mexico 649 871.620 74.46 14 Medellin Colombia 1.624 2,309,446 70.32 15 Mazatlan Mexico 307 445.343 68.94 16 Tepic (metropolitan area) Mexico 299 439.362 68.05 17 Vitoria Brazil 1.143 1,685,384 67.82 18 Veracruz Mexico 418 697.414 59.94 19 Ciudad Guayana Venezuela 554 940.477 58.91 20 San Salvador El Salvador 1.343 2,290,790 58.63 21 New Orleans United States 199 343.829 57.88 22 Salvador (and RMS) Brazil 2.037 3,574,804 56.98 23 Cucuta Colombia 335 597.385 56.08 24 Barquisimeto Venezuela 621 1,120,718 55.41 25 San Juan Puerto Rico 225 427.789 52.60 26 Manaus Brazil 1.079 2,106,866 51.21 27 São Luís Brazil 516 1,014,837 50.85 28 Nuevo Laredo Mexico 191 389.674 49.02 29 João Pessoa Brazil 583 1,198,675 48.64 30 Detroit United States 346 713.777 48.47 31 Cuiabá Brazil 403 834.060 48.32 32 Recife Brazil 1.793 3,717,640 48.23 33 Kingston (metropolitan) Jamaica 550 1,169,808 47.02 34 Cape Town South Africa 1.614 3,497,097 46.15 35 Pereira Colombia 177 383.623 46.14 36 Macapá Brazil 225 499.116 45.08 37 Fortress Brazil 1.514 3,529,138 42.90 38 Monterrey (metropolitan area) Mexico 1.680 4,160,339 40.38 39 Curitiba Brazil 720 1,890,272 38.09 40 Goiânia Brazil 484 1,302,001 37.17 41 Nelson Mandela Bay Metropolitan Municipality (Port Elizabeth) South Africa 381 1,050,930 36.25 42 Barranquilla Colombia 424 1,182,493 35.86 43 ST. Louis United States 113 319.294 35.39 44 Mosul Iraq 636 1,800,000 35.33 45 Belo Horizonte Brazil 1.680 4,883,721 34.40 46 Panama Panama 543 1,713,070 31.70 47 Cuernavaca (metropolitan area) Mexico 198 630.174 31.42 48 Baltimore United States 195 620.961 31.40 49 Durban South Africa 1.059 3,468,087 30.54 50 City of Johannesburg South Africa 1.186 3,888,180 30.50
For context, New York had a murder rate of 4.5 per 100.000 in 2010.
It's clear that Latin America is by far the most violent region in the world, but why?
The drug trade is surely part of the answer, but there are parts of the world that are poorer and less developed than Latin America, likes most of Africa and parts of Asia, that still don't show such levels of violence, so maybe there's a cultural element at play?
Crazy, Weird how some of the US cities are way up there, even though they seem to be run in the mill cities (Baltimore, St, Louis. Ect). New orleans was a big shock. Other than those, not a whole lot of suprises.
I'm actually really surprised some of the smaller cities in China and south west Asia aren't on this list, they are a total mess. I guess they aren't completely doing this per capita because those cities would have ridiculously high rates.
I am half Jamaican, and lived in Kingston, Jamaica for 12 years of my life and i would like to mention that the vast majority of the violence in Kingston is due to political differences. Additionally, any violence that takes place tends to take place in specific areas, and tourists visiting the city are at virtually no harm, as they are unlikely to go to these places and tourists are very highly respected in the country.
If you are thinking of visiting the island, you should always keep a certain level of caution, but it is a relatively harmless place and in the 12 years that i have lived there i have experienced very little violence myself.
Wow, i didn't know that situation in South America is that bad. i heard about drug wars but this numbers are scary. I'm glad to live in Europe. Also condolences to all who lost their family members and friends there
whaaaa??? Shocked that Juarez is not #1. guess i'm not too familiar with Honduras
edit: For anyone wondering why Mexico seems to be so high, it's because they've got a war going on right now. We don't hear too much about it in the news, but it's actually quite comparable to a "real" war in terms of violence, death, and general mayhem/instability. Check out blogdelnarco.com if you want to learn more from firsthand sources
On January 16 2012 01:46 Darpa wrote: Crazy, Weird how some of the US cities are way up there, even though they seem to be run in the mill cities (Baltimore, St, Louis. Ect). New orleans was a big shock. Other than those, not a whole lot of suprises.
The only one that surprised me is St. Louis. The other three are pretty well known for large amount of crime. Detroit was the murder capital of the word for a while iirc. I hadn't heard the same about St. Louis.
Well there are some areas in Africa for which statistics cannot be gathered or are gathered but not published globally. For example, cities in the Congo would definitely make the list.
I think this list cannot possibly be accurate, there is a lot in this world thats not ever going to be calculated and written down in the history books the way it really was. There are probably a lot of cities that deserve to be on the list but won't be.
Also those US cities are pretty notorious for having lots of gang activity (they are pretty big cities ofc).
Edit:
On January 16 2012 02:02 SkelA wrote: Latin America = flawless victory
Its probably just because they seem to be more open about their killing sometimes (Like leaving bodies in the street). I'm not doubting there is violence in S.A. but I don't think its probably as bad as the list makes it seem -_-
there was something sad like anxiety level, which in some countries is very high, mostly less developed countries, which would explain the case, why latin people are more aggressive, emotional, or violent.
On January 16 2012 01:46 Darpa wrote: Crazy, Weird how some of the US cities are way up there, even though they seem to be run in the mill cities (Baltimore, St, Louis. Ect). New orleans was a big shock.
how is new orleans a big shock? so many shootings and violence over there. Some people even call it the armpit of the US
St. Louis, not surprising at all. Some guy shot a pregnant woman in the alley behind my house a few years ago. There are a lot of savages in St. Louis and some of them are violent.
On January 16 2012 02:05 HwangjaeTerran wrote: Makes you wonder just how many lives would be saved by stopping the war on drugs. Maybe the profits from the legal drugs would take too big of a hit.
Legal drugs? you mean like alcohol or what legal drugs are you talking about?
St. Louis is always included on the lists, but it shouldn't be. St. Louis city isn't averaged with the county, as other cities are; they are considerd two different entities, with the county being more than 3 times the size of the city.
Exclude the county statistics of all American cities, and you would see a lot more on here.
i never been to any of the cities in brazil that were mentioned but honestly, every city in brazil that i've been to is bad. for brazil, and probably much of south america, it is a combination of unchecked crime and unparallel poverty.
On January 16 2012 02:06 Sated wrote: Strong gun control = Less violent cities.
I think to answer the question of why not poorer places. There is no promise that this data is complete, meaning some under developed areas may not have a meaningful statistic for homicide rates. Furthermore if homicide was the only statistic te entire study is misleading about being most dangerous. Another thing to consider is countries that are closed to outsiders (north Korea for example)
48 Baltimore United States 195 620.961 31.40 I'm guessing that the periods are supposed to be commas. Baltimore has been much higher on that list I'm disappointed with the their recent fall. I remember back in like 08 it was one of the worst places in the world.
In all seriousness though it has to do with the drug trade. I remember a school teacher was killed when I was living down there, this wasn't even inner city it was at the Towson Town Mall. He waited for her in the car didn't know what he'd be expecting but it was a school teacher when she arrived back at the car. The man robbed her and then just stabbed her to death and kicked her out of the vehicle. My aunt worked at Mercy General Hospital and there was an incident where a man was shooting bullets into the ER.
I moved down to Cockeysville when I was 16 and used to ride the Light Rail into the city on North Avenue to get drugs. I remember my Aunt used to always say when we were leaving Camden Yards that she wouldn't even use North Ave to exit and we would take the long way out. She said all the locals called it Nulf avenue. So I figured that would be a good spot to get drugs when I was young. But it is more like a syndicate down there. If you get caught beating someone for money or drugs they will just flat out kill you because you are ruining customers. I was never bothered aside from when a man reached inside his coat and I thought fuck this dudes gonna pull a gun and then he pulled out a soda bottle and threw it at me. I think he was a too few stones in for noon time on a Saturday.
They advise you if someone walks in front of your car down there inner city to just keep going, run them over and report it to the police because they will just swarm your car.
I'm very suprised no cities situated in other parts of Africa than a couple of South African ones are on the list. I always thought South Africa would be among the more peacefull countries. Or any of the numerous nations not only in Africa that are currently involved in war or civil war.
On January 16 2012 02:23 inamorato wrote: 48 Baltimore United States 195 620.961 31.40 I'm guessing that the periods are supposed to be commas. Baltimore has been much higher on that list I'm disappointed with the their recent fall. I remember back in like 08 it was one of the worst places in the world.
In all seriousness though it has to do with the drug trade. I remember a school teacher was killed when I was living down there, this wasn't even inner city it was at the Towson Town Mall. He waited for her in the car didn't know what he'd be expecting but it was a school teacher when she arrived back at the car. The man robbed her and then just stabbed her to death and kicked her out of the vehicle. My aunt worked at Mercy General Hospital and there was an incident where a man was shooting bullets into the ER.
I moved down to Cockeysville when I was 16 and used to ride the Light Rail into the city on North Avenue to get drugs. I remember my Aunt used to always say when we were leaving Camden Yards that she wouldn't even use North Ave to exit and we would take the long way out. She said all the locals called it Nulf avenue. So I figured that would be a good spot to get drugs when I was young. But it is more like a syndicate down there. If you get caught beating someone for money or drugs they will just flat out kill you because you are ruining customers. I was never bothered aside from when a man reached inside his coat and I thought fuck this dudes gonna pull a gun and then he pulled out a soda bottle and threw it at me. I think he was a too few stones in for noon time on a Saturday.
They advise you if someone walks in front of your car down there inner city to just keep going, run them over and report it to the police because they will just swarm your car.
The blocking-the-car technique is an old trick, a tried and true method of robbery. If a someone passive aggressively blocks your car, just rev your engine and accelerate and they will get the fuck out of the way. Stay safe.
How did they measure this? There's no way this is even close to accurate, seeing as I can name dozens of more dangerous cities off the top of my head.
Yesterday, 51 people were killed in Baghdad...
It seems like this list is just excluding cities because they don't have 100% accurate figures on them. That's like ranking countries my military expenditures and leaving out the US, most of NATO, China, India, North Korea, Israel, India, etc. and leaving on Switzerland, Monaco, and Haiti. It's absolutely idiotic.
Sorry, but it was hard to resist, given all the USA USA USA! stuff elsewhere on the Forums
Criminals in the US can get guns quite easily, regardless of gun controls. If they can smuggle drugs in at a regular basis, they would have no trouble smuggling guns in (and they don't, because the vast majority of criminals get their guns illegally). I don't want to start a gun control argument here, but I'm pretty sure that is not the problem.
I wonder how an american drug policy reform would affect this issue. There's a real problem and it doesn't look like the ongoing war on drugs is helping. I don't know what would be the best reform but it seems like there needs to be SOMETHING done.
On January 16 2012 02:24 DorF wrote: I'm very suprised no cities situated in other parts of Africa than a couple of South African ones are on the list. I always thought South Africa would be among the more peacefull countries. Or any of the numerous nations not only in Africa that are currently involved in war or civil war.
I think part of the problem is that it's very hard to get accurate statistics on African cities. I think another part of it is rampant racism. The West does not give a shit about Africa unless somebody important decides he can win political correctness points by spending 30 minutes in front of a camera. "Yay, Africa is so culturally wonderful -- now let's get out of here before the natives kill us." That's our attitude. It's unhealthy and I find it sickening, but it is what it is.
You want bad, check out Liberia. Vice Guide to Travel did a show on them... seriously fucked up place.
The entire premise of the OP is false, seeing as it's a ranking of the most violent cities with dozens of the most violent ones excluded for no discernible reason. It's a list of violence as counted by official murder rates (?) when actual violent cities aren't predominantly marked by murders, but by terrorism and war.
Quite surprised St. Louis is there and a little bit surprised about Baltimore (okay not really). But as others have said this is far from comprehensive/accurate as a lot of more dangerous places seem to have been ignored or no stats available.
On January 16 2012 02:40 FryktSkyene wrote: Mexican drug cartels are the reason for so many high ranking mexican cities? Yes/no? I'm just speculating.
absolutely correct. the death figures associated with the narco violence is staggering, and has been ever since around 2006-2007ish. The numbers rival numbers in actual, recognized wars.
Another important aspect is avoidability. For example, in the Netherlands most murders are criminals killing criminals and (ex)family members killing eachother. Which makes a safer country (for me) than if most of the murders were robberies/random/terrorist. Numbers like this don't address real safety/danger imho.
On January 16 2012 02:24 DorF wrote: I'm very suprised no cities situated in other parts of Africa than a couple of South African ones are on the list. I always thought South Africa would be among the more peacefull countries. Or any of the numerous nations not only in Africa that are currently involved in war or civil war.
I think part of the problem is that it's very hard to get accurate statistics on African cities. I think another part of it is rampant racism. The West does not give a shit about Africa unless somebody important decides he can win political correctness points by spending 30 minutes in front of a camera. "Yay, Africa is so culturally wonderful -- now let's get out of here before the natives kill us." That's our attitude. It's unhealthy and I find it sickening, but it is what it is.
You want bad, check out Liberia. Vice Guide to Travel did a show on them... seriously fucked up place.
Ask a random person what they know about Africa, they'll say famine, epidemics, civil wars and maybe safaris. Maybe it's very different in the US but I don't see some sort of concentrated effort to paint Africa as a nice place. Most people realize that most of the continent is seriously fucked up. Though arguably less so than 10 years ago.
On January 16 2012 02:37 Caseyclysm wrote: I'm somewhat surprised about Baltimore and St. Louis. New Orleans being on there sounds reasonable.
As I've said before, St. Louis county is never averaged with the city in these studies because it is considered a different entity from St. Louis city, while other cities have their counties stats averaged in. The county is three times larger than the city, and if it were included then St. Louis wouldn't be on the list.
St. Louis county has one of the lowest crime rates in the nation.
I spent a week in the slums of Juarez. That city is knee deep in trash. Nicest people around though. Children playing soccer in the streets everyday. Brings me to tears. TT
On January 16 2012 02:37 hmunkey wrote: The entire premise of the OP is false, seeing as it's a ranking of the most violent cities with dozens of the most violent ones excluded for no discernible reason. It's a list of violence as counted by official murder rates (?) when actual violent cities aren't predominantly marked by murders, but by terrorism and war.
You guys need to learn how to use your brains.
I don't know if I can agree wih you. War and Terrorism is not murder? why would that not count in this study. Granted that they problebly missed some because of lack of statistics but I don't see how "The entire premise of the OP is false" sure I don't think it is 100% accurate, but I don't think it is that far from the truth. Hell isn't mexico toping that list? What do you think they deal with? I'm pretty sure that can be called terrorism and war (on drugs).
On January 16 2012 02:24 DorF wrote: I'm very suprised no cities situated in other parts of Africa than a couple of South African ones are on the list. I always thought South Africa would be among the more peacefull countries. Or any of the numerous nations not only in Africa that are currently involved in war or civil war.
It seems that quite simply, most of Africa does not keep/report murder rates:
Poor Mexico. I have a friend who lives there (he lives in Canada and Mexico half the time. He lives in Durango during winter, and comes to Canada for summer), and he is terrified to do a lot of things. The drug war there is getting crazy, especially seeing how many Mexican cities are at the top of that list. So many innocent people caught in the middle of something they want nothing to do with.
If I recall correctly Port Moresby usually makes those kinds of lists, maybe it has gotten better over the last few years, I'm not so updated on the situation there.
On January 16 2012 02:51 isleyofthenorth wrote: no surprise that only the US out of the highest developed countries made that list with their gun laws etc
Blaming the U.S. out of every developed country due to their "gun laws etc" shows a very high amount of ignorance to the overall cause of these issues. If you think that the people causing these crimes own a legal firearm, you are sorely mistaken.
And for the record, I am very anti gun. These cities are infested to the core with drug and gang problems, neither of which concern the issue of firearm laws at all.
On January 16 2012 02:51 isleyofthenorth wrote: no surprise that only the US out of the highest developed countries made that list with their gun laws etc
God you people just can't help yourselves can you... seen this like 10 times in 5 pages.
Yeah, I'm gonna stay as far away from this thread as possible.
Not only should St. Louis not be on there, but Baltimore as well. Baltimore is also an independent city, so its stats won't be averaged with its county. And, as with St. Louis, its county population is greater than its city population.
It's not good to compare countries with tight gun controls to those without them in terms of murder rates. We have high crime rates in our bad areas in our cities, but the chance of dying to a stabwound is significantly lower than the chance of dying to a gunshot. If you compared cities in terms of violent crimes, then I'm sure some Scottish/ British towns would sneak in.
This ranking is only for big cities (at least all the brazilian cities are all state capitals, and there's other cities much more violent), so it's pretty deceptive.
On January 16 2012 02:51 isleyofthenorth wrote: no surprise that only the US out of the highest developed countries made that list with their gun laws etc
Blaming the U.S. out of every developed country due to their "gun laws etc" shows a very high amount of ignorance to the overall cause of these issues. If you think that the people causing these crimes own a legal firearm, you are sorely mistaken.
And for the record, I am very anti gun. These cities are infested to the core with drug and gang problems, neither of which concern the issue of firearm laws at all.
Shut up you ignorant American! (obv a joke) Ignorant Europeans need to learn that you can track down the owner of a gun. As in Europe most crimes are commited with illegally acquired ones. Seems like all the cities in that list have a big drug/gang scene :/
On January 16 2012 02:57 unteqair wrote: Not only should St. Louis not be on there, but Baltimore as well. Baltimore is also an independent city, so its stats won't be averaged with its county. And, as with St. Louis, its county population is greater than its city population.
I don't get why this means they shouldn't be on there. So long as they took both homicide and population stats from the same area (either both from the city or both from the county) then it's fine.
Because it hasn't been made clear to the readers. The parameters for the statistics weren't consistent. People who read this will assume St. Louis and Baltimore are more dangerous than some surrounding areas, where it might not actually be the case.
Gotta love how Detroit, New Orleans and St. Louis are more dangerous than Mosul, Iraq. You know it's bad when your city is deemed more dangerous than a war zone
On January 16 2012 02:51 isleyofthenorth wrote: no surprise that only the US out of the highest developed countries made that list with their gun laws etc
Blaming the U.S. out of every developed country due to their "gun laws etc" shows a very high amount of ignorance to the overall cause of these issues. If you think that the people causing these crimes own a legal firearm, you are sorely mistaken.
And for the record, I am very anti gun. These cities are infested to the core with drug and gang problems, neither of which concern the issue of firearm laws at all.
Here's a question: IF gun laws were part of the problem would you support changing them?
The intentional homicide rate in the US is 4.8/100,000
The EU average is around 1.5. If the US had the same homicide rate it would mean about 10,000 less deaths per year. Maybe gun laws don't make a difference at all. Maybe they are responsible for 10% or 50%. Where would you draw the line?
If you're not sure what the effect is, is it ok to dismiss it out of hand? You may be supporting a policy that causes thousands of deaths each year. Don't you feel a responsibility to actually inform yourself, instead of taking the position that seems most convenient?
Its just a shame that that there is several areas in the Middle East and Southeast Asia missing data and practically all of Africa. I think if we had data for them the list would be extremely different. I wouldn't be surprised if Congo as a whole is worse than Mexico.
Are you sure cities in Asia and Africa are so much safer? There's definitely got to be some (a lot) of bias here. As if South America definitively keeps better murder records than other continents full of third-world nations.
On January 16 2012 01:46 Darpa wrote: Crazy, Weird how some of the US cities are way up there, even though they seem to be run in the mill cities (Baltimore, St, Louis. Ect). New orleans was a big shock. Other than those, not a whole lot of suprises.
On January 16 2012 02:51 isleyofthenorth wrote: no surprise that only the US out of the highest developed countries made that list with their gun laws etc
Why aren't your neighbors to the west on the list?
On January 16 2012 02:37 hmunkey wrote: The entire premise of the OP is false, seeing as it's a ranking of the most violent cities with dozens of the most violent ones excluded for no discernible reason. It's a list of violence as counted by official murder rates (?) when actual violent cities aren't predominantly marked by murders, but by terrorism and war.
You guys need to learn how to use your brains.
I don't know if I can agree wih you. War and Terrorism is not murder? why would that not count in this study. Granted that they problebly missed some because of lack of statistics but I don't see how "The entire premise of the OP is false" sure I don't think it is 100% accurate, but I don't think it is that far from the truth. Hell isn't mexico toping that list? What do you think they deal with? I'm pretty sure that can be called terrorism and war (on drugs).
What are you talking about? You realize there are several cities in Iraq with more deaths in the last month than some of the cities on that list, right? But of course they aren't listed for whatever reason. Oh, and what about Damascus? How many 1000s of people have died so far in the last few months? Shouldn't that be at the very top? Where is Tripoli, Manama, Mogadishu, etc? I can think of dozens upon dozens of missing cities where more people die every year from violent causes. And there's the whole issue of ineffective policing and under-reporting of crime.
This entire "study" is built on incompletely information and is meaningless. You cannot make a list and exclude the actual top ranks for arbitrary reasons.
It's like if I make a list of the top SC2 players and left out MVP, MMA, Nestea, DRG, etc. without giving a reason. Hopefully you would all realize how full of shit that list would be.
No, seriously, I never knew Brazil was so dangerous. o_o We hear a lot of stories of people being killed and their bodies dumped at random places, but I never thought they were for real.
On January 16 2012 03:18 Hassybaby wrote: Interesting that there isn't a single Asian city in that list, especially after recent events over the past few years
To be honest, I don't think gun control laws make that much of a difference. In most places in Latin America guns are very strictly controlled, and yet you see those numbers.
I think the key issue behind violence is 1) poverty and 2) the drug trade, when talking about Latin America.
That's why some countries in South America, Argentina, Chile and Uruguay in particular, are far, far more peaceful in comparison to their northern neighbours. They have higher standars of living and are located away from the drug trade routes.
On January 16 2012 03:17 hmunkey wrote: What are you talking about? You realize there are several cities in Iraq with more deaths in the last month than some of the cities on that list, right? But of course they aren't listed for whatever reason. Oh, and what about Damascus? How many 1000s of people have died so far in the last few months? Shouldn't that be at the very top? Where is Tripoli, Manama, Mogadishu, etc? I can think of dozens upon dozens of missing cities where more people die every year from violent causes. And there's the whole issue of ineffective policing and under-reporting of crime.
This entire "study" is built on incompletely information and is meaningless. You cannot make a list and exclude the actual top ranks for arbitrary reasons.
It's like if I make a list of the top SC2 players and left out MVP, MMA, Nestea, DRG, etc. without giving a reason. Hopefully you would all realize how full of shit that list would be.
You can't include data from countries that aren't keeping such data. I really doubt that there were official figures of murder during the Lybian civil war, or during the current uprising in Syria. And most of Africa doesn't keep such records, and maybe in some of the more authoritarian states in Asia the goverment doesn't reveal the real figures, who knows?
This isn't supposed to be some magical and perfect ranking that accounts for every single murder in the world, is just to shed light on what we do know about violence in the modern world.
On January 16 2012 03:14 peekn wrote: Huh...didnt' think that those US cities were that violent... Need to start cleaning up your act!!
I blame the drugs for most of those Latin American cities being on there without a doubt.
When I visited the US, I noticed that there are two types of places. The places where you think "the standard of living here is so high, jesus, I wish I lived here". And then the places where you think "I thought the USA was a first world country". For example, I visited Richmond, VA and I was happily driving along, then all of a sudden, I entered Petersburg, VA and I felt like I was going to get shot at any minute.
On January 16 2012 02:51 isleyofthenorth wrote: no surprise that only the US out of the highest developed countries made that list with their gun laws etc
Why aren't your neighbors to the west on the list?
is that your pro-guns argument? <3 (answer: cuz the country is a lot richer - ppl dont have as many problems that make them kill each other. different situation -> plz dont use this as an pro guns argument)
Oh come on, Guatemala isn't that bad - I visited there and it was great. It's just full of displaced people and therefore poor, not to mention there's significant language barriers there.
I live in St. Louis, the only bad part of St. Louis is East St. Louis, where it can be pretty egregious, most of the people I know have never been there. But other than East St. Louis it really is a nice place to live in.
On January 16 2012 02:51 isleyofthenorth wrote: no surprise that only the US out of the highest developed countries made that list with their gun laws etc
Blaming the U.S. out of every developed country due to their "gun laws etc" shows a very high amount of ignorance to the overall cause of these issues. If you think that the people causing these crimes own a legal firearm, you are sorely mistaken.
And for the record, I am very anti gun. These cities are infested to the core with drug and gang problems, neither of which concern the issue of firearm laws at all.
Here's a question: IF gun laws were part of the problem would you support changing them?
The intentional homicide rate in the US is 4.8/100,000
The EU average is around 1.5. If the US had the same homicide rate it would mean about 10,000 less deaths per year. Maybe gun laws don't make a difference at all. Maybe they are responsible for 10% or 50%. Where would you draw the line?
If you're not sure what the effect is, is it ok to dismiss it out of hand? You may be supporting a policy that causes thousands of deaths each year. Don't you feel a responsibility to actually inform yourself, instead of taking the position that seems most convenient?
First of all i am against gun control and own a handgun, with that out of the way I dont believe u can say outlaw guns in U.S. and u'll have the same murder statistics as in Europe, with Mexico being next to us how fucked their situation is and how easy it is getting stuff across the border, all that gun control will accomplish are more gun cartels and a lot more violence and highly unlikely anything will change except law abiding citizens will have less guns, if situation in Mexico changes then i might be ok with stricter gun control laws until then i am against it.
On January 16 2012 02:37 hmunkey wrote: The entire premise of the OP is false, seeing as it's a ranking of the most violent cities with dozens of the most violent ones excluded for no discernible reason. It's a list of violence as counted by official murder rates (?) when actual violent cities aren't predominantly marked by murders, but by terrorism and war.
You guys need to learn how to use your brains.
I don't know if I can agree wih you. War and Terrorism is not murder? why would that not count in this study. Granted that they problebly missed some because of lack of statistics but I don't see how "The entire premise of the OP is false" sure I don't think it is 100% accurate, but I don't think it is that far from the truth. Hell isn't mexico toping that list? What do you think they deal with? I'm pretty sure that can be called terrorism and war (on drugs).
What are you talking about? You realize there are several cities in Iraq with more deaths in the last month than some of the cities on that list, right? But of course they aren't listed for whatever reason. Oh, and what about Damascus? How many 1000s of people have died so far in the last few months? Shouldn't that be at the very top? Where is Tripoli, Manama, Mogadishu, etc? I can think of dozens upon dozens of missing cities where more people die every year from violent causes. And there's the whole issue of ineffective policing and under-reporting of crime.
This entire "study" is built on incompletely information and is meaningless. You cannot make a list and exclude the actual top ranks for arbitrary reasons.
It's like if I make a list of the top SC2 players and left out MVP, MMA, Nestea, DRG, etc. without giving a reason. Hopefully you would all realize how full of shit that list would be.
Actualy You are the one spilling nosense all the time. You have no idea what You are talking about. Get educated about the actual numbers before posting again.
Ps. The total war related casulties in Iraq in 2011 is 4059 according to Iraqi Body Count.Half of that would have to happen in Baghdad in order to put it in 50 place on that list.
IF gun laws were part of the problem would you support changing them?
Since places like oh almost all of South and Central America have far more restrictive gun laws and also have way more murders including gun murders, your hypothetical is a pointless rhetorical gain. Who cares "IF" American gun laws were the problem because they are not. No matter how much you believe they are, and no matter how many irrelevant questions asked to try to slide around and through to an unsupportable position you couldn't reach otherwise.
If you're not sure what the effect is, is it ok to dismiss it out of hand?
Is it?
You may be supporting a policy that causes thousands of deaths each year. Don't you feel a responsibility to actually inform yourself, instead of taking the position that seems most convenient?
Don't you feel that same responsibility, instead of taking the same old position you're comfortable with?
What are you talking about? You realize there are several cities in Iraq with more deaths in the last month than some of the cities on that list, right?
Which ones? And where would those cities lie on the list if included? Somewhere down near the lower end.
But of course they aren't listed for whatever reason.
Because the list is a list of criminal murder, not war killing or war crimes. Those are, rightly or wrongly, viewed as transient and not normal situations that would skew the picture. If you want to be broad then Homs, Syria, wouldn't even be on the list six months ago, and today it would be Number One. And in six more months it would be gone again.
Now what help would that be to people trying to do studies on crime and diminishing it?
Oh, and what about Damascus? How many 1000s of people have died so far in the last few months? Shouldn't that be at the very top? Where is Tripoli, Manama, Mogadishu, etc? I can think of dozens upon dozens of missing cities where more people die every year from violent causes. And there's the whole issue of ineffective policing and under-reporting of crime.
Actually you probably can't, because even if we include cities ushered in under your broader guidelines, most of those cities already up there would still have more murders and be more dangerous, particularly the ones in Mexico, Brazil, and Venezuela.
Most of the Brazilian cities listed except for Belo Horizonte and Curitiba are small, backwater cities in the shittiest regions of the country (north and northeast). I'm actually shocked those are there instead of say, Sao Paulo or Rio de Janeiro.
On January 16 2012 02:51 isleyofthenorth wrote: no surprise that only the US out of the highest developed countries made that list with their gun laws etc
Blaming the U.S. out of every developed country due to their "gun laws etc" shows a very high amount of ignorance to the overall cause of these issues. If you think that the people causing these crimes own a legal firearm, you are sorely mistaken.
And for the record, I am very anti gun. These cities are infested to the core with drug and gang problems, neither of which concern the issue of firearm laws at all.
Here's a question: IF gun laws were part of the problem would you support changing them?
The intentional homicide rate in the US is 4.8/100,000
The EU average is around 1.5. If the US had the same homicide rate it would mean about 10,000 less deaths per year. Maybe gun laws don't make a difference at all. Maybe they are responsible for 10% or 50%. Where would you draw the line?
If you're not sure what the effect is, is it ok to dismiss it out of hand? You may be supporting a policy that causes thousands of deaths each year. Don't you feel a responsibility to actually inform yourself, instead of taking the position that seems most convenient?
First of all i am against gun control and own a handgun, with that out of the way I dont believe u can say outlaw guns in U.S. and u'll have the same murder statistics as in Europe, with Mexico being next to us how fucked their situation is and how easy it is getting stuff across the border, all that gun control will accomplish are more gun cartels and a lot more violence and highly unlikely anything will change except law abiding citizens will have less guns, if situation in Mexico changes then i might be ok with stricter gun control laws until then i am against it.
OK, but why do you think gun laws aren't the reason for higher murder rates?
I don't know why this conversation broke down into a debate on gun control.
If you'd like to know why these cities made this list, look up the average household income in the 50 cities listed. Voila, you will have your reasoning. Poor people and poor living conditions often lead to an increase in crime rate.
On January 16 2012 02:37 hmunkey wrote: The entire premise of the OP is false, seeing as it's a ranking of the most violent cities with dozens of the most violent ones excluded for no discernible reason. It's a list of violence as counted by official murder rates (?) when actual violent cities aren't predominantly marked by murders, but by terrorism and war.
You guys need to learn how to use your brains.
I don't know if I can agree wih you. War and Terrorism is not murder? why would that not count in this study. Granted that they problebly missed some because of lack of statistics but I don't see how "The entire premise of the OP is false" sure I don't think it is 100% accurate, but I don't think it is that far from the truth. Hell isn't mexico toping that list? What do you think they deal with? I'm pretty sure that can be called terrorism and war (on drugs).
What are you talking about? You realize there are several cities in Iraq with more deaths in the last month than some of the cities on that list, right? But of course they aren't listed for whatever reason. Oh, and what about Damascus? How many 1000s of people have died so far in the last few months? Shouldn't that be at the very top? Where is Tripoli, Manama, Mogadishu, etc? I can think of dozens upon dozens of missing cities where more people die every year from violent causes. And there's the whole issue of ineffective policing and under-reporting of crime.
This entire "study" is built on incompletely information and is meaningless. You cannot make a list and exclude the actual top ranks for arbitrary reasons.
It's like if I make a list of the top SC2 players and left out MVP, MMA, Nestea, DRG, etc. without giving a reason. Hopefully you would all realize how full of shit that list would be.
Please feel free to show me some statistics that show that other cities toped the ones listed during 2011. As I said I do think some cities had more murders but since war in particular don't count every victim and publish it it is hard to find true statistic over those places. Not to mention that the victims in Iraq and Syria might not necesserly be in a city or the same city thus not granting them a place in top 50 even though the country on avarage is more violent.
Also your metaphor suck since the reason obviously is lack of statistics which would not be the case of MVP, MMA, etc.
Edit: Also if you don't find that the high rate in 4 cities in USA is alarming even if there are worse cities out there, I don't know what to say. South Africa, and Brazil have the excuse of being extreamly poor and being considered Third world countries. Mexico and Iraq have the excuse of war and terrorism. US don't have any excuse for so high rates.
On January 16 2012 01:47 Count9 wrote: YEAHHH!!! We made it! Go Saint louis!!!
I'm actually really surprised some of the smaller cities in China and south west Asia aren't on this list, they are a total mess. I guess they aren't completely doing this per capita because those cities would have ridiculously high rates.
We are talking about crime here, stuffs such as car accidents or government violence are not included.
On January 16 2012 03:38 Durp wrote: I don't know why this conversation broke down into a debate on gun control.
If you'd like to know why these cities made this list, look up the average household income in the 50 cities listed. Voila, you will have your reasoning. Poor people and poor living conditions often lead to an increase in crime rate.
I mostly agree with that, but, for example: Curitiba is one of the cities in Brazil with higher HDI lowest inequality, and its still in the ranking.
In Brazil normal citizens don`t just "die" as you may think. The homicide rate is usually something that happens in a drug dealer sort of situation, or if someone denies to give something to the mugger and he decides to shoot the person (situations like that does not happen often).
But yea, Brazil is a country with almost the same size as the whole USA or even bigger If Alaska is not included, as a developing country, the tedency is to get better time after time, while in developed countries, with the crisys, I see many international friends telling me that their neighborhood is full of thiefs and stuff like that.
As someone said before, the most dangerous city in the country are in the least developed regions (north and northeast regions), unlikely USA, where the south is below in terms of economy and security compared to the north.
Cities like Sao Paulo, Rio de Janeiro and others are actually getting better in terms of homicide rate.
Just to give you an example, in 1998 Rio de Janeiro had an homicide rate of almost 100/100.000. Now it`s close to 20/100.000.
Sao Paulo nowadays is below than 10 / 100.000, which is, according to some organizations, a good homicide rate.
And please, do not think South America as "a" country, as if here everything is dangerous. Chile, for example, is safer than USA. While in USA its homicide rate is 5 / 100,00, Chile is similar to european countries. Same goes to Uruguay, some parts of Argentina and even in the countryside of the most developed states of Brazil (like Sao Paulo, Santa Catarina, Parana and Rio Grande do Sul).
So apparently, I used to live in the most dangerous city in the world. While finishing up high school and surfing the beginnings of this great site, I lived in San Pedro Sula with the entire mothers side of the family (lots of cousins, aunts, etc).
Can't really say I'm surprised when the military walks the streets with Ak's and everyone who can hires people to watch their property for them at night. (Can't say a week didn't go by without hearing about someone getting killed, no close relatives have ever been murdered though) Most of the killing seems to happen in the lower class.
IF gun laws were part of the problem would you support changing them?
Since places like oh almost all of South and Central America have far more restrictive gun laws and also have way more murders including gun murders, your hypothetical is a pointless rhetorical gain. Who cares "IF" American gun laws were the problem because they are not. No matter how much you believe they are, and no matter how many irrelevant questions asked to try to slide around and through to an unsupportable position you couldn't reach otherwise.
Well, obviously if someone supports gun laws regardless of their consequences than I wouldn't try to debate them. Or if they said it's an acceptable price to pay to have a balance against government power, etc.
And it makes sense logically to separate the two questions. You can't make an informed decision on gun laws without making an unbiased estimate of their consequences.
You may be supporting a policy that causes thousands of deaths each year. Don't you feel a responsibility to actually inform yourself, instead of taking the position that seems most convenient?
Don't you feel that same responsibility, instead of taking the same old position you're comfortable with?
IDK, from the data I've seen and simple logic I feel fairly confident that gun ownership doesn't decrease violent crime significantly. But if someone showed me data that seemed to suggest the opposite I'd certainly feel responsible to take a look at it.
On January 16 2012 02:51 isleyofthenorth wrote: no surprise that only the US out of the highest developed countries made that list with their gun laws etc
Why aren't your neighbors to the west on the list?
is that your pro-guns argument? <3 (answer: cuz the country is a lot richer - ppl dont have as many problems that make them kill each other. different situation -> plz dont use this as an pro guns argument)
You can't be serious. Who the hell goes through the mental steps of answering a rhetorical question and somehow misses the point entirely?
Im from Caracas, wich is in my opinion the worst one in the list because it's a capital. its fueled by the lack of punishment of any kind, there is no law in venezuela just corruption. 3164 homicides in a year is a lot, and sadly this are official government numbers so just imagine the reality. my family was getting kill threats so we had to move to spain and now enjoy a life without fear.
On January 16 2012 02:51 isleyofthenorth wrote: no surprise that only the US out of the highest developed countries made that list with their gun laws etc
Why aren't your neighbors to the west on the list?
is that your pro-guns argument? <3 (answer: cuz the country is a lot richer - ppl dont have as many problems that make them kill each other. different situation -> plz dont use this as an pro guns argument)
You can't be serious. Who the hell goes through the mental steps of answering a rhetorical question and somehow misses the point entirely?
owned :/ sry, not used to ppl using rhetorical questions in senseless internet discussion
New Orleans doesn't suprise me. Outside of the downtown area with Bourbon Street and the French Quarter and all that, the entire city just looks run-down for the most part. I'm glad I was only there for a week when I went there a few years ago, would sure as fuck not want to live there.
On January 16 2012 04:21 nymfaw wrote: Legalise drugs?
I kind of used to be only in favor of legalizing marijuana and keeping the others the way they are. After looking at this list and knowing that the drug trade is obviously the underlying problem, I say f* it and lets legalize all drugs.
It's better that a random strangers kid turn a junkie than having drug wars throughout our continent perpetuating a state of poverty and violence.
thats a lot of south and central american countries. this all means very little though in the long run for traveling at least. i just got back from san juan puerto rico and there were no issues as i stayed in the tourist areas (beach) and no problems. i have also been to a lot of the other cities in brazil, costa rica and mexico without problem. finally, i live by oakland and richmond in california, which are very bad. just be smart about it.
On January 16 2012 04:21 nymfaw wrote: Legalise drugs?
Decriminalisation should be the word.
Depends on the implementation. To drive down cartel profits you need allow large scale production and distribution or else they're the ones still producing everything.
But seriously, this is sad list. Almost everything is in Latin America . I'm a bit surprised that Tijuana isn't there, because I've been there and that city is really bad :/.
On January 16 2012 01:46 Darpa wrote: Crazy, Weird how some of the US cities are way up there, even though they seem to be run in the mill cities (Baltimore, St, Louis. Ect). New orleans was a big shock. Other than those, not a whole lot of suprises.
New orleans is a tourist city so most of thos deaths are probably during marti gras or other times and not against citizens nessecary which there is only 300K a fairly small city.
On January 16 2012 01:46 Darpa wrote: Crazy, Weird how some of the US cities are way up there, even though they seem to be run in the mill cities (Baltimore, St, Louis. Ect). New orleans was a big shock. Other than those, not a whole lot of suprises.
you've clearly never been to baltimore...I'm shocked it wasn't higher up tbh
Seems top 20 is dominated by South American countries.. As expected one could say, BUT what about a lot of african countries(especially the really poor ones like liberia)?
I'd reckon the murder rate to be even higher there, but im guessing statistics aren't really at close hand in those regions. Something to think about.
Drug wars and gangs. Sure there are poorer regions and cities but it seems with the prevalence of the drug trade in Latin America, higher murder rates would make sense. Then again, surprised that Syrian and Libyan cities did not make the list after all they been through this year.
Oh guys trust me Russia and Ukraine would lead in this... If you talk about small mobs, but chances if you are not in center of the city you better know how to fight/run... giving cellphone is easiest way out...
On January 16 2012 05:45 Bagration wrote: Drug wars and gangs. Sure there are poorer regions and cities but it seems with the prevalence of the drug trade in Latin America, higher murder rates would make sense. Then again, surprised that Syrian and Libyan cities did not make the list after all they been through this year.
On January 16 2012 03:25 Lewan72 wrote: I live in St. Louis, the only bad part of St. Louis is East St. Louis, where it can be pretty egregious, most of the people I know have never been there. But other than East St. Louis it really is a nice place to live in.
Wow, what an ignorant post. Perhaps you live in the county and haven't been into the city. Cruise through some poor neighborhoods in St. Louis, see poverty and you'll see how someone desperate to survive might be motivated to kill another person. East St. Louis, even though the shack towns are gone, is merely a sample of what is to be found on the other side of the river.
On January 16 2012 06:05 slytown wrote: Anyone else expect Detroit to be a little higher?
Honestly the core part of downtown by the casinos and sports stadiums has gotten much better in the last 10-15 years. I don't mind being in that area of Detroit at night. But there are tons of other spots nobody in their right mind would go to.
On January 16 2012 06:02 aTnClouD wrote: Ok this makes me want to not visit Mexico ever
Well, I was there like 4 years ago and it was quite ok if you did not go to the north part of the country and in the south avoided areas with guerillas. Center of the country was ok and it is really a nice country, unfortunately the reasonably safe area is shrinking as time goes on, but I would say as a tourist Mexico is not as bad as many countries not on that list or with smaller presence on the list. Also to note you can go even to the north and the probability that something will happen to you is still low if you are a tourist and you stick to safe areas, but the risks are quite higher and since there is enough to see and do in the rest of the country it makes no sense to go there really.
Glad to see California is doing better than it used to. I live in the second most violent city in California (Stockton, behind Oakland) and it thankfully did not make the list.
On January 16 2012 02:37 Steel wrote: I wonder how an american drug policy reform would affect this issue. There's a real problem and it doesn't look like the ongoing war on drugs is helping. I don't know what would be the best reform but it seems like there needs to be SOMETHING done.
We tried to build a big-ass wall but we got yelled at for being racist.
Sorry, but it was hard to resist, given all the USA USA USA! stuff elsewhere on the Forums
That explains why Mexico is so safe and why North Dakota is so dangerous.
Actually if you look countrywide UK's is MUCH lower than US. Using one state with less than a million people and comparing it to a country with more than 100 million is really silly. Also North Dakota is too close to Canada, they're too nice to shoot each other [I'm from ND].
My shot at an explanation is the places really high on the list have easy access of a way to kill people (guns mostly) and also a high incidence of people wanting to kill each other (drug violence, poverty, perhaps ethnic tensions). To the OP who asked why Africa wasn't on the list, I imagine it's either because accurate data isn't available or because they don't have as high of an access to guns.
You should follow this up with the safest cities in the world. It would be interesting to see if there are any conceived dangerous cities that may not be as bad as they are portrayed.
St Louis being on there is kind of deceptive. There are really only 2 areas that are dangerous, and neither is an area you are likely to end up unless you're just stupid.
In this image you`ll see the capitals of Brazil (for the 27 states) during 2000 and 2010 for its homicide rate.
As you can see, São Paulo (biggest city in Southern Hemisphere in economic terms) in 2010 was the most dangerous city after Recife, Vitória and Cuiabá.
After ten years, now it`s the "safest" between the 27 capitals.
Still, the countryside of the country is safe, at least for the states like Santa Catarina or São Paulo (there`s the capital São Paulo and the state).
But it`s not like you guys would be scared here. Mostly of the deaths by homicide rate is for people who get involved in bad stuff (drugs and stuff). Our coast, probably the best in the world after Australia, is literally an "industry for turism". If you go to Maceio, a city which has great beaches, pretty sure you`ll be far away from the bad stuff.
I live in Cuiaba and to be honest me and my family feel secure here.
So overall México is #1? That's a shame, it must be that stupid narco-culture that poisons the mind of a lot of people, listening to sh*tty narco-music and stuff... Oh man, I despise them so much D:< .
On January 16 2012 06:55 Iceman331 wrote: St Louis being on there is kind of deceptive. There are really only 2 areas that are dangerous, and neither is an area you are likely to end up unless you're just stupid.
Yeah and on top of that crime in St. Louis is reported far more than crime in third world countries. If someone is shot in Guadalajara, there's a chance it'll never be investigated or even show up on the books anywhere. If someone's shot in St. Louis, it's going to be recorded and investigated.
There's an inherent bias in how this study was done because of this. It seems like they only used official stats and didn't attempt to make any estimates, which explains why some cities like Damascus and Mogadishu are missing even though they're FAR more violent than any of the cities on this list.
Hell, the two most impoverished (and historically violent) continents and simply absent from the study.
On January 16 2012 06:02 aTnClouD wrote: Ok this makes me want to not visit Mexico ever
Mexico is one of the most beautiful places on the planet. Except now due to Americans insatiable appetite for drugs it's turned into a war zone. Worst part is now alot of the US border towns are starting to become just as bad as the Mexican border cities like Tijuana and Juarez. Also, is East St. Louis counted as part of St. Louis? Because it's one of the most dangerous cities in the US. Even moreso than New Orleans, Baltimore and Detroit.
Sorry, but it was hard to resist, given all the USA USA USA! stuff elsewhere on the Forums
That explains why Mexico is so safe and why North Dakota is so dangerous.
Actually if you look countrywide UK's is MUCH lower than US. Using one state with less than a million people and comparing it to a country with more than 100 million is really silly. Also North Dakota is too close to Canada, they're too nice to shoot each other [I'm from ND].
My shot at an explanation is the places really high on the list have easy access of a way to kill people (guns mostly) and also a high incidence of people wanting to kill each other (drug violence, poverty, perhaps ethnic tensions). To the OP who asked why Africa wasn't on the list, I imagine it's either because accurate data isn't available or because they don't have as high of an access to guns.
All I'm doing is discrediting the view that you can simply look at gun control, look at gun crime, then come to conclusions about the effectiveness of gun control. You can look at hundreds of US counties with extremely high gun ownership rates and very low crime. You can look at plenty of cities with very low levels of legal gun ownership, and tight gun control and extremely high rates of gun crime. There are just way more factors than just gun control for you to draw a correlation like "The UK has low gun crime and lots of gun control and therefore gun control reduces crime".
Also, seeing as how you mentioned Canada as a reason for North Dakota having lower crime, why don't we look at the crime rates and gun control in Manitoba. Gun control is pretty tight here, especially compared to North Dakota, but we have way more crime than North Dakota. I know that you were saying that tongue in cheek but even the comparison between those two neighbors, doesn't favor your argument.
I don't think that this table is quite accurate. Saying that Saint Louis is more dangerous than a city in South Africa is pretty stupid. You can't just count murders and then base the danger-level around that, there is much more to the actual danger that belongs to a city: rape, general assualts, robbery, kill ATTEMPTS etc
Would be interested to know what the murder rates against innocents is. Like a lot of countries stats might be inflated by Drug cartels or gangs killing each other which violence targeted towards criminals by other criminals doesn't exactly lead to a place being as dangerous as perceived by these rankings for regular people. Murders against people just because they got caught in the crossfire or killing a person for their cash or car or something DOES affect the general population to a greater degree.
And those surprised that some of the US cities aren't higher, the murder rate overall in the country has been on the decline the last decade so it isn't too surprising that they aren't higher on the list.
I was reading about murder rate per 100.000 on the newspaper today. America has 5.5 murders per 100.000 (in average) and so does Argentina. Chile is one of the safest places in America with 3.5
Sorry, but it was hard to resist, given all the USA USA USA! stuff elsewhere on the Forums
That explains why Mexico is so safe and why North Dakota is so dangerous.
Actually if you look countrywide UK's is MUCH lower than US. Using one state with less than a million people and comparing it to a country with more than 100 million is really silly. Also North Dakota is too close to Canada, they're too nice to shoot each other [I'm from ND].
My shot at an explanation is the places really high on the list have easy access of a way to kill people (guns mostly) and also a high incidence of people wanting to kill each other (drug violence, poverty, perhaps ethnic tensions). To the OP who asked why Africa wasn't on the list, I imagine it's either because accurate data isn't available or because they don't have as high of an access to guns.
All I'm doing is discrediting the view that you can simply look at gun control, look at gun crime, then come to conclusions about the effectiveness of gun control. You can look at hundreds of US counties with extremely high gun ownership rates and very low crime. You can look at plenty of cities with very low levels of legal gun ownership, and tight gun control and extremely high rates of gun crime. There are just way more factors than just gun control for you to draw a correlation like "The UK has low gun crime and lots of gun control and therefore gun control reduces crime".
Also, seeing as how you mentioned Canada as a reason for North Dakota having lower crime, why don't we look at the crime rates and gun control in Manitoba. Gun control is pretty tight here, especially compared to North Dakota, but we have way more crime than North Dakota. I know that you were saying that tongue in cheek but even the comparison between those two neighbors, doesn't favor your argument.
My argument was you need both a way to kill people and a reason to do so. Guns account for a huge proportion of murders so easy of gun access is definitely a factor for that part. Having only half of the equation doesn't lead to higher intentional homicide though. Neither Manitoba nor ND has a lot of ethnic tension, areas of severe poverty (although I think Winnipeg has a few areas that are pretty poor), nor drug trafficking (ND does a fair bit of meth manufacture but I'm sure it's nothing compared to Latin/South America drug trade.
I only agreed with the guy you were quoting halfway.
On January 16 2012 07:12 Perseverance wrote: 3/4 in the US are in the south...
Detroit in the south = no Baltimore in the south = no St. Louis in the south = no New Orleans in the south = yes
Your geography is terrible.
Actually I can understand calling Baltimore and St. Louis the South. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Southern_United_States Missouri touches what wikipedia calls the south and puts Maryland in the South. I'd call Maryland a midatlantic state but it really depends where you're from how big you consider various regions.
I'm actually interested by this study. From all accounts I've heard, Flint, Michigan is actually a more dangerous city than Detroit and last year was rated #1 in terms of danger in the United States. Has it changed that quickly or was the information I read last year incorrect? O_o
On January 16 2012 01:48 mbr2321 wrote: It's heart breaking that the list is so skewed towards Central and South america Top 20 all south of the United States.
All caused by the US war on drugs too. So many lives lost for no reason due to something that could be ended so easily, very sad.
On January 16 2012 07:33 Tyrr wrote: I'm actually interested by this study. From all accounts I've heard, Flint, Michigan is actually a more dangerous city than Detroit and last year was rated #1 in terms of danger in the United States. Has it changed that quickly or was the information I read last year incorrect? O_o
It's not letting me download the original paper but it appears there's a minimum population of 250,000 for cities on the list.
On January 16 2012 01:48 mbr2321 wrote: It's heart breaking that the list is so skewed towards Central and South america Top 20 all south of the United States.
All caused by the US war on drugs too. So many lives lost for no reason due to something that could be ended so easily, very sad.
XD. Really? There are numerous reasons why the US has screwed over South and Latin America, and drugs is near the bottom.
On January 16 2012 07:33 Tyrr wrote: I'm actually interested by this study. From all accounts I've heard, Flint, Michigan is actually a more dangerous city than Detroit and last year was rated #1 in terms of danger in the United States. Has it changed that quickly or was the information I read last year incorrect? O_o
The study is randomly missing cities without explanation, so it doesn't really matter. None of the actual most violent cities in the world are even on the list.
On January 16 2012 01:43 CrimsonLotus wrote: 48 Baltimore United States 195 620.961 31.40
Ah, home sweet home.
Edit - Skimmed through this thread, and I see some people are surprised to see Baltimore on the list. I honestly jumped to the top 20 expecting it to be around there. This is not a surprise. :-P
On January 16 2012 01:48 mbr2321 wrote: It's heart breaking that the list is so skewed towards Central and South america Top 20 all south of the United States.
All caused by the US war on drugs too. So many lives lost for no reason due to something that could be ended so easily, very sad.
XD. Really? There are numerous reasons why the US has screwed over South and Latin America, and drugs is near the bottom.
Really? what are the Mexican and Colombian drug cartels going to kill people over if there was no illegal drug trade?
On January 16 2012 07:33 Tyrr wrote: I'm actually interested by this study. From all accounts I've heard, Flint, Michigan is actually a more dangerous city than Detroit and last year was rated #1 in terms of danger in the United States. Has it changed that quickly or was the information I read last year incorrect? O_o
The study is randomly missing cities without explanation, so it doesn't really matter. None of the actual most violent cities in the world are even on the list.
West and Central Europe = 1.2 Central America = 25 South America = 21
I'd be interested to see what the murder rates are like if you remove all criminals from the stats though. A great deal (if not the vast majority) of murders are members of one criminal organization killing those of another, so while the rate may be high, the risk is low.
EDIT: This isn't a problem I have with the study so stop quoting it. It's simply an indication of an interesting piece of information I would like to see since it adds a new dimension of personal relevance. If Juarez had 10000 homicides for example, but 9990 were within drug gangs, that means only 10 are ones that I as a non-criminal would have to worry about. That's it, this isn't a flaw in the study. The problem with the study is that it disregards many more significant causes of violence.
On January 16 2012 07:33 Tyrr wrote: I'm actually interested by this study. From all accounts I've heard, Flint, Michigan is actually a more dangerous city than Detroit and last year was rated #1 in terms of danger in the United States. Has it changed that quickly or was the information I read last year incorrect? O_o
The study is randomly missing cities without explanation, so it doesn't really matter. None of the actual most violent cities in the world are even on the list.
How do you know?
Where is Mogadishu? Tripoli? Damascus? What about most of Iraq? 51 people just died in Iraq two days ago. Around that many died a week ago. 5000 have died in Damascus in the last few months, along with 100s and 100s in Tripoli. Mogadishu is basically a warzone with a government that has control over only a few city blocks. Sanaa, Karachi, Nairobi, Abidjan, etc. are all missing. I could go on and on, but really it should be quite apparent that the study has huge holes if it says St. Louis, Missouri is more violent than Baghdad.
It seems like they're only counting drug related homicides or something and even then only from official government figures (of course only more stable and effective governments would have accurate figures, and it turns out the most violent places are oftentimes lacking this). If they're doing this though, they're completely ignoring mass murder, terrorism, war, etc., all of which qualify as pretty significant sources of violence.
St. Louis is worse than memphis and somehow i doubt that that would push us off the list considering baltimore is number 8 lol. Memphis is number 5 and basically its 80% hood. All of these places are rough, but not putting memphis on the list and putting baltimore there seems a bit off. General violence is off the charts and is not getting better. Its so bad that the University of Tennessee placed its medical school in Memphis so that students could become proficient at dealing with stab, shot, burn, and abuse wounds along with the normal diseases seen.
On January 16 2012 06:55 Iceman331 wrote: St Louis being on there is kind of deceptive. There are really only 2 areas that are dangerous, and neither is an area you are likely to end up unless you're just stupid.
A lot of the cities on the list has bad and good areas. If you are unlikely to end up in those areas, how come there are murders there The point is they are not measuring how likely is outsider to get killed, just how dangerous is the cite on average for its inhabitants, and people living in those dangerous areas are also inhabitants of that city.
i think romania has about 500 cases of homicide per year for a population of 22 million people..... i'm quite thankful to not be a latin american right now
On January 16 2012 06:55 Iceman331 wrote: St Louis being on there is kind of deceptive. There are really only 2 areas that are dangerous, and neither is an area you are likely to end up unless you're just stupid.
A lot of the cities on the list has bad and good areas. If you are unlikely to end up in those areas, how come there are murders there The point is they are not measuring how likely is outsider to get killed, just how dangerous is the cite on average for its inhabitants, and people living in those dangerous areas are also inhabitants of that city.
From St. Louis here, one of the things is that St. Louis is really messed up in how it is zoned, so technically, the "City of St. Louis" contains about 5% of the population of the metropolitain area. Unless you go to the Arch or go to a sports game, there is not a whole lot in the technical city. (5% may be a bit off one way or another, havn't actually learned about it for a few years now, numbers might have changed.)
On January 16 2012 07:33 Tyrr wrote: I'm actually interested by this study. From all accounts I've heard, Flint, Michigan is actually a more dangerous city than Detroit and last year was rated #1 in terms of danger in the United States. Has it changed that quickly or was the information I read last year incorrect? O_o
The study is randomly missing cities without explanation, so it doesn't really matter. None of the actual most violent cities in the world are even on the list.
How do you know?
Where is Mogadishu? Tripoli? Damascus? What about most of Iraq? 51 people just died in Iraq two days ago. Around that many died a week ago. 5000 have died in Damascus in the last few months, along with 100s and 100s in Tripoli. Mogadishu is basically a warzone with a government that has control over only a few city blocks. Sanaa, Karachi, Nairobi, Abidjan, etc. are all missing. I could go on and on, but really it should be quite apparent that the study has huge holes if it says St. Louis, Missouri is more violent than Baghdad.
It seems like they're only counting drug related homicides or something and even then only from official government figures (of course only more stable and effective governments would have accurate figures, and it turns out the most violent places are oftentimes lacking this). If they're doing this though, they're completely ignoring mass murder, terrorism, war, etc., all of which qualify as pretty significant sources of violence.
I guess country's in war are not considered. They just studied countries that are supposed to be peacefull and where so many murders are not supposed to append.
On January 16 2012 07:12 Perseverance wrote: 3/4 in the US are in the south...
Im extremely curious what your point is? They are actually geographically quite spread out from each other. Most people in the US would not classify any of those other than New Orleans as southern cities. Saint Louis is Midwest and Baltimore is Mid Atlantic or northern tip of the southeast depending on how small of regions you are going with.
On January 16 2012 07:07 laste wrote: Not one European or Asian city, thats pretty odd.
On January 16 2012 08:01 jacen wrote: No Asian city in the list? Doesn't seem right.
How come ? Do you have any data to suggest that any Asian city should be on the list ? As for European city, it would be very strange considering how low murder rates are in Europe. Only Russia would I imagine to be possible to be on the list, but Russia murder rate is probably spread evenly and does not have some big centers, so no city would make it into the list. Western and Central Europe has not enough murders to even theoretically have such a city.
On January 16 2012 07:33 Tyrr wrote: I'm actually interested by this study. From all accounts I've heard, Flint, Michigan is actually a more dangerous city than Detroit and last year was rated #1 in terms of danger in the United States. Has it changed that quickly or was the information I read last year incorrect? O_o
The study is randomly missing cities without explanation, so it doesn't really matter. None of the actual most violent cities in the world are even on the list.
How do you know?
Where is Mogadishu? Tripoli? Damascus? What about most of Iraq? 51 people just died in Iraq two days ago. Around that many died a week ago. 5000 have died in Damascus in the last few months, along with 100s and 100s in Tripoli. Mogadishu is basically a warzone with a government that has control over only a few city blocks. Sanaa, Karachi, Nairobi, Abidjan, etc. are all missing. I could go on and on, but really it should be quite apparent that the study has huge holes if it says St. Louis, Missouri is more violent than Baghdad.
It seems like they're only counting drug related homicides or something and even then only from official government figures (of course only more stable and effective governments would have accurate figures, and it turns out the most violent places are oftentimes lacking this). If they're doing this though, they're completely ignoring mass murder, terrorism, war, etc., all of which qualify as pretty significant sources of violence.
I guess country's in war are not considered. They just studied countries that are supposed to be peacefull and where so many murders are not supposed to append.
Only a few of the cities I listed are in war though. And even if you exclude warzones: they're listing cities by violence. How can they arbitrarily make a list of cities that are supposed to be peaceful and then list only these by violence?
That would be like me making a list of the best SC2 pros and excluding all Koreans (because they're going to be at the top, just like warzones would be in this list), and then taking out Stephano, Thorzain, Idra, Huk, and Naniwa for no real reason. Well of course the resulting list is completely idiotic and meaningless, right?
On January 16 2012 08:01 jacen wrote: No Asian city in the list? Doesn't seem right.
How come ? Do you have any data to suggest that any Asian city should be on the list ? As for European city, it would be very strange considering how low murder rates are in Europe. Only Russia would I imagine to be possible to be on the list, but Russia murder rate is probably spread evenly and does not have some big centers, so no city would make it into the list. Western and Central Europe has not enough murders to even theoretically have such a city.
Seems to me that almost none of the marked "conflict areas" are even in the top 50 most violent cities. In other words, this list is pretty stupid because it's missing some pretty key parts.
On January 16 2012 06:55 Iceman331 wrote: St Louis being on there is kind of deceptive. There are really only 2 areas that are dangerous, and neither is an area you are likely to end up unless you're just stupid.
Yeah and on top of that crime in St. Louis is reported far more than crime in third world countries. If someone is shot in Guadalajara, there's a chance it'll never be investigated or even show up on the books anywhere. If someone's shot in St. Louis, it's going to be recorded and investigated.
There's an inherent bias in how this study was done because of this. It seems like they only used official stats and didn't attempt to make any estimates, which explains why some cities like Damascus and Mogadishu are missing even though they're FAR more violent than any of the cities on this list.
Hell, the two most impoverished (and historically violent) continents and simply absent from the study.
On January 16 2012 07:33 Tyrr wrote: I'm actually interested by this study. From all accounts I've heard, Flint, Michigan is actually a more dangerous city than Detroit and last year was rated #1 in terms of danger in the United States. Has it changed that quickly or was the information I read last year incorrect? O_o
The study is randomly missing cities without explanation, so it doesn't really matter. None of the actual most violent cities in the world are even on the list.
There is possibility that the study does not have data for parts of sub-Saharan Africa, hard to know without the original study. But otherwise what other cities do you miss on the list. As for Damascus, the study might have used only 2010 data ? It is not like the Damascus violence is long-term phenomenon unlike the cities on the list. But anyway, do you have a murder rate for Damascus and Mogadishu to assert that they have higher ratios ?
On January 16 2012 07:33 Tyrr wrote: I'm actually interested by this study. From all accounts I've heard, Flint, Michigan is actually a more dangerous city than Detroit and last year was rated #1 in terms of danger in the United States. Has it changed that quickly or was the information I read last year incorrect? O_o
The study is randomly missing cities without explanation, so it doesn't really matter. None of the actual most violent cities in the world are even on the list.
How do you know?
Where is Mogadishu? Tripoli? Damascus? What about most of Iraq? 51 people just died in Iraq two days ago. Around that many died a week ago. 5000 have died in Damascus in the last few months, along with 100s and 100s in Tripoli. Mogadishu is basically a warzone with a government that has control over only a few city blocks. Sanaa, Karachi, Nairobi, Abidjan, etc. are all missing. I could go on and on, but really it should be quite apparent that the study has huge holes if it says St. Louis, Missouri is more violent than Baghdad.
It seems like they're only counting drug related homicides or something and even then only from official government figures (of course only more stable and effective governments would have accurate figures, and it turns out the most violent places are oftentimes lacking this). If they're doing this though, they're completely ignoring mass murder, terrorism, war, etc., all of which qualify as pretty significant sources of violence.
I guess country's in war are not considered. They just studied countries that are supposed to be peacefull and where so many murders are not supposed to append.
Only a few of the cities I listed are in war though. And even if you exclude warzones: they're listing cities by violence. How can they arbitrarily make a list of cities that are supposed to be peaceful and then list only these by violence?
That would be like me making a list of the best SC2 pros and excluding all Koreans (because they're going to be at the top, just like warzones would be in this list), and then taking out Stephano, Thorzain, Idra, Huk, and Naniwa for no real reason. Well of course the resulting list is completely idiotic and meaningless, right?
Well before you denounce it as rubbish perhaps there aren't accurate statistics released for cities like Mogadishu? It seems they rely on official government numbers for the list since in the English summary it sounds like they use Mexico's official numbers but then talk about how they think actual numbers are higher. If the government is suppressing the numbers then there's not much the study can do about that. Further if something is listed as an ongoing military conflict I can understand that the military killing people wouldn't be classified as homicide. Unless someone can read the actual article in Spanish for us all I can do is postulate on how the list works.
Finally it also has to do with what is considered a city. Places like Detroit and St. Louis have very small "cities" with the surrounding area being considered a different city. It's much easier to have a high per capita homicide rate with 300,000 in a highly dense, small area than with 10 million people in a huge spread out one. The parts of Detroit and St. Louis that are considered part of the actual city are largely the shitty parts.
West and Central Europe = 1.2 Central America = 25 South America = 21
I'd be interested to see what the murder rates are like if you remove all criminals from the stats though. A great deal (if not the vast majority) of murders are members of one criminal organization killing those of another, so while the rate may be high, the risk is low.
Of course this is pretty hard to gauge and it's not like this study even has the resources to try considering the fact that they didn't even have the resources to figure out the rates in the majority of the world.
You are still talking about problems with the study without nothing to really back it up. Not even talking that even if only criminals killed themselves that would still be quite a statement about relative rates of criminal activity in different areas.
On January 16 2012 07:33 Tyrr wrote: I'm actually interested by this study. From all accounts I've heard, Flint, Michigan is actually a more dangerous city than Detroit and last year was rated #1 in terms of danger in the United States. Has it changed that quickly or was the information I read last year incorrect? O_o
The study is randomly missing cities without explanation, so it doesn't really matter. None of the actual most violent cities in the world are even on the list.
How do you know?
Where is Mogadishu? Tripoli? Damascus? What about most of Iraq? 51 people just died in Iraq two days ago. Around that many died a week ago. 5000 have died in Damascus in the last few months, along with 100s and 100s in Tripoli. Mogadishu is basically a warzone with a government that has control over only a few city blocks. Sanaa, Karachi, Nairobi, Abidjan, etc. are all missing. I could go on and on, but really it should be quite apparent that the study has huge holes if it says St. Louis, Missouri is more violent than Baghdad.
It seems like they're only counting drug related homicides or something and even then only from official government figures (of course only more stable and effective governments would have accurate figures, and it turns out the most violent places are oftentimes lacking this). If they're doing this though, they're completely ignoring mass murder, terrorism, war, etc., all of which qualify as pretty significant sources of violence.
I guess country's in war are not considered. They just studied countries that are supposed to be peacefull and where so many murders are not supposed to append.
Only a few of the cities I listed are in war though. And even if you exclude warzones: they're listing cities by violence. How can they arbitrarily make a list of cities that are supposed to be peaceful and then list only these by violence?
That would be like me making a list of the best SC2 pros and excluding all Koreans (because they're going to be at the top, just like warzones would be in this list), and then taking out Stephano, Thorzain, Idra, Huk, and Naniwa for no real reason. Well of course the resulting list is completely idiotic and meaningless, right?
Well before you denounce it as rubbish perhaps there aren't accurate statistics released for cities like Mogadishu? It seems they rely on official government numbers for the list since in the English summary it sounds like they use Mexico's official numbers but then talk about how they think actual numbers are higher. If the government is suppressing the numbers then there's not much the study can do about that. Further if something is listed as an ongoing military conflict I can understand that the military killing people wouldn't be classified as homicide. Unless someone can read the actual article in Spanish for us all I can do is postulate on how the list works.
Yeah, I'm sure that's exactly the reason -- there aren't accurate stats available. However, the list is meant to rank places in terms of violence so you kind of need to have estimates or stats or your list is meaningless.
I mean, what good is a list if you leave out the potential first 40 spots because of a lack of accurate data? Really this is just a list of the most violent cities other than you know, those other ones that are probably way more violent. Plus, it wasn't really a ranking of homicide rates, it was a ranking of violence. That shouldn't only encompass homicides because let's be honest, homicides aren't even close to the real violence in some parts of the world.
If you don't have numbers on the cities that would probably take up the first 40 spots on the list, why even bother publishing the list?
As a venezuelan living in Venezuela (come on guys no Somalia ^^), I have to say the statistics are wrong regarding my country.
Caracas apparently has a death rate of 130 murders for each 100.000 people, those numbers were said in the news a few days ago by the government, best described as a social-democratic-left-stalinist type, who cheats on numbers most of the time, like for example not including missing persons, but only found bodies. Also it should show Maracaibo and Tachira as very dangereous cities with over 100 murders for each 100.000 people.
I haven't read this thread but I have a lot of familiarity with what causes crime in Venezuela, because I live and have lived in zones of relative poverty, close to very dangereous barrios (ghettos in mountains), now that is pretty much common to everybody living in Venezuela, except rich people, certainly most middle class people live close to barrios-ghettos, that is an important fact to point out.
Drugs have made the situation a little worse. It's not such a big deal, obviously in the US people consume more drugs than in Venezuela, that increases murder rate without a doubt by a small percentage but that's it, so what causes crime in Venezuela? I'm no scientist, so I cannot give data of this, plus I'm too bored to search on google but let's take a look...
1811, Venezuelan independence, start of the first civil war. In history books it says Venezuela became independent the 5 july of 1811, that did not happend of course because a war with "Spain", the whole continent except Brazil was Spain, happened just after the independence, it was a war between local people who opposed being part of Spain and local people who supported being part of Spain. By 1822, the civil war ended, it was fought throughout the whole continent but Venezuela was in a especially bad position because the real spaniards sent 15.000 troops who destroyed the local government twice in 1812 and 1814. By 1822 the population had decreased 1/8 of what it was in 1811, due entirely to war, people died fighting or starved to death because the colombian-local troops needed food to eat, so they ate every cattle they could capture and didn't pay for it or anything, especially if the owner was a "spaniard", this continued to happend for a while even in peace times. Also the local spaniards needed troops, so they decided to free every slave they had, who were basically the entire work force who raised this cattle, slaves became uncontrolable, they teammed up with poor peasants and did their own revolutions quite a few times, in 1816 they managed to overthrow the government. They are portrayed sometimes as spaniards but they served no master but themselves, and the only way to get rid of these people was another war. By the end of the war officially in 1822 there was no food or workforce, basically.
By 1830 Venezuela separated from Colombia, revolts started, people who supported being part of "The great Colombia" (Colombia + Ecuador + Venezuela) and people who were against it. The army became more modern and for a few decades there was no war, but local revolts of opposition or peasant-slaves happened all the time, the country was one city, Caracas, who had all the national budget for themselves, while the regions were on their own, with no schools or anything, those local people knew how to fight because the whole country was full of army veterans, if they didn't like a governor who were imposed by Caracas (basically only a tax collector), they would just overthrow the local government and appoint their own governor, the central government would then pact with him, or if things were getting too ugly, the central government would send the army to fight these people.
From 1855 to 1870 came a new bunch of revolutions, federalists were fighting centralist, but this time because the regions had modern soldiers too it was a new series of civil wars. Not only that, part of the enlightened elite were freemasons who were in opposition to catolics, they had a hard time being the government together, so sometimes when they did not agree they would go to some regional warlord who appointed himself general to gather some troops in hope to overthrow the central government. This continued happening until 1870.
After 1870 a coalition of federalists and centralists agreed to make a government, this time revolts continued happening in the regions for a while.
By 1899, the mid-west part of the country was in absolute oblivion from the central government, some people though Colombia would invade and take over that region because all the trade was done with them. That region, the Andes mountains became an economic power, they slowly built an army to take over the central government, and so they did.
By 1908 huge revolts continued happening in the north-west region and in the east regions, some claimed independence of their region as a sovereign country, until one bloody battle in the east region showed the absolute superiority of the central army. (Made mostly of mid-westerners). The country was finally unified by 1908, by a dictator who ordered tortured and killed anybody who opposed, but technically (although denied by school books) is the father of the country because for the first time in history all the regions were under complete control. He died in 1935.
By 1935 a new government made of supporters of the dictator promised democracy, they said they would take 10 years to stablish it, it was the first real peace, ever. But by 1945 they were overthrown by the supposed modern democrats who teammed up with communist guerrillas who were doing terrorist attacks all over. The first group, the democrats, funded by oil companies (US, europe) and the communists by Soviet union.
By 1948, the people of the old regime overthrew these guys, and took power for 10 years. Very good economic times under the dictatorship, like what happened with Pinochet in Chile.
By 1958, they were overthrow by the "democratic" guys of 1948. By 1960 the first real-democratic government was made, they made an alliance with the communist, but soon these decided to imitate the cuban revolution that was all the fuss back in 1960, the government decided for the next 8 years to "dissappear" 10.000 of these communists, the government simply killed them, obviously the term communist was very wide, from real guerrillas to just union leaders or peasant leaders, these ones were the majority being killed because the whole communist guerrilla to do a cuban revolution thing was never popular. The army though was very pissed off with the abuses of the killing of innocents and corruption, they revolted twice and one of these was very close to overthrowing the government.
By 1989 economic crisis was big, FMI came around doing things that increased inflation to a total 106%, people rioted in Caracas, in an episode where "the barrios-ghettos came down of the mountains". Over 3.000 killed and dissapeared.
By 1992 the army tried to overthrow the government, twice, failed both. Chavez, who's now President became famous (by chance really), was supported by the left and won the 1998 election.
The whole crime thing started in 1960. By 1960, Venezuela already had a fucking huge murder rate, part of it was blamed on huge alcohol consumption, which does happend, but the percentages were very close to what they are now, except now is blamed on drugs, which do increase it but is not the reason. The unfortuned thing is, there wasn't much of a serious statistic thing back in the 60's so modern politicians blame everything in the government of Chavez, who in turn blames the government of the 60's to 90's. The truth is violence is cultural, in the west regions since forever the way to settle a dispute like my daughter got pregnant by your son but he refuses to marry was to kill the son, and maybe a war between the families could happend. There wasn't such a thing as a real police force back then, plus those regions still today are quite isolated with huge jungles and mountains, everybody can hide a body and it will never be found.
From 1900's to about the 80's if you wanted to kill somebody in these regions you could explain to your local police officer why would you do it, "my daughter got pregnant", then pay him some money and an investigation would not take place because it was an honor thing. The honor thing got made into law in 1928 (I'm a lawyer by the way, lol), in the criminal code until 2000 used to say that if you got home and found your wife with a dude you could kill them both, and you would only go to jail for 2 years, it was so illogical that if the wife did the same thing she would face the regular murder sentence of 30 years. The honor thing became so inbeded in the venezuelan mind it doesn't fade away and is part of our nature. When I used to work as a lawyer (I don't anymore) I worked in one of the biggest firms of the east region, who only has rich clients, you would think people with better education don't have that mindset but one time two colleges and me went to seize an appartment of a former army officer and he promised to kill us all three, a few days later he shoot 16 times the car of one of my buddies (nobody inside just a threat), luckily got on tape by a farmacy near by and went straight to jail for attempt of murder. Now in the west regions, we could probably be dead, dead threats are serious business because proffesional hitmans are everywhere, it's quite easy to find one and they never get caught, the good ones have military training by colombian guerrillas FARC, or former army men of the government, or just some guy who gets a pistol and decides to start making a lot of money and got nothing to lose. Another time a owner of a hotel who was going to get sued threatned to kidnap one of my college's wife and even sent a guy to harras her, the lawsuit was not made because of this.
Dead threats are such a joke especially in the west regions, were the honor thing is still pretty much real, if you own somebody a lot of money better get the hell out of there because if he's cold blooded enough you could be a dead man, don't even talk about nailing some powerful guy's girlfriend or wife, that is hell dangereous and if you're an union leader, or indigenous leader, or peasant leader, don't ever piss off a latifundist, or you're absolutely dead. A year and a half ago, a toyota union leader got killed, the CEO's ordered them killed, mob guys just don't fuck around with those kind of people, the rest of the union got pissed off and destroyed with hammers over 200 cars...
Yea, tl, dr ^^. It is cultural in Venezuela and Colombia. Rest of latinamerica not so sure but probably the countries with the worst murder records have long histories of civil war and revolts. I know Mexico does. Also the government and rich people have so many connections in big business with the mob or are the mob that they take part in violet crime too like in Russia, unlike the US were rich people mostly do business-related crime and tax evation.
I think the only thing I can reliably gather from this study is that it is dangerous in South America. I feel really bad about what's happening down there. That being said, this study seems to be overlooking areas where information is not as accurately recorded.
On January 16 2012 07:33 Tyrr wrote: I'm actually interested by this study. From all accounts I've heard, Flint, Michigan is actually a more dangerous city than Detroit and last year was rated #1 in terms of danger in the United States. Has it changed that quickly or was the information I read last year incorrect? O_o
The study is randomly missing cities without explanation, so it doesn't really matter. None of the actual most violent cities in the world are even on the list.
How do you know?
Where is Mogadishu? Tripoli? Damascus? What about most of Iraq? 51 people just died in Iraq two days ago. Around that many died a week ago. 5000 have died in Damascus in the last few months, along with 100s and 100s in Tripoli. Mogadishu is basically a warzone with a government that has control over only a few city blocks. Sanaa, Karachi, Nairobi, Abidjan, etc. are all missing. I could go on and on, but really it should be quite apparent that the study has huge holes if it says St. Louis, Missouri is more violent than Baghdad.
It seems like they're only counting drug related homicides or something and even then only from official government figures (of course only more stable and effective governments would have accurate figures, and it turns out the most violent places are oftentimes lacking this). If they're doing this though, they're completely ignoring mass murder, terrorism, war, etc., all of which qualify as pretty significant sources of violence.
As someone said if the point is to measure long term issues, Tripoli and Damascus are not a candidates as their problems are civil war related. I know nothing about actual number of deaths in Mogadishu, do you ? Do you have data on Sanaa, Nairobi, Abidjan,... Karachi was already shown to have lower rate than the 50th city on the list.
Also your assumption that murders are less reported in Guadalajara than in US city to that extent is nonsensical.
On January 16 2012 07:07 laste wrote: Not one European or Asian city, thats pretty odd.
On January 16 2012 08:01 jacen wrote: No Asian city in the list? Doesn't seem right.
How come ? Do you have any data to suggest that any Asian city should be on the list ? As for European city, it would be very strange considering how low murder rates are in Europe. Only Russia would I imagine to be possible to be on the list, but Russia murder rate is probably spread evenly and does not have some big centers, so no city would make it into the list. Western and Central Europe has not enough murders to even theoretically have such a city.
Seems to me that almost none of the marked "conflict areas" are even in the top 50 most violent cities. In other words, this list is pretty stupid because it's missing some pretty key parts.
Yes, as people pointed out war casualties are mostly not counted as crime casualties. And you still did not provide any numbers for any cities.
On January 16 2012 08:23 Manimal_pro wrote: i think romania has about 500 cases of homicide per year for a population of 22 million people..... i'm quite thankful to not be a latin american right now
Honestly you're probably one of those nerds who claim to have friends in the police to kill somebody who pisses you off, so many of those in cybercafes, it's quite funny ^^.
On January 16 2012 07:07 laste wrote: Not one European or Asian city, thats pretty odd.
On January 16 2012 08:01 jacen wrote: No Asian city in the list? Doesn't seem right.
How come ? Do you have any data to suggest that any Asian city should be on the list ? As for European city, it would be very strange considering how low murder rates are in Europe. Only Russia would I imagine to be possible to be on the list, but Russia murder rate is probably spread evenly and does not have some big centers, so no city would make it into the list. Western and Central Europe has not enough murders to even theoretically have such a city.
Seems to me that almost none of the marked "conflict areas" are even in the top 50 most violent cities. In other words, this list is pretty stupid because it's missing some pretty key parts.
Yes, as people pointed out war casualties are mostly not counted as crime casualties. And you still did not provide any numbers for any cities.
And why exactly doesn't war count as violence? How is war distinguished from crime in some of these situations? For example, in Mexico, highly organized and well-trained multi-billion dollar organizations (the cartels) are fighting among eachother and the Mexican military has been deployed. The same situation holds true for Honduras, Nicaragua, etc. In other words, trained and armed men are fighting and military forces are part of the picture. Explain how this is different from African warlords fighting against eachother and the government, or how it's different from organizations in the Middle East leading attacks against military and police forces. It's just semantics and when ranking by violence, it's kinda important to include major causes of violence.
West and Central Europe = 1.2 Central America = 25 South America = 21
I'd be interested to see what the murder rates are like if you remove all criminals from the stats though. A great deal (if not the vast majority) of murders are members of one criminal organization killing those of another, so while the rate may be high, the risk is low.
Of course this is pretty hard to gauge and it's not like this study even has the resources to try considering the fact that they didn't even have the resources to figure out the rates in the majority of the world.
Oh please. Really? No shit that the most people are killed by criminals. How is that even relevant to the study? Ofcourse the numbers will be lower if you remove all criminals from the states. Hell, remove them from the world and we can look what the numbers are like. Don't forget that criminals fighting criminals often end up with innocent victims aswell so it is not like you can say "no no, we have so many criminals that kill each other that the numbers are skewed. It is really peacefull here". And still, the study have done a good deal of research for every place that they could find somewhat accurate stats. Even if they miss a few cities and it isn't 100% accurate it still say something and have some value.
Edit: also Hmunkey you do know that all your "random sources" is based on the same study? ( http://www.mercer.com/press-releases/quality-of-living-report-2011 ) Now, I won't say that this source is wrong, but I do say that they have different approach to "The Most Dangerous Cities in the World", both can be correct and both suffer the same problems, Not enough information since the information doesn't exist
On January 16 2012 08:23 Manimal_pro wrote: i think romania has about 500 cases of homicide per year for a population of 22 million people..... i'm quite thankful to not be a latin american right now
you realise...romania is in europe?
I think he knows which continent his own country is in.
West and Central Europe = 1.2 Central America = 25 South America = 21
I'd be interested to see what the murder rates are like if you remove all criminals from the stats though. A great deal (if not the vast majority) of murders are members of one criminal organization killing those of another, so while the rate may be high, the risk is low.
Of course this is pretty hard to gauge and it's not like this study even has the resources to try considering the fact that they didn't even have the resources to figure out the rates in the majority of the world.
Oh please. Really? No shit that the most people are killed by criminals. How is that even relevant to the study? Ofcourse the numbers will be lower if you remove all criminals from the states. Hell, remove them from the world and we can look what the numbers are like. Don't forget that criminals fighting criminals often end up with innocent victims aswell so it is not like you can say "no no, we have so many criminals that kill each other that the numbers are skewed. It is really peacefull here".
I wasn't asking to remove criminals, I was just saying I'd be curious to know how that would affect the numbers as a point of further research. It wouldn't mean a city is less violent, but it would show how safe a city is for someone like me, since I'm not involved in any criminal activity. This isn't even a problem I have with the study, it's simply something I would like to know if possible because it's an interesting way to expand the study.
Now on to my actual problem with the study: it ranks cities by violence but seems to only do so through official government reports of crime-related deaths. Basically, it's ranking cities by violence but ignoring some pretty key causes of violence, like religious conflict, terrorism, popular uprisings, violence instigated by government forces, warlords, etc.
It's a ranking of violence without accounting for most of the things that qualify as violence.
On January 16 2012 07:07 laste wrote: Not one European or Asian city, thats pretty odd.
On January 16 2012 08:01 jacen wrote: No Asian city in the list? Doesn't seem right.
How come ? Do you have any data to suggest that any Asian city should be on the list ? As for European city, it would be very strange considering how low murder rates are in Europe. Only Russia would I imagine to be possible to be on the list, but Russia murder rate is probably spread evenly and does not have some big centers, so no city would make it into the list. Western and Central Europe has not enough murders to even theoretically have such a city.
Seems to me that almost none of the marked "conflict areas" are even in the top 50 most violent cities. In other words, this list is pretty stupid because it's missing some pretty key parts.
Yes, as people pointed out war casualties are mostly not counted as crime casualties. And you still did not provide any numbers for any cities.
And why exactly doesn't war count as violence? How is war distinguished from crime in some of these situations? For example, in Mexico, highly organized and well-trained multi-billion dollar organizations (the cartels) are fighting among eachother and the Mexican military has been deployed. The same situation holds true for Honduras, Nicaragua, etc. In other words, trained and armed men are fighting and military forces are part of the picture. Explain how this is different from African warlords fighting against eachother and the government, or how it's different from organizations in the Middle East leading attacks against military and police forces. It's just semantics and when ranking by violence, it's kinda important to include major causes of violence.
You seem to be concentrating too much on the title and too little on what the study actually says. They are not measuring violence in general by design and they are not hiding it. They measure homicide rates. So your Quality of living report has only correlative relevance. Your first link suggests that none of the cities there should be on the list. I am basing it on Karachi (as was already shown) not belonging on the list and comparing the mortality rate they use for Karachi compared to the others. I am not reading others as I see no point considering how your first two do not really concern the issue.
As for their criteria, we would need the original study, which I cannot download. Was anyone successful ? They seem to mostly use 2010 sources and seem to have a lower limit on the city size. Considering this do you have any homicide rates (even good projections, not only official counts) for some city that is not on the list and should be there ? From the linked article it seems they are not using only official sources themselves, they are using projections also to account for underreporting it seems.
On January 16 2012 07:07 laste wrote: Not one European or Asian city, thats pretty odd.
On January 16 2012 08:01 jacen wrote: No Asian city in the list? Doesn't seem right.
How come ? Do you have any data to suggest that any Asian city should be on the list ? As for European city, it would be very strange considering how low murder rates are in Europe. Only Russia would I imagine to be possible to be on the list, but Russia murder rate is probably spread evenly and does not have some big centers, so no city would make it into the list. Western and Central Europe has not enough murders to even theoretically have such a city.
Seems to me that almost none of the marked "conflict areas" are even in the top 50 most violent cities. In other words, this list is pretty stupid because it's missing some pretty key parts.
Yes, as people pointed out war casualties are mostly not counted as crime casualties. And you still did not provide any numbers for any cities.
And why exactly doesn't war count as violence? How is war distinguished from crime in some of these situations? For example, in Mexico, highly organized and well-trained multi-billion dollar organizations (the cartels) are fighting among eachother and the Mexican military has been deployed. The same situation holds true for Honduras, Nicaragua, etc. In other words, trained and armed men are fighting and military forces are part of the picture. Explain how this is different from African warlords fighting against eachother and the government, or how it's different from organizations in the Middle East leading attacks against military and police forces. It's just semantics and when ranking by violence, it's kinda important to include major causes of violence.
You seem to be concentrating too much on the title and too little on what the study actually says. They are not measuring violence in general by design and they are not hiding it. They measure homicide rates. So your Quality of living report has only correlative relevance. Your first link suggests that none of the cities there should be on the list. I am basing it on Karachi (as was already shown) not belonging on the list and comparing the mortality rate they use for Karachi compared to the others. I am not reading others as I see no point considering how your first two do not really concern the issue.
As for their criteria, we would need the original study, which I cannot download. Was anyone successful ? They seem to mostly use 2010 sources and seem to have a lower limit on the city size. Considering this do you have any homicide rates (even good projections, not only official counts) for some city that is not on the list and should be there ? From the linked article it seems they are not using only official sources themselves, they are using projections also to account for underreporting it seems.
EDIT:clarification
I guess... It depends on what you're looking for. If it's a ranking of cities by homicide rate, I guess this study holds some weight. That said, it's still pretty hard to distinguish homicide rates by drug organizations for homicides by tribal organizations, right? I mean, as I said:
...in Mexico, highly organized and well-trained multi-billion dollar organizations (the cartels) are fighting among eachother and the Mexican military has been deployed. The same situation holds true for Honduras, Nicaragua, etc. In other words, trained and armed men are fighting and military forces are part of the picture. Explain how this is different from African warlords fighting against eachother and the government, or how it's different from organizations in the Middle East leading attacks against military and police forces.
It would seem to me that calling a targeting murder by a drug organization a homicide means you would have to do the same for all situations, but that's not what we're doing.
And even all of that aside, the study itself makes claims on the cities being ranked by violence. If you read the actual text of the study's summary, they continually comment on the levels of violence in the cities when really, they aren't talking about the violence but rather the number of murders they arbitrarily chose to consider. They didn't count the murders in Africa because those are committed by warlords, nor did they count the murders in the Middle East because they're committed by the government or by terrorist organizations.
My main (and only) point is that those cities are not actually the most dangerous or the most violent. To actually rank cities by danger or violence, we would need to look at all causes, not just cartels and individuals. How can anyone reasonably make the claim that Homs is less dangerous than Baltimore, or that Mogadishu is safer than St. Louis?
For example, according to this, 2011 had over 2000 deaths in Homs. Now the cause of these was obviously different from those in Mexico, but for the study to explicitly say a city is "the world's most dangerous", shouldn't they have to somehow acknowledge that they're being misleading? They repeatedly claim that their listing is of the most dangerous cities in 2011 when really it isn't at all, not even in the slightest. We aren't ranking causes here, we're ranking cities by violence. If we're not, maybe the people writing the study should change everything they wrote and start over.
On January 16 2012 07:07 laste wrote: Not one European or Asian city, thats pretty odd.
On January 16 2012 08:01 jacen wrote: No Asian city in the list? Doesn't seem right.
How come ? Do you have any data to suggest that any Asian city should be on the list ? As for European city, it would be very strange considering how low murder rates are in Europe. Only Russia would I imagine to be possible to be on the list, but Russia murder rate is probably spread evenly and does not have some big centers, so no city would make it into the list. Western and Central Europe has not enough murders to even theoretically have such a city.
Seems to me that almost none of the marked "conflict areas" are even in the top 50 most violent cities. In other words, this list is pretty stupid because it's missing some pretty key parts.
Yes, as people pointed out war casualties are mostly not counted as crime casualties. And you still did not provide any numbers for any cities.
And why exactly doesn't war count as violence? How is war distinguished from crime in some of these situations? For example, in Mexico, highly organized and well-trained multi-billion dollar organizations (the cartels) are fighting among eachother and the Mexican military has been deployed. The same situation holds true for Honduras, Nicaragua, etc. In other words, trained and armed men are fighting and military forces are part of the picture. Explain how this is different from African warlords fighting against eachother and the government, or how it's different from organizations in the Middle East leading attacks against military and police forces. It's just semantics and when ranking by violence, it's kinda important to include major causes of violence.
You seem to be concentrating too much on the title and too little on what the study actually says. They are not measuring violence in general by design and they are not hiding it. They measure homicide rates. So your Quality of living report has only correlative relevance. Your first link suggests that none of the cities there should be on the list. I am basing it on Karachi (as was already shown) not belonging on the list and comparing the mortality rate they use for Karachi compared to the others. I am not reading others as I see no point considering how your first two do not really concern the issue.
As for their criteria, we would need the original study, which I cannot download. Was anyone successful ? They seem to mostly use 2010 sources and seem to have a lower limit on the city size. Considering this do you have any homicide rates (even good projections, not only official counts) for some city that is not on the list and should be there ? From the linked article it seems they are not using only official sources themselves, they are using projections also to account for underreporting it seems.
EDIT:clarification
If you're interested there's a UN study on homicide that estimated the number of homicides based on public health data where there were no official government statistics. The breakdown is by country, not individual cities but it seems like homicide rates in sub-Saharan Africa are roughly the same as in Central America.
Sorry, but it was hard to resist, given all the USA USA USA! stuff elsewhere on the Forums
I'm an American citizen and a proud firearm owner of many different varieties, and I don't see how gun control would impact crime in America. All it does is it make it harder for the law biding citizen to attain what our constitution says you can legally own. Only .2% of all violent crimes in America are committed with legally owned firearms. It's the black market trade where the criminalizes get their weapons from. I'm a strong believer in more guns less crime. I live in NY state and I have a conceal carry permit for 2 almost 3 years now and i have yet to use it, IDK how you can say that gun control is a good thing. Just because i carry one doesn't mean i'm going to rob a store..
Sorry, but it was hard to resist, given all the USA USA USA! stuff elsewhere on the Forums
I'm an American citizen and a proud firearm owner of many different varieties, and I don't see how gun control would impact crime in America. All it does is it make it harder for the law biding citizen to attain what our constitution says you can legally own. Only .2% of all violent crimes in America are committed with legally owned firearms. It's the black market trade where the criminalizes get their weapons from. I'm a strong believer in more guns less crime. I live in NY state and I have a conceal carry permit for 2 almost 3 years now and i have yet to use it, IDK how you can say that gun control is a good thing. Just because i carry one doesn't mean i'm going to rob a store..
While gun control laws tend to reduce violent crimes, there has be be gun control from the start. Now that loose gun control laws have lead to a large amount of firearms coming into the U.S. it's a tad too late to decide to enforce gun control laws because they won't make guns magically disappear. But saying gun control laws have no impact on violent crime would be well.... wrong to put it bluntly.
Sorry, but it was hard to resist, given all the USA USA USA! stuff elsewhere on the Forums
I'm an American citizen and a proud firearm owner of many different varieties, and I don't see how gun control would impact crime in America. All it does is it make it harder for the law biding citizen to attain what our constitution says you can legally own. Only .2% of all violent crimes in America are committed with legally owned firearms. It's the black market trade where the criminalizes get their weapons from. I'm a strong believer in more guns less crime. I live in NY state and I have a conceal carry permit for 2 almost 3 years now and i have yet to use it, IDK how you can say that gun control is a good thing. Just because i carry one doesn't mean i'm going to rob a store..
While gun control laws tend to reduce violent crimes, there has be be gun control from the start. Now that loose gun control laws have lead to a large amount of firearms coming into the U.S. it's a tad too late to decide to enforce gun control laws because they won't make guns magically disappear. But saying gun control laws have no impact on violent crime would be well.... wrong to put it bluntly.
Really? Then how do you account for countries like Switzerland, Sweden, Finland, etc. that all have high rates of gun ownership but lower crime than other European states like the UK?
Sorry, but it was hard to resist, given all the USA USA USA! stuff elsewhere on the Forums
I'm an American citizen and a proud firearm owner of many different varieties, and I don't see how gun control would impact crime in America. All it does is it make it harder for the law biding citizen to attain what our constitution says you can legally own. Only .2% of all violent crimes in America are committed with legally owned firearms. It's the black market trade where the criminalizes get their weapons from. I'm a strong believer in more guns less crime. I live in NY state and I have a conceal carry permit for 2 almost 3 years now and i have yet to use it, IDK how you can say that gun control is a good thing. Just because i carry one doesn't mean i'm going to rob a store..
As it is not true that gun control laws will decrease crime rates universally, so it is wrong to say that more guns less crime. As for access of criminals to weapons, most of them are stolen from legal owners. If there are no legal weapons, criminals would have to rely on smuggled weapons or weapons stolen from police and army. So no legal weapons would in the long run mean less weapons available for criminals.
Surprised no South African cities such as Johannesburg made it onto the list. You can't drive through some parts of it without seeing a carjacking or there being a shooting on the street you're on. Exaggerated of course, but it gets the point across
Sorry, but it was hard to resist, given all the USA USA USA! stuff elsewhere on the Forums
I'm an American citizen and a proud firearm owner of many different varieties, and I don't see how gun control would impact crime in America. All it does is it make it harder for the law biding citizen to attain what our constitution says you can legally own. Only .2% of all violent crimes in America are committed with legally owned firearms. It's the black market trade where the criminalizes get their weapons from. I'm a strong believer in more guns less crime. I live in NY state and I have a conceal carry permit for 2 almost 3 years now and i have yet to use it, IDK how you can say that gun control is a good thing. Just because i carry one doesn't mean i'm going to rob a store..
Canada has way less crime and it has gun control laws that are very strict.
As for the legal/illegal guns where do the illegal guns come from? They sure as hell don't get made by the criminals they start as legal and then get sold/stolen onto the black market.
On January 16 2012 07:07 laste wrote: Not one European or Asian city, thats pretty odd.
On January 16 2012 08:01 jacen wrote: No Asian city in the list? Doesn't seem right.
How come ? Do you have any data to suggest that any Asian city should be on the list ? As for European city, it would be very strange considering how low murder rates are in Europe. Only Russia would I imagine to be possible to be on the list, but Russia murder rate is probably spread evenly and does not have some big centers, so no city would make it into the list. Western and Central Europe has not enough murders to even theoretically have such a city.
Seems to me that almost none of the marked "conflict areas" are even in the top 50 most violent cities. In other words, this list is pretty stupid because it's missing some pretty key parts.
Yes, as people pointed out war casualties are mostly not counted as crime casualties. And you still did not provide any numbers for any cities.
And why exactly doesn't war count as violence? How is war distinguished from crime in some of these situations? For example, in Mexico, highly organized and well-trained multi-billion dollar organizations (the cartels) are fighting among eachother and the Mexican military has been deployed. The same situation holds true for Honduras, Nicaragua, etc. In other words, trained and armed men are fighting and military forces are part of the picture. Explain how this is different from African warlords fighting against eachother and the government, or how it's different from organizations in the Middle East leading attacks against military and police forces. It's just semantics and when ranking by violence, it's kinda important to include major causes of violence.
You seem to be concentrating too much on the title and too little on what the study actually says. They are not measuring violence in general by design and they are not hiding it. They measure homicide rates. So your Quality of living report has only correlative relevance. Your first link suggests that none of the cities there should be on the list. I am basing it on Karachi (as was already shown) not belonging on the list and comparing the mortality rate they use for Karachi compared to the others. I am not reading others as I see no point considering how your first two do not really concern the issue.
As for their criteria, we would need the original study, which I cannot download. Was anyone successful ? They seem to mostly use 2010 sources and seem to have a lower limit on the city size. Considering this do you have any homicide rates (even good projections, not only official counts) for some city that is not on the list and should be there ? From the linked article it seems they are not using only official sources themselves, they are using projections also to account for underreporting it seems.
EDIT:clarification
I guess... It depends on what you're looking for. If it's a ranking of cities by homicide rate, I guess this study holds some weight. That said, it's still pretty hard to distinguish homicide rates by drug organizations for homicides by tribal organizations, right? I mean, as I said:
...in Mexico, highly organized and well-trained multi-billion dollar organizations (the cartels) are fighting among eachother and the Mexican military has been deployed. The same situation holds true for Honduras, Nicaragua, etc. In other words, trained and armed men are fighting and military forces are part of the picture. Explain how this is different from African warlords fighting against eachother and the government, or how it's different from organizations in the Middle East leading attacks against military and police forces.
It would seem to me that calling a targeting murder by a drug organization a homicide means you would have to do the same for all situations, but that's not what we're doing.
And even all of that aside, the study itself makes claims on the cities being ranked by violence. If you read the actual text of the study's summary, they continually comment on the levels of violence in the cities when really, they aren't talking about the violence but rather the number of murders they arbitrarily chose to consider. They didn't count the murders in Africa because those are committed by warlords, nor did they count the murders in the Middle East because they're committed by the government or by terrorist organizations.
My main (and only) point is that those cities are not actually the most dangerous or the most violent. To actually rank cities by danger or violence, we would need to look at all causes, not just cartels and individuals. How can anyone reasonably make the claim that Homs is less dangerous than Baltimore, or that Mogadishu is safer than St. Louis?
For example, according to this, 2011 had over 2000 deaths in Homs. Now the cause of these was obviously different from those in Mexico, but for the study to explicitly say a city is "the world's most dangerous", shouldn't they have to somehow acknowledge that they're being misleading? They repeatedly claim that their listing is of the most dangerous cities in 2011 when really it isn't at all, not even in the slightest. We aren't ranking causes here, we're ranking cities by violence. If we're not, maybe the people writing the study should change everything they wrote and start over.
From the English version it seems they do not use precise language, that's true, although from the fact that they use everywhere homicide rates it is clear what measure for violence and danger they use. It might also be a problem of the translation. I would agree that ranking by violence would need to include other crimes and look also outside of criminal area to political (wars,...). That does not mean that you cannot conclude things from that about safety even as it is. As for you conclusions I have no idea how Mogadishu looks these days, but I would assume it is not safer than St.Louis. As for Homs, my guess is that it is long-term much safer than Baltimore.
On January 16 2012 10:43 NinjaNitrate wrote: Surprised no South African cities such as Johannesburg made it onto the list. You can't drive through some parts of it without seeing a carjacking or there being a shooting on the street you're on. Exaggerated of course, but it gets the point across
There's atleast 3 south african cities on that top50 list.
On January 16 2012 07:07 laste wrote: Not one European or Asian city, thats pretty odd.
On January 16 2012 08:01 jacen wrote: No Asian city in the list? Doesn't seem right.
How come ? Do you have any data to suggest that any Asian city should be on the list ? As for European city, it would be very strange considering how low murder rates are in Europe. Only Russia would I imagine to be possible to be on the list, but Russia murder rate is probably spread evenly and does not have some big centers, so no city would make it into the list. Western and Central Europe has not enough murders to even theoretically have such a city.
Seems to me that almost none of the marked "conflict areas" are even in the top 50 most violent cities. In other words, this list is pretty stupid because it's missing some pretty key parts.
Yes, as people pointed out war casualties are mostly not counted as crime casualties. And you still did not provide any numbers for any cities.
And why exactly doesn't war count as violence? How is war distinguished from crime in some of these situations? For example, in Mexico, highly organized and well-trained multi-billion dollar organizations (the cartels) are fighting among eachother and the Mexican military has been deployed. The same situation holds true for Honduras, Nicaragua, etc. In other words, trained and armed men are fighting and military forces are part of the picture. Explain how this is different from African warlords fighting against eachother and the government, or how it's different from organizations in the Middle East leading attacks against military and police forces. It's just semantics and when ranking by violence, it's kinda important to include major causes of violence.
You seem to be concentrating too much on the title and too little on what the study actually says. They are not measuring violence in general by design and they are not hiding it. They measure homicide rates. So your Quality of living report has only correlative relevance. Your first link suggests that none of the cities there should be on the list. I am basing it on Karachi (as was already shown) not belonging on the list and comparing the mortality rate they use for Karachi compared to the others. I am not reading others as I see no point considering how your first two do not really concern the issue.
As for their criteria, we would need the original study, which I cannot download. Was anyone successful ? They seem to mostly use 2010 sources and seem to have a lower limit on the city size. Considering this do you have any homicide rates (even good projections, not only official counts) for some city that is not on the list and should be there ? From the linked article it seems they are not using only official sources themselves, they are using projections also to account for underreporting it seems.
EDIT:clarification
If you're interested there's a UN study on homicide that estimated the number of homicides based on public health data where there were no official government statistics. The breakdown is by country, not individual cities but it seems like homicide rates in sub-Saharan Africa are roughly the same as in Central America.
Sorry, but it was hard to resist, given all the USA USA USA! stuff elsewhere on the Forums
I'm an American citizen and a proud firearm owner of many different varieties, and I don't see how gun control would impact crime in America. All it does is it make it harder for the law biding citizen to attain what our constitution says you can legally own. Only .2% of all violent crimes in America are committed with legally owned firearms. It's the black market trade where the criminalizes get their weapons from. I'm a strong believer in more guns less crime. I live in NY state and I have a conceal carry permit for 2 almost 3 years now and i have yet to use it, IDK how you can say that gun control is a good thing. Just because i carry one doesn't mean i'm going to rob a store..
While gun control laws tend to reduce violent crimes, there has be be gun control from the start. Now that loose gun control laws have lead to a large amount of firearms coming into the U.S. it's a tad too late to decide to enforce gun control laws because they won't make guns magically disappear. But saying gun control laws have no impact on violent crime would be well.... wrong to put it bluntly.
Really? Then how do you account for countries like Switzerland, Sweden, Finland, etc. that all have high rates of gun ownership but lower crime than other European states like the UK?
Sweden have high rate of gun ownership? I'm living here for all my life and I know no one that have bought a gun for protection or for leisure. Most that have weapons are hunters and those are not the kind of firearms you use in common crimes. Also you need a weapon license that is fairly strict, at least compared to other country's.
Sorry, but it was hard to resist, given all the USA USA USA! stuff elsewhere on the Forums
I'm an American citizen and a proud firearm owner of many different varieties, and I don't see how gun control would impact crime in America. All it does is it make it harder for the law biding citizen to attain what our constitution says you can legally own. Only .2% of all violent crimes in America are committed with legally owned firearms. It's the black market trade where the criminalizes get their weapons from. I'm a strong believer in more guns less crime. I live in NY state and I have a conceal carry permit for 2 almost 3 years now and i have yet to use it, IDK how you can say that gun control is a good thing. Just because i carry one doesn't mean i'm going to rob a store..
While gun control laws tend to reduce violent crimes, there has be be gun control from the start. Now that loose gun control laws have lead to a large amount of firearms coming into the U.S. it's a tad too late to decide to enforce gun control laws because they won't make guns magically disappear. But saying gun control laws have no impact on violent crime would be well.... wrong to put it bluntly.
Really? Then how do you account for countries like Switzerland, Sweden, Finland, etc. that all have high rates of gun ownership but lower crime than other European states like the UK?
Would be interesting to check that correlation using not guns in general, but handguns in particular. But yes, blaming everything on just guns is simplifying things too much.
Sorry, but it was hard to resist, given all the USA USA USA! stuff elsewhere on the Forums
I'm an American citizen and a proud firearm owner of many different varieties, and I don't see how gun control would impact crime in America. All it does is it make it harder for the law biding citizen to attain what our constitution says you can legally own. Only .2% of all violent crimes in America are committed with legally owned firearms. It's the black market trade where the criminalizes get their weapons from. I'm a strong believer in more guns less crime. I live in NY state and I have a conceal carry permit for 2 almost 3 years now and i have yet to use it, IDK how you can say that gun control is a good thing. Just because i carry one doesn't mean i'm going to rob a store..
While gun control laws tend to reduce violent crimes, there has be be gun control from the start. Now that loose gun control laws have lead to a large amount of firearms coming into the U.S. it's a tad too late to decide to enforce gun control laws because they won't make guns magically disappear. But saying gun control laws have no impact on violent crime would be well.... wrong to put it bluntly.
Really? Then how do you account for countries like Switzerland, Sweden, Finland, etc. that all have high rates of gun ownership but lower crime than other European states like the UK?
Would be interesting to check that correlation using not guns in general, but handguns in particular. But yes, blaming everything on just guns is simplifying things too much.
Yeah guns should contribute to violent crimes but they are but a tool, and it's not like there aren't deadly weapons besides firearms. Not having a gun won't make a violent person suddenly not violent nor will having a gun make a peaceful person suddenly go on a shooting spree of everyone who ever double-parked him/her at the Whole Foods.
Social pressure, ethnic tension, gang crimes, poor education, bad upbringing and poverty are far more "compelling" reasons for violent crimes than gun ownership.
On January 16 2012 01:46 Darpa wrote: Crazy, Weird how some of the US cities are way up there, even though they seem to be run in the mill cities (Baltimore, St, Louis. Ect). New orleans was a big shock. Other than those, not a whole lot of suprises.
I'm a little shocked by New Orleans, but I don't see how you could be shocked by Baltimore, Detroit, or St. Louis. I'm surprised Oakland isn't on their.
Sorry, but it was hard to resist, given all the USA USA USA! stuff elsewhere on the Forums
I'm an American citizen and a proud firearm owner of many different varieties, and I don't see how gun control would impact crime in America. All it does is it make it harder for the law biding citizen to attain what our constitution says you can legally own. Only .2% of all violent crimes in America are committed with legally owned firearms. It's the black market trade where the criminalizes get their weapons from. I'm a strong believer in more guns less crime. I live in NY state and I have a conceal carry permit for 2 almost 3 years now and i have yet to use it, IDK how you can say that gun control is a good thing. Just because i carry one doesn't mean i'm going to rob a store..
While gun control laws tend to reduce violent crimes, there has be be gun control from the start. Now that loose gun control laws have lead to a large amount of firearms coming into the U.S. it's a tad too late to decide to enforce gun control laws because they won't make guns magically disappear. But saying gun control laws have no impact on violent crime would be well.... wrong to put it bluntly.
Really? Then how do you account for countries like Switzerland, Sweden, Finland, etc. that all have high rates of gun ownership but lower crime than other European states like the UK?
Sweden have high rate of gun ownership? I'm living here for all my life and I know no one that have bought a gun for protection or for leisure. Most that have weapons are hunters and those are not the kind of firearms you use in common crimes. Also you need a weapon license that is fairly strict, at least compared to other country's.
Yes, it's actually pretty high compared to the rest of the world. I think Switzerland and the US is higher though. Look around!
Sorry, but it was hard to resist, given all the USA USA USA! stuff elsewhere on the Forums
I'm an American citizen and a proud firearm owner of many different varieties, and I don't see how gun control would impact crime in America. All it does is it make it harder for the law biding citizen to attain what our constitution says you can legally own. Only .2% of all violent crimes in America are committed with legally owned firearms. It's the black market trade where the criminalizes get their weapons from. I'm a strong believer in more guns less crime. I live in NY state and I have a conceal carry permit for 2 almost 3 years now and i have yet to use it, IDK how you can say that gun control is a good thing. Just because i carry one doesn't mean i'm going to rob a store..
While gun control laws tend to reduce violent crimes, there has be be gun control from the start. Now that loose gun control laws have lead to a large amount of firearms coming into the U.S. it's a tad too late to decide to enforce gun control laws because they won't make guns magically disappear. But saying gun control laws have no impact on violent crime would be well.... wrong to put it bluntly.
Really? Then how do you account for countries like Switzerland, Sweden, Finland, etc. that all have high rates of gun ownership but lower crime than other European states like the UK?
Would be interesting to check that correlation using not guns in general, but handguns in particular. But yes, blaming everything on just guns is simplifying things too much.
Do you think a bigger correlation is with economic hardship and war rather than legal status of guns? From what I saw, when people want to commit crimes, they always miraculously obtain the materials required to commit the crime.
And please do not say that a correlation with the lack of gun control creates crime and poverty because it is simply not true due to common sense. And please do not state that we need guns to protect ourselves (I am looking at you guys in the first world) because it is simply just propaganda fueled by too much anecdotal evidence.
On January 16 2012 11:04 Mobius_1 wrote: I'd like to nominate Beijing because the air will kill you. Slowly. Unknowingly. Quietly but probably not painlessly.
But for outright violence USA definitely has China beat.
Sorry, but it was hard to resist, given all the USA USA USA! stuff elsewhere on the Forums
I'm an American citizen and a proud firearm owner of many different varieties, and I don't see how gun control would impact crime in America. All it does is it make it harder for the law biding citizen to attain what our constitution says you can legally own. Only .2% of all violent crimes in America are committed with legally owned firearms. It's the black market trade where the criminalizes get their weapons from. I'm a strong believer in more guns less crime. I live in NY state and I have a conceal carry permit for 2 almost 3 years now and i have yet to use it, IDK how you can say that gun control is a good thing. Just because i carry one doesn't mean i'm going to rob a store..
While gun control laws tend to reduce violent crimes, there has be be gun control from the start. Now that loose gun control laws have lead to a large amount of firearms coming into the U.S. it's a tad too late to decide to enforce gun control laws because they won't make guns magically disappear. But saying gun control laws have no impact on violent crime would be well.... wrong to put it bluntly.
Really? Then how do you account for countries like Switzerland, Sweden, Finland, etc. that all have high rates of gun ownership but lower crime than other European states like the UK?
Would be interesting to check that correlation using not guns in general, but handguns in particular. But yes, blaming everything on just guns is simplifying things too much.
Yeah guns should contribute to violent crimes but they are but a tool, and it's not like there aren't deadly weapons besides firearms. Not having a gun won't make a violent person suddenly not violent nor will having a gun make a peaceful person suddenly go on a shooting spree of everyone who ever double-parked him/her at the Whole Foods.
Social pressure, ethnic tension, gang crimes, poor education, bad upbringing and poverty are far more "compelling" reasons for violent crimes than gun ownership.
Well having a gun allows you to kill more people easily than a knife or a club.
On January 16 2012 01:46 Darpa wrote: New orleans was a big shock.
LOL have you ever actually been to New Orlean?. Go anywhere outside the french quarter and you a have constant feeling that your about to be robbed.
No I haven't been to New Orleans, Hence the reason it was a shock. My perception of it is clearly not where it should be given its listed among what I thought were much more dangerous cities. No need to be rude.
Hmmm, I expected Urumqi, China to be up there (as well as a lot of central/sub-Saharan Africa, Iraq/Afghanistan, etc.). Does homicide only cover criminal murders (but not say, government crackdowns and/or war)?
On January 16 2012 11:31 SerpentFlame wrote: Hmmm, I expected Urumqi, China to be up there (as well as a lot of central/sub-Saharan Africa, Iraq/Afghanistan, etc.). Does homicide only cover criminal murders (but not say, government crackdowns and/or war)?
I believe they can only rely on official figures, and the chinese goverment doesn't seem like the type of goverment that would release figures that make them look bad if they don't have to.
Sorry, but it was hard to resist, given all the USA USA USA! stuff elsewhere on the Forums
I'm an American citizen and a proud firearm owner of many different varieties, and I don't see how gun control would impact crime in America. All it does is it make it harder for the law biding citizen to attain what our constitution says you can legally own. Only .2% of all violent crimes in America are committed with legally owned firearms. It's the black market trade where the criminalizes get their weapons from. I'm a strong believer in more guns less crime. I live in NY state and I have a conceal carry permit for 2 almost 3 years now and i have yet to use it, IDK how you can say that gun control is a good thing. Just because i carry one doesn't mean i'm going to rob a store..
While gun control laws tend to reduce violent crimes, there has be be gun control from the start. Now that loose gun control laws have lead to a large amount of firearms coming into the U.S. it's a tad too late to decide to enforce gun control laws because they won't make guns magically disappear. But saying gun control laws have no impact on violent crime would be well.... wrong to put it bluntly.
Really? Then how do you account for countries like Switzerland, Sweden, Finland, etc. that all have high rates of gun ownership but lower crime than other European states like the UK?
Would be interesting to check that correlation using not guns in general, but handguns in particular. But yes, blaming everything on just guns is simplifying things too much.
Do you think a bigger correlation is with economic hardship and war rather than legal status of guns? From what I saw, when people want to commit crimes, they always miraculously obtain the materials required to commit the crime.
Considering that in Europe and other low crime-rate countries most murders seem to be done "on the fly" in affect, the person in question does not have time to search for guns if he does not have one. And when you add that and ease of more deaths when using a gun compared to knife or club it actually makes a difference. There were instances here where a guy suddenly went nuts and killed few people with privately owned gun. Without that gun he would be able to kill at most one person. Crazies like Breyvik will get the guns no matter what (without instituting some pretty totalitarian measures), but the others that I described would not get the gun. And those happen quite more often and more than offset the possible lives that could be saved by people in Norway being armed to the teeth and stopping Breyvik.
As for your economic hardship correlation I do not think that actually plays a big role alone. A lot of poor countries have relatively low murder rates. But I think getting rich helps with lowering murder rates if the whole society gets richer, not just parts of the society. So maybe inequality and poverty are part of the problem, but even that seems not a complete picture. I think it is deeper societal problem that is not easy to pinpoint.
Sorry, but it was hard to resist, given all the USA USA USA! stuff elsewhere on the Forums
I'm an American citizen and a proud firearm owner of many different varieties, and I don't see how gun control would impact crime in America. All it does is it make it harder for the law biding citizen to attain what our constitution says you can legally own. Only .2% of all violent crimes in America are committed with legally owned firearms. It's the black market trade where the criminalizes get their weapons from. I'm a strong believer in more guns less crime. I live in NY state and I have a conceal carry permit for 2 almost 3 years now and i have yet to use it, IDK how you can say that gun control is a good thing. Just because i carry one doesn't mean i'm going to rob a store..
While gun control laws tend to reduce violent crimes, there has be be gun control from the start. Now that loose gun control laws have lead to a large amount of firearms coming into the U.S. it's a tad too late to decide to enforce gun control laws because they won't make guns magically disappear. But saying gun control laws have no impact on violent crime would be well.... wrong to put it bluntly.
Really? Then how do you account for countries like Switzerland, Sweden, Finland, etc. that all have high rates of gun ownership but lower crime than other European states like the UK?
Would be interesting to check that correlation using not guns in general, but handguns in particular. But yes, blaming everything on just guns is simplifying things too much.
Do you think a bigger correlation is with economic hardship and war rather than legal status of guns? From what I saw, when people want to commit crimes, they always miraculously obtain the materials required to commit the crime.
Considering that in Europe and other low crime-rate countries most murders seem to be done "on the fly" in affect, the person in question does not have time to search for guns if he does not have one. And when you add that and ease of more deaths when using a gun compared to knife or club it actually makes a difference. There were instances here where a guy suddenly went nuts and killed few people with privately owned gun. Without that gun he would be able to kill at most one person. Crazies like Breyvik will get the guns no matter what (without instituting some pretty totalitarian measures), but the others that I described would not get the gun. And those happen quite more often and more than offset the possible lives that could be saved by people in Norway being armed to the teeth and stopping Breyvik.
As for your economic hardship correlation I do not think that actually plays a big role alone. A lot of poor countries have relatively low murder rates. But I think getting rich helps with lowering murder rates if the whole society gets richer, not just parts of the society. So maybe inequality and poverty are part of the problem, but even that seems not a complete picture. I think it is deeper societal problem that is not easy to pinpoint.
EDIT:typo
Oh, the US has a very, very high murder per capita rate, and they're not exactly a third-world country. They're like fighting in the top ten along South Africa and Mexico. So yeah, I think you can kind of blame guns.
Sorry, but it was hard to resist, given all the USA USA USA! stuff elsewhere on the Forums
I'm an American citizen and a proud firearm owner of many different varieties, and I don't see how gun control would impact crime in America. All it does is it make it harder for the law biding citizen to attain what our constitution says you can legally own. Only .2% of all violent crimes in America are committed with legally owned firearms. It's the black market trade where the criminalizes get their weapons from. I'm a strong believer in more guns less crime. I live in NY state and I have a conceal carry permit for 2 almost 3 years now and i have yet to use it, IDK how you can say that gun control is a good thing. Just because i carry one doesn't mean i'm going to rob a store..
While gun control laws tend to reduce violent crimes, there has be be gun control from the start. Now that loose gun control laws have lead to a large amount of firearms coming into the U.S. it's a tad too late to decide to enforce gun control laws because they won't make guns magically disappear. But saying gun control laws have no impact on violent crime would be well.... wrong to put it bluntly.
Really? Then how do you account for countries like Switzerland, Sweden, Finland, etc. that all have high rates of gun ownership but lower crime than other European states like the UK?
Would be interesting to check that correlation using not guns in general, but handguns in particular. But yes, blaming everything on just guns is simplifying things too much.
Do you think a bigger correlation is with economic hardship and war rather than legal status of guns? From what I saw, when people want to commit crimes, they always miraculously obtain the materials required to commit the crime.
Considering that in Europe and other low crime-rate countries most murders seem to be done "on the fly" in affect, the person in question does not have time to search for guns if he does not have one. And when you add that and ease of more deaths when using a gun compared to knife or club it actually makes a difference. There were instances here where a guy suddenly went nuts and killed few people with privately owned gun. Without that gun he would be able to kill at most one person. Crazies like Breyvik will get the guns no matter what (without instituting some pretty totalitarian measures), but the others that I described would not get the gun. And those happen quite more often and more than offset the possible lives that could be saved by people in Norway being armed to the teeth and stopping Breyvik.
As for your economic hardship correlation I do not think that actually plays a big role alone. A lot of poor countries have relatively low murder rates. But I think getting rich helps with lowering murder rates if the whole society gets richer, not just parts of the society. So maybe inequality and poverty are part of the problem, but even that seems not a complete picture. I think it is deeper societal problem that is not easy to pinpoint.
EDIT:typo
Oh, the US has a very, very high murder per capita rate, and they're not exactly a third-world country. They're like fighting in the top ten along South Africa and Mexico. So yeah, I think you can kind of blame guns.
I would start with, correlation does not mean causation But the problem is that the correlation does not hold so well when you look at other countries.
Sorry, but it was hard to resist, given all the USA USA USA! stuff elsewhere on the Forums
I'm an American citizen and a proud firearm owner of many different varieties, and I don't see how gun control would impact crime in America. All it does is it make it harder for the law biding citizen to attain what our constitution says you can legally own. Only .2% of all violent crimes in America are committed with legally owned firearms. It's the black market trade where the criminalizes get their weapons from. I'm a strong believer in more guns less crime. I live in NY state and I have a conceal carry permit for 2 almost 3 years now and i have yet to use it, IDK how you can say that gun control is a good thing. Just because i carry one doesn't mean i'm going to rob a store..
While gun control laws tend to reduce violent crimes, there has be be gun control from the start. Now that loose gun control laws have lead to a large amount of firearms coming into the U.S. it's a tad too late to decide to enforce gun control laws because they won't make guns magically disappear. But saying gun control laws have no impact on violent crime would be well.... wrong to put it bluntly.
Really? Then how do you account for countries like Switzerland, Sweden, Finland, etc. that all have high rates of gun ownership but lower crime than other European states like the UK?
Would be interesting to check that correlation using not guns in general, but handguns in particular. But yes, blaming everything on just guns is simplifying things too much.
Do you think a bigger correlation is with economic hardship and war rather than legal status of guns? From what I saw, when people want to commit crimes, they always miraculously obtain the materials required to commit the crime.
Considering that in Europe and other low crime-rate countries most murders seem to be done "on the fly" in affect, the person in question does not have time to search for guns if he does not have one. And when you add that and ease of more deaths when using a gun compared to knife or club it actually makes a difference. There were instances here where a guy suddenly went nuts and killed few people with privately owned gun. Without that gun he would be able to kill at most one person. Crazies like Breyvik will get the guns no matter what (without instituting some pretty totalitarian measures), but the others that I described would not get the gun. And those happen quite more often and more than offset the possible lives that could be saved by people in Norway being armed to the teeth and stopping Breyvik.
As for your economic hardship correlation I do not think that actually plays a big role alone. A lot of poor countries have relatively low murder rates. But I think getting rich helps with lowering murder rates if the whole society gets richer, not just parts of the society. So maybe inequality and poverty are part of the problem, but even that seems not a complete picture. I think it is deeper societal problem that is not easy to pinpoint.
EDIT:typo
Oh, the US has a very, very high murder per capita rate, and they're not exactly a third-world country. They're like fighting in the top ten along South Africa and Mexico. So yeah, I think you can kind of blame guns.
People blaming gun control for violence have very little experience with statistics and scientific thought. I understand that it is a political issue, therefore facts aren't weighed as heavily, but it is really folly to say something like "US has more guns than europe and more crime, guns cause crime."
Since the figures are per capita, it's kind of skewed in the US because of the way the metropolitan areas are considered. St. Louis, in particular, holds 11% of the population of its urban area. Other cities have similar figures, with Detroit at 16%, New Orleans at 27%, and Baltimore at 23%. More murders in a particular city can be disguised by higher populations in the urban core areas.
I also wonder how they differentiate between "murder", as in "I killed this guy because he got in a fight with me", or acts of war, as in "I killed this guy because he is an enemy combatant." I'll bet a lot of the deaths in Africa are mostly war related as opposed to just murders as we know them elsewhere. Based on what's going on in Mexico right now, some of those deaths could probably be considered war related too.
On January 16 2012 13:58 DanceOnCreep wrote: Maybe the next Hostel Movie should be in the U.S or America :D
Europe seems to be pretty Educated and fine ^^
Europe seems pretty educated, so I guess the US seems uneducated. :/
Seriously, why the hell is this thread still open? First of all, the list is horribly inaccurate and not even close to a real representation of the most violent cities. Second of all, everyone is repeating the same stuff from 15 pages ago, "wow latin america has a lot of murders." "how come X didn't make the list?"
Then you got the morons like this one who show up just to bash on the US or make some point about gun laws...
On January 16 2012 01:46 Darpa wrote: Crazy, Weird how some of the US cities are way up there, even though they seem to be run in the mill cities (Baltimore, St, Louis. Ect). New orleans was a big shock. Other than those, not a whole lot of suprises.
The only one that surprised me is St. Louis. The other three are pretty well known for large amount of crime. Detroit was the murder capital of the word for a while iirc. I hadn't heard the same about St. Louis.
East St. Louis is one of the worst places in the world. If you just randomly woke up there one day you'd be shocked to know you were in the US.
On January 16 2012 13:58 DanceOnCreep wrote: Maybe the next Hostel Movie should be in the U.S or America :D
Europe seems to be pretty Educated and fine ^^
Or, its just harder to get into Europe.
Half these cities would drop off the list if the US could get its drug importation problem under control.
Not that I agree with his rather ironically uneducated post But Europe has longer and harder to patrol borders and easier to cross seas. That is definitely not the reason
On January 16 2012 13:58 DanceOnCreep wrote: Maybe the next Hostel Movie should be in the U.S or America :D
Europe seems to be pretty Educated and fine ^^
Or, its just harder to get into Europe.
Half these cities would drop off the list if the US could get its drug importation problem under control.
I'm sorry but this is never going to happen with current policies. The drug war will never end and thus Mexico and the U.S. will always be perpetual victims/enhancers of it.
On January 16 2012 13:58 DanceOnCreep wrote: Maybe the next Hostel Movie should be in the U.S or America :D
Europe seems to be pretty Educated and fine ^^
Or, its just harder to get into Europe.
Half these cities would drop off the list if the US could get its drug importation problem under control.
I'm sorry but this is never going to happen with current policies. The drug war will never end and thus Mexico and the U.S. will always be perpetual victims/enhancers of it.
That's a shame really, south america is such a beautiful continent.
I wonder if the study distinguishes between St. Louis and East St. Louis. There is a rather large difference and while I was living on the Missouri side people used to say bad stuff about the Illinois side of the river. :-P
Wow Brazil is a pretty dangerous place. I'm kinda of surprised there aren't many Asian cities on the list. Also I was surprised to see the american cities that made the list.
On January 16 2012 15:00 Ciryandor wrote: Really? NOT ONE Asian city? Not exactly an unbiased list if you ask me.
I feel a lot safer on the streets at night in Shanghai / Fuzhou / Beijing than I do at night at Berkeley. Obviously those are pretty modernized cities, but strict gun control and lots of people actually tends to lead to less violence I think.
It would be nice if they stated which countries were not part of the study. Still, some of the numbers are pretty scary. over 3k murders in Caracas, Venezuela o.O.
I was close to going to Baltimore for half a year to do a research project, guess I'm lucky I ended up in Seattle instead .
On January 16 2012 16:44 R3demption wrote: Yeah like they say, don't drink the water in mexico. That shit makes you crazy
Nah, that shit gives you horrible diarrhea. The problem with Mexico is the drug trade. In fact, almost all cities on the list have a booming drug industry.
not surprised to see 4 south African cities listed. was surprised that port Elizabeth was the most violent in my country though. i thought joburg would be on top
edit / my bad. cape town on top. that makes a lot more sense.
South America is no shock to me what so ever, extremely poor, LOTS of drugs and little policing. I am truly surprised africa is on there once! Is is because it is so chaotic that it is near impossible to get real numbers from there?
Yeah, China is pretty safe. I don't know about south eastern Asia, maybe things get a bit rough there. But let me tell you, being from Central America, the culture is pretty rough there.
Sorry, but it was hard to resist, given all the USA USA USA! stuff elsewhere on the Forums
I'm an American citizen and a proud firearm owner of many different varieties, and I don't see how gun control would impact crime in America. All it does is it make it harder for the law biding citizen to attain what our constitution says you can legally own. Only .2% of all violent crimes in America are committed with legally owned firearms. It's the black market trade where the criminalizes get their weapons from. I'm a strong believer in more guns less crime. I live in NY state and I have a conceal carry permit for 2 almost 3 years now and i have yet to use it, IDK how you can say that gun control is a good thing. Just because i carry one doesn't mean i'm going to rob a store..
While gun control laws tend to reduce violent crimes, there has be be gun control from the start. Now that loose gun control laws have lead to a large amount of firearms coming into the U.S. it's a tad too late to decide to enforce gun control laws because they won't make guns magically disappear. But saying gun control laws have no impact on violent crime would be well.... wrong to put it bluntly.
Really? Then how do you account for countries like Switzerland, Sweden, Finland, etc. that all have high rates of gun ownership but lower crime than other European states like the UK?
Would be interesting to check that correlation using not guns in general, but handguns in particular. But yes, blaming everything on just guns is simplifying things too much.
Do you think a bigger correlation is with economic hardship and war rather than legal status of guns? From what I saw, when people want to commit crimes, they always miraculously obtain the materials required to commit the crime.
Considering that in Europe and other low crime-rate countries most murders seem to be done "on the fly" in affect, the person in question does not have time to search for guns if he does not have one. And when you add that and ease of more deaths when using a gun compared to knife or club it actually makes a difference. There were instances here where a guy suddenly went nuts and killed few people with privately owned gun. Without that gun he would be able to kill at most one person. Crazies like Breyvik will get the guns no matter what (without instituting some pretty totalitarian measures), but the others that I described would not get the gun. And those happen quite more often and more than offset the possible lives that could be saved by people in Norway being armed to the teeth and stopping Breyvik.
As for your economic hardship correlation I do not think that actually plays a big role alone. A lot of poor countries have relatively low murder rates. But I think getting rich helps with lowering murder rates if the whole society gets richer, not just parts of the society. So maybe inequality and poverty are part of the problem, but even that seems not a complete picture. I think it is deeper societal problem that is not easy to pinpoint.
EDIT:typo
Oh, the US has a very, very high murder per capita rate, and they're not exactly a third-world country. They're like fighting in the top ten along South Africa and Mexico. So yeah, I think you can kind of blame guns.
Uh I guess your definition of very high is different from mine but the US is still lower than the average homicide rate world wide.
It's not just the guns especially considering the vast majority of violent crime is committed with illegally acquired firearms.... The ethnic tension, terrible war on drugs, and gangs are far more to blame.
On January 16 2012 17:01 Balgrog wrote: South America is no shock to me what so ever, extremely poor, LOTS of drugs and little policing. I am truly surprised africa is on there once! Is is because it is so chaotic that it is near impossible to get real numbers from there?
On January 16 2012 17:01 Balgrog wrote: South America is no shock to me what so ever, extremely poor, LOTS of drugs and little policing. I am truly surprised africa is on there once! Is is because it is so chaotic that it is near impossible to get real numbers from there?
south Africa is on the list 4 times.
Didnt see PE on the list, that very surpising. I would Pretoria first before PE?
On January 16 2012 01:46 Darpa wrote: Crazy, Weird how some of the US cities are way up there, even though they seem to be run in the mill cities (Baltimore, St, Louis. Ect). New orleans was a big shock. Other than those, not a whole lot of suprises.
The only one that surprised me is St. Louis. The other three are pretty well known for large amount of crime. Detroit was the murder capital of the word for a while iirc. I hadn't heard the same about St. Louis.
Sorry, but it was hard to resist, given all the USA USA USA! stuff elsewhere on the Forums
I'm an American citizen and a proud firearm owner of many different varieties, and I don't see how gun control would impact crime in America. All it does is it make it harder for the law biding citizen to attain what our constitution says you can legally own. Only .2% of all violent crimes in America are committed with legally owned firearms. It's the black market trade where the criminalizes get their weapons from. I'm a strong believer in more guns less crime. I live in NY state and I have a conceal carry permit for 2 almost 3 years now and i have yet to use it, IDK how you can say that gun control is a good thing. Just because i carry one doesn't mean i'm going to rob a store..
While gun control laws tend to reduce violent crimes, there has be be gun control from the start. Now that loose gun control laws have lead to a large amount of firearms coming into the U.S. it's a tad too late to decide to enforce gun control laws because they won't make guns magically disappear. But saying gun control laws have no impact on violent crime would be well.... wrong to put it bluntly.
Really? Then how do you account for countries like Switzerland, Sweden, Finland, etc. that all have high rates of gun ownership but lower crime than other European states like the UK?
Would be interesting to check that correlation using not guns in general, but handguns in particular. But yes, blaming everything on just guns is simplifying things too much.
Do you think a bigger correlation is with economic hardship and war rather than legal status of guns? From what I saw, when people want to commit crimes, they always miraculously obtain the materials required to commit the crime.
Considering that in Europe and other low crime-rate countries most murders seem to be done "on the fly" in affect, the person in question does not have time to search for guns if he does not have one. And when you add that and ease of more deaths when using a gun compared to knife or club it actually makes a difference. There were instances here where a guy suddenly went nuts and killed few people with privately owned gun. Without that gun he would be able to kill at most one person. Crazies like Breyvik will get the guns no matter what (without instituting some pretty totalitarian measures), but the others that I described would not get the gun. And those happen quite more often and more than offset the possible lives that could be saved by people in Norway being armed to the teeth and stopping Breyvik.
As for your economic hardship correlation I do not think that actually plays a big role alone. A lot of poor countries have relatively low murder rates. But I think getting rich helps with lowering murder rates if the whole society gets richer, not just parts of the society. So maybe inequality and poverty are part of the problem, but even that seems not a complete picture. I think it is deeper societal problem that is not easy to pinpoint.
EDIT:typo
Oh, the US has a very, very high murder per capita rate, and they're not exactly a third-world country. They're like fighting in the top ten along South Africa and Mexico. So yeah, I think you can kind of blame guns.
Uh I guess your definition of very high is different from mine but the US is still lower than the average homicide rate world wide.
It's not just the guns especially considering the vast majority of violent crime is committed with illegally acquired firearms.... The ethnic tension, terrible war on drugs, and gangs are far more to blame.
Most people, rightfully, tend to compare the USA with other "first" World nations.. Not with poor second or even third world countries so they can tell themselves, that it's all fine...
On January 16 2012 17:01 Balgrog wrote: South America is no shock to me what so ever, extremely poor, LOTS of drugs and little policing. I am truly surprised africa is on there once! Is is because it is so chaotic that it is near impossible to get real numbers from there?
south Africa is on the list 4 times.
Didnt see PE on the list, that very surpising. I would Pretoria first before PE?
that's what i thought too man. lol guess its just kept well hidden.
i didn't realise honduras was so brutal, probably because i know very little about the country..
and on people debating whether the gun situation in america contributes to the number of murders.. i think you'd have to be an idiot to argue otherwise. maybe only 2% of violent crimes are committed with firearms registered to that person but it's sure as hell gonna be easier to obtain them illegally. more guns = easier to get a gun. you can bet pretty safely that if the total number of guns in the country was drastically reduced you'd see more than a 2% decrease..
On January 16 2012 15:00 Ciryandor wrote: Really? NOT ONE Asian city? Not exactly an unbiased list if you ask me.
Did you look at all how it was ranked or did you just not see a city in Asia on the list and say "OMG bias!" for no actual intelligent reason?
I did, and I'd have to say that statistics for homicide are severely under-reported for many Asian cities/metropolitan areas, even already accounting for the fact that sheer population size means that the absolute number of homicides in these places will end up higher.
I would also feel a lot more comfortable if the number of attempted homicides/murders were also included to give a scale of how many intents to kill actually do end up being consummated.
Anyone else think its time to handle the drug cartels like we did the terrorists in Iraq/Afghanistan? I doubt we can kill 'em all but I'm sure we could put a dent in 'em and give their head honcho's the same burial Osama got.
This list surely can't be serious??!? I've been to half those cities in the top 10, and none of them compare to the risks and dangers involved in simply taking a drive through down town Johannesburg.
On January 16 2012 01:46 Darpa wrote: Crazy, Weird how some of the US cities are way up there, even though they seem to be run in the mill cities (Baltimore, St, Louis. Ect). New orleans was a big shock. Other than those, not a whole lot of suprises.
The only one that surprised me is St. Louis. The other three are pretty well known for large amount of crime. Detroit was the murder capital of the word for a while iirc. I hadn't heard the same about St. Louis.
Ya St. Louis was a surprise to me as well.
I live in St. Louis, and the figures are definitely skewed. The reason for this is that St. Louis is a little bit weird in the fact that the surrounding St. Louis metropolitan area is not technically part of "St. Louis" eventhough it actually is. The crime rate figures only represent the crimes that are committed in the downtown portion, and since the population in the inner city is small it fucks with the numbers.
4 Acapulco Mexico 1.029 804.412 127.92 ¨God damn, this is close to where my moms dad decided to live with his new mexican wife. I even went there to visit ^^
I lived in Brazil 10 years ago for 20 years. I'm not surprised in see lotsa cities from there in this list, but I'm surprised that Belo Horizonte and Curitiba are in this list, specially Curitiba. It used to be an example of a good state capital in Brazil. Well, at least São Paulo and Rio de Janeiro aren't in this list.
Violence is a serious problem in Brazil, but in São Paulo it wasn't as rampant compared to people's perception of violence there. What happens is when an act of violence happened there, it was really fucked up. It was literally at least a slaughter (more than 3 people killed at the same crime case) a day. Also, traffic violence didn't help much too.
When I lived there, whenever I was on street or even using public transportation, I had to look at all directions all the time and have special precautions when going in and out of home. I'm consider lucky, as I got robbed only one time there. However, I have friends there that get robbed very often and even got kidnapped there. I feel very safe here in comparison to São Paulo.
This is not accurate stats, dont know where this came from, but Johannesburg South Africa, has the highest rapes/murder per capita and highest crimerate in the world... and its not even in the top 10...so I call bullshit!
On January 16 2012 06:55 Iceman331 wrote: St Louis being on there is kind of deceptive. There are really only 2 areas that are dangerous, and neither is an area you are likely to end up unless you're just stupid.
A lot of the cities on the list has bad and good areas. If you are unlikely to end up in those areas, how come there are murders there The point is they are not measuring how likely is outsider to get killed, just how dangerous is the cite on average for its inhabitants, and people living in those dangerous areas are also inhabitants of that city.
Mostly because the people that live in those areas kill each other actually. It is really unlikely for someone from out of town to end up in any of the dangerous areas of St Louis. To get the the really bad area, you literally would have to break down on the far side of the river (still considered part of St Louis). If you don't break down, there's really no reason you would ever get off the highway over there.
On January 16 2012 13:37 Sprouter wrote: I thought Detroit was more dangerous than Nola. Must be Bourbon street shenanigans.
New orleans still hasnt recovered from katrina. Basically the eastern side of new orleans is fucked. You don't even have a hospital cause we haven't had the money for it. I think they just worked out the details and one should be done by 2013.
Yea bourbon street/french quarter and most of the surrounding areas in New Orleans are fine. East New Orleans is residential area that hasn't recovered from Katrina yet which is where most of the murders are.
On January 16 2012 18:06 Joedaddy wrote: Mexico is in a bad state of affairs...
Anyone else think its time to handle the drug cartels like we did the terrorists in Iraq/Afghanistan? I doubt we can kill 'em all but I'm sure we could put a dent in 'em and give their head honcho's the same burial Osama got.
that is possibly the singularly shittest idea i have ever heard.
all that will do is throw away the lives of more american soldiers and the lives of more mexican civilians. it'll end some worthless lives of some cartel members but they'll be instantly replaced. when pablo escobar died, the mexican cartels exploded. the war will to some extent reduce supply, which will just drive drug prices UP and lure more people in. the cartels are openly appreciative of the US government trying to fight drugs cause it just means more money for them.
what is really needed is a rethink on drug policy and education, before mexico gets destroyed.
Seems like Mexico is mentioned all over that list. I am not touching anywhere near Mexico thats for sure. All those drug cartels which kills you with freakin chainsaws .....
Sorry, but it was hard to resist, given all the USA USA USA! stuff elsewhere on the Forums
I'm an American citizen and a proud firearm owner of many different varieties, and I don't see how gun control would impact crime in America. All it does is it make it harder for the law biding citizen to attain what our constitution says you can legally own. Only .2% of all violent crimes in America are committed with legally owned firearms. It's the black market trade where the criminalizes get their weapons from. I'm a strong believer in more guns less crime. I live in NY state and I have a conceal carry permit for 2 almost 3 years now and i have yet to use it, IDK how you can say that gun control is a good thing. Just because i carry one doesn't mean i'm going to rob a store..
While gun control laws tend to reduce violent crimes, there has be be gun control from the start. Now that loose gun control laws have lead to a large amount of firearms coming into the U.S. it's a tad too late to decide to enforce gun control laws because they won't make guns magically disappear. But saying gun control laws have no impact on violent crime would be well.... wrong to put it bluntly.
Really? Then how do you account for countries like Switzerland, Sweden, Finland, etc. that all have high rates of gun ownership but lower crime than other European states like the UK?
Would be interesting to check that correlation using not guns in general, but handguns in particular. But yes, blaming everything on just guns is simplifying things too much.
Do you think a bigger correlation is with economic hardship and war rather than legal status of guns? From what I saw, when people want to commit crimes, they always miraculously obtain the materials required to commit the crime.
Considering that in Europe and other low crime-rate countries most murders seem to be done "on the fly" in affect, the person in question does not have time to search for guns if he does not have one. And when you add that and ease of more deaths when using a gun compared to knife or club it actually makes a difference. There were instances here where a guy suddenly went nuts and killed few people with privately owned gun. Without that gun he would be able to kill at most one person. Crazies like Breyvik will get the guns no matter what (without instituting some pretty totalitarian measures), but the others that I described would not get the gun. And those happen quite more often and more than offset the possible lives that could be saved by people in Norway being armed to the teeth and stopping Breyvik.
As for your economic hardship correlation I do not think that actually plays a big role alone. A lot of poor countries have relatively low murder rates. But I think getting rich helps with lowering murder rates if the whole society gets richer, not just parts of the society. So maybe inequality and poverty are part of the problem, but even that seems not a complete picture. I think it is deeper societal problem that is not easy to pinpoint.
EDIT:typo
Oh, the US has a very, very high murder per capita rate, and they're not exactly a third-world country. They're like fighting in the top ten along South Africa and Mexico. So yeah, I think you can kind of blame guns.
Didn't find those figures, but quoting this very document:
"42 per cent of global homicides are actually committed by firearm. Homicides in the Americas are more than three and a half times as likely to be perpetrated with a firearm than in Europe (74 per cent vs. 21 per cent)"
"The role played by firearms in homicide is fundamental and, while the specific relationship between firearm availability and homicide is complex, it appears that a vicious circle connects firearm availability and higher homicide levels. Firearms undoubtedly drive homicide increases in certain regions and where they do members of organized criminal groups are often those who pull the trigger."
"In many countries with high homicide rates the share of firearm homicides is also greater and is often associated with the illicit activities of organized criminal groups."
Also, here are the numbers I find: USA - 5.9 murders/100 000 people (rank 63) = a respectable position (the average being 11.1, but still ranked with third-world countries). I mistook the murder rate for the firearm murder rate, which is the one that places the US at rank 4.
On January 16 2012 01:46 Darpa wrote: Crazy, Weird how some of the US cities are way up there, even though they seem to be run in the mill cities (Baltimore, St, Louis. Ect). New orleans was a big shock. Other than those, not a whole lot of suprises.
All of the us cities on there are notorious for their ghettos. Baltimore and Detroit specifically.
My questions is where the fuck is Camden??? Shit's gone soft down there.
Based on what I've heard from friends, I'm suprised that Moscow is not on the list. St Louis was also shocking though, my girlfriend used to live there for quite a while O.o
On January 16 2012 01:47 Count9 wrote: YEAHHH!!! We made it! Go Saint louis!!!
I'm actually really surprised some of the smaller cities in China and south west Asia aren't on this list, they are a total mess. I guess they aren't completely doing this per capita because those cities would have ridiculously high rates.
On January 16 2012 01:47 Count9 wrote: YEAHHH!!! We made it! Go Saint louis!!!
I'm actually really surprised some of the smaller cities in China and south west Asia aren't on this list, they are a total mess. I guess they aren't completely doing this per capita because those cities would have ridiculously high rates.
not really, we chinese are very peaceful!
Although I don't doubt Chinese cities can't be that bad it would be true China is a nightmare for statisticians because of how closed off their crime reporting is.... I don't think we'll ever get an accurate picture of Chinese city crime rates.
On January 16 2012 01:46 Darpa wrote: Crazy, Weird how some of the US cities are way up there, even though they seem to be run in the mill cities (Baltimore, St, Louis. Ect). New orleans was a big shock. Other than those, not a whole lot of suprises.
All of the us cities on there are notorious for their ghettos. Baltimore and Detroit specifically.
My questions is where the fuck is Camden??? Shit's gone soft down there.
Yeah inner city Detriot might as well be a different country. The level of gang related violence that goes on there is astonishing, dozens of kids get gunned down every year fighting over crap neighborhoods.
On January 16 2012 20:50 Spitfire wrote: Cape Town and Durban higher then Johannesburg? Find that hard to believe.
Ditto! I say that he cops are so lazy in SA that most the crimes are not reported properly.
My friends car was stolen when we went to the local police station they said: ok so what? We were speechless and just left. The rage came later. I bet allot of stats are lost like this.
A country like the USA I would imagine would have close to perfect stats. So its sort of unfair this list. But still an eye opener.
Also so sad that my country has 4 entries :-(
34 Cape Town South Africa 1.614 3,497,097 46.15 41 Nelson Mandela Bay Metropolitan Municipality (Port Elizabeth) South Africa 381 1,050,930 36.25 49 Durban South Africa 1.059 3,468,087 30.54 50 City of Johannesburg South Africa 1.186 3,888,180 30.50
That list seems verry biased. Nearly all citys are in north and south america. Maybe they just took the official numbers wich are not reliable everywhere. Expected at least some rusian, african, and maybe palestine citys in there., but maybe its not as bad there as i thought, or other places are even much worse. Not suprised to see only few or even none asian citys. Asia has crime rate even lower then europe.
50-150 kills/100k thats alot If you would live in such a city for 50 years thats like 5% change to die of murder O-o (off course some groups of people inside a city have way higher risk then other groups)
well the ratios of colombia can be quite a bit exagerated since the problem in colombia its not really a "drug war" but rather an inner civil war against some guerrillas that has been going on for decades now :/
On January 16 2012 01:47 Count9 wrote: YEAHHH!!! We made it! Go Saint louis!!!
I'm actually really surprised some of the smaller cities in China and south west Asia aren't on this list, they are a total mess. I guess they aren't completely doing this per capita because those cities would have ridiculously high rates.
not really, we chinese are very peaceful!
Yeah, I can't imagine living in one of those cities. I have never been bothered in HK. Ever.
On January 16 2012 21:20 Nizaris wrote: Not a single city is in Europe, it's good to live here. I've never even seen a mugging, and i use to take public transports every day for years.
yay for strict gun policies ?!
No. Just look at all the safe US counties with extremely high gun ownership rates. Look at countries like Mexico with tight gun control but extremely high crime rates. Just because a lot of Europe has low crime rates and gun control does not mean there is causation.
To the people who keep bleating about UK gun ownership...
It's very easy to get a weapon here. You get a license, and you buy yourself a shotgun / rifle / crossbow / anything that isn't automatic or a pistol. If you want a gun and have a reason for it, then you can get one in a few weeks.
In other words, if you live in the countryside, getting a gun is easy. Nearly all UK homicides are knife related, in glasgow / london / birmingham,
I imagine someone has already said this somewhere, but I would guess that there are some other terribly violent cities that don't make it to this list because their governments don't keep track of crime numbers as well.
Interesting list... my wife is Colombian, and I've been there four times in the last year. She lives near Cali (on the list) and I've also spent time in Bogotá. While I wouldn't go walking around alone at midnight, no one has bothered me so far and I've spent about six weeks there, and will go back for a month soon.
Anything can happen anywhere, and you have to be careful. But just visiting a city on this list doesn't mean you'll come back home dead.
To be honest I feel that certain cities in third world countries should be on here (Nairobi comes to mind for instance), but the sheer fact that they are third world countries prevents active and accurate measurements of these sorts of statistics. I personally find it hard to believe that not a single "African" city finds its way here (such as Somalia), or even war-time countries would obviously be more dangerous to live in (Afghanistan, Iraq).
This reads much more as a list of top 50 most dangerous cities in North America, with some token SA thrown in...
I feel these talks about "Most Dangerous Places" are alot like talking about ghosts. Someone says they have seen a ghost, another guy comes along with a story about two ghosts, and then a third guy shows up with a story about flirting with a hot girl ghost that ended up raping him (whoo hoo! count me in).
At the end of the day, they have all seen ghosts and that's that.
On May 15 2012 02:01 ImGonnaRideYou wrote: I feel these talks about "Most Dangerous Places" are alot like talking about ghosts. Someone says they have seen a ghost, another guy comes along with a story about two ghosts, and then a third guy shows up with a story about flirting with a hot girl ghost that ended up raping him (whoo hoo! count me in).
At the end of the day, they have all seen ghosts and that's that.
I have no idea what this analogy means but it sounds cool.
On May 15 2012 01:46 DYEAlabaster wrote: This reads much more as a list of top 50 most dangerous cities in North America, with some token SA thrown in...
Might want to check your geography again.... many of these are central american countries that you could argue to north, south, or neither america.
Plus Columbia, Venezuela, and Brazil are all in South America and make the list very frequently. In fact, if Mexico didnt have so many dangerous cities, there would actually be more in south america.
On January 16 2012 01:50 Blix wrote: I speculate that there are areas that are more dangerous, so dangerous they don't keep accurate statistics...
Exactly what I was thinking. There are places in Africa and Middle East that have to be more dangerous than New Orleans...
There is probably a population cutoff for consideration. Many places are so violent as to be uninhabited, The country of Sudan just came out of a horrific genocide for example.
Plus many of the communist countries like China don't make statistics public. So its not an accurate portrayal of the world. Our freedom in the americas is ironically what shows us to be so violent.
I can't really explain how parts of Latin America are far more violent than the average African nation, but some others (like Chile, Uruguay and Argentina) are as safe as Western Europe.
The drug traffic certainly adds to it, but I think it's just too easy to blame it all on drugs. There seems to be something really wrong with andean and central american culture, but I can't really say what it is.
On May 15 2012 05:53 CrimsonLotus wrote: I can't really explain how parts of Latin America are far more violent than the average African nation, but some others (like Chile, Uruguay and Argentina) are as safe as Western Europe.
The drug traffic certainly adds to it, but I think it's just too easy to blame it all on drugs. There seems to be something really wrong with andean and central american culture, but I can't really say what it is.
It doesn't count as murder if the government does it, or if there is no government in the first place.
And poverty is what's wrong.
edit: poverty with very weak and ineffective governments
On May 15 2012 05:53 CrimsonLotus wrote: I can't really explain how parts of Latin America are far more violent than the average African nation, but some others (like Chile, Uruguay and Argentina) are as safe as Western Europe.
The drug traffic certainly adds to it, but I think it's just too easy to blame it all on drugs. There seems to be something really wrong with andean and central american culture, but I can't really say what it is.
It doesn't count as murder if the government does it, or if there is no government in the first place.
And poverty is what's wrong.
edit: poverty with very weak and ineffective governments
But the average goverment is SA is a lot stronger and stable that the average african country. Also, if poverty was the single factor again SA would be significantly less violent than most of Africa, but it isn't.
There's just something really fucked up in certain cultures around here, and since I was born and live in one of those cultures it's hardly prejudice or racism lol.
On May 15 2012 06:27 Damrak wrote: Isn't a (partial) cause for the wars in these southern american countries the illegal state of softdrugs or am I wrong?
Yup, the only way to weaken the cartels is to cut their profits, and the only way to do that is to legalize. Good luck convincing the US government, though.
On May 15 2012 06:37 Xpace wrote: Where's Baghdad?!
The war is more of a rape than a murder really. Just read an article for a summary in spanish tomorrow in school about killings in Mexico. 49 people in plastic bags found along a highway, 14 people found decapitated and another 9 found hanged from a bridge, all of these in the month of May. Makes the minor violence we experience over here seem like something to applaud. Seriously feel sick now... Just read some more and it turns out as vengeance for the 14 decapitated ones, 18 were killed, jesus f'ing christ...
I live in the south of Mexico in Playa del Carmen, and I have to say it is a very calm and beautiful place. There is some violence involved but, only if you are on wrong steps ( selling drugs, etc..)
I think violence is really hardcore on the North of Mexico thats for sure, but don´t fear the south.
Also I think there are way more dangerous places in Africa, than in some areas of Mexico, definitely not Juarez because thats one of the most violent cities in the world for years!
I dislike very much our neigbhour countries in Latin America....Argentina and Uruguay are cool tho, even though Argenitna is getting pretty dangerous nowadays, well I guess we will just have to deal with it for now and keep on working for a better future for our neighbours.
this is study is somewhat wrong. I agree that cities like Vitoria in Brazil are one of the most violent in the world. But this study is based on what they can get as information. I don`t think that some countries have any acuraccy in this statistics. Even Brazil have plenty of errors in this statistics.
On May 15 2012 05:53 CrimsonLotus wrote: I can't really explain how parts of Latin America are far more violent than the average African nation, but some others (like Chile, Uruguay and Argentina) are as safe as Western Europe.
The drug traffic certainly adds to it, but I think it's just too easy to blame it all on drugs. There seems to be something really wrong with andean and central american culture, but I can't really say what it is.
It doesn't count as murder if the government does it, or if there is no government in the first place.
And poverty is what's wrong.
edit: poverty with very weak and ineffective governments
But the average goverment is SA is a lot stronger and stable that the average african country. Also, if poverty was the single factor again SA would be significantly less violent than most of Africa, but it isn't.
There's just something really fucked up in certain cultures around here, and since I was born and live in one of those cultures it's hardly prejudice or racism lol.
You misunderstand. I'm saying the reason various African cities aren't listed here is because their governments are too inefficient/corrupt to report/tabulate things like these : /
On May 15 2012 07:54 torm3ntin wrote: this is study is somewhat wrong. I agree that cities like Vitoria in Brazil are one of the most violent in the world. But this study is based on what they can get as information. I don`t think that some countries have any acuraccy in this statistics. Even Brazil have plenty of errors in this statistics.
There sure might be some statistics missing but there are certainly no fewer than the numbers posted, so it could only get worse by knowing more :/
On May 15 2012 05:53 CrimsonLotus wrote: I can't really explain how parts of Latin America are far more violent than the average African nation, but some others (like Chile, Uruguay and Argentina) are as safe as Western Europe.
The drug traffic certainly adds to it, but I think it's just too easy to blame it all on drugs. There seems to be something really wrong with andean and central american culture, but I can't really say what it is.
It doesn't count as murder if the government does it, or if there is no government in the first place.
And poverty is what's wrong.
edit: poverty with very weak and ineffective governments
But the average goverment is SA is a lot stronger and stable that the average african country. Also, if poverty was the single factor again SA would be significantly less violent than most of Africa, but it isn't.
There's just something really fucked up in certain cultures around here, and since I was born and live in one of those cultures it's hardly prejudice or racism lol.
I agree wholeheartedly. I can't imagine anyone believing culture can't influence predispositions toward violence/aggression. I'm also Colombian, but live in the states.
On May 15 2012 05:53 CrimsonLotus wrote: I can't really explain how parts of Latin America are far more violent than the average African nation, but some others (like Chile, Uruguay and Argentina) are as safe as Western Europe.
The drug traffic certainly adds to it, but I think it's just too easy to blame it all on drugs. There seems to be something really wrong with andean and central american culture, but I can't really say what it is.
It doesn't count as murder if the government does it, or if there is no government in the first place.
And poverty is what's wrong.
edit: poverty with very weak and ineffective governments
But the average goverment is SA is a lot stronger and stable that the average african country. Also, if poverty was the single factor again SA would be significantly less violent than most of Africa, but it isn't.
There's just something really fucked up in certain cultures around here, and since I was born and live in one of those cultures it's hardly prejudice or racism lol.
I agree wholeheartedly. Multicultural-equalist like to pretend this isn't true, but in many cultures, violence and brutality are simply more common, and I would be entirely un-surprised if you could extend this to ethnic groups. I'm also Colombian, but live in the states.
We have such unfair wealth distribution in Brazil, some people are literally starving to death as I type this words, here in one of the most naturally rich countries in the world. The creation of the favelas decades ago was pretty much the rich making the poor live in shitty places with sub-human conditions. In those favelas the police is the enemy and the Druglord is the people's savior, inside the favelas those who are not in gangs feel protected by the druglords, the police is corrupt and most of the times won't ever go up them.
In my city, Brasília, it's even more ridiculous, we went such ways to make sure we in the center could have our little european lives that all the marginalized workers are forced to live 50km of where they work and use SHITTY public transport(not run by the government, it is run by pretty much what we would call mafia) everyday while cramped for 1hour and a half trip to his shit work. Seriously seeing people blaming this culture which manages to be such a light-hearted, smiling one even in the most dire times makes me mad. I don't know hard life, none of you know. But some of us have seen it.
The living conditions aren't acceptable to the working class over these parts, marginalized people don't care for laws, even more when they need money to sustain their family or their crack addiction. We learned how to dominate and segregate not with our GUARANI indians, we learned with the portuguese, the english, the french and more recently with the americans(whose government had a CRUCIAL role in starting the dictatorship we had.)
My city hangs around number 8 in top dangerous in the "US" still its pretty bad i had a friend murdered last year, wasn't even involved in anything gang oriented just graduated and everything! The thing is though he was into spice and i don't know if he killed over having the 200 hundred spice bags on him that were taken at the time. It might have been gang involved because he broke some low life's necks in a county jail cell because the guy came at him over "disrespect" nice kid too didn't deserve what he got but i guess he hung around the wrong people because he was arrested for theft at wal-mart and having a bong at him at the time.
On May 15 2012 05:53 CrimsonLotus wrote: I can't really explain how parts of Latin America are far more violent than the average African nation, but some others (like Chile, Uruguay and Argentina) are as safe as Western Europe.
The drug traffic certainly adds to it, but I think it's just too easy to blame it all on drugs. There seems to be something really wrong with andean and central american culture, but I can't really say what it is.
It doesn't count as murder if the government does it, or if there is no government in the first place.
And poverty is what's wrong.
edit: poverty with very weak and ineffective governments
Sorry we couldn't steal as much as you did . Plus if you fuckers kept your nose out of our countries some stuff would be better.
Nice numbers, but you should put a bit more work into editing that long list because its very confusing numbers not being sorted out and everything being all over the place.
I can't really explain how parts of Latin America are far more violent than the average African nation, but some others (like Chile, Uruguay and Argentina) are as safe as Western Europe.
The drug traffic certainly adds to it, but I think it's just too easy to blame it all on drugs. There seems to be something really wrong with andean and central american culture, but I can't really say what it is.
You know what seperates Chile from just about every other south american nation? It isn't aligned with US interests, frequently cozying with Cuba and China D:.
I can't really explain how parts of Latin America are far more violent than the average African nation, but some others (like Chile, Uruguay and Argentina) are as safe as Western Europe.
The drug traffic certainly adds to it, but I think it's just too easy to blame it all on drugs. There seems to be something really wrong with andean and central american culture, but I can't really say what it is.
You know what seperates Chile from just about every other south american nation? It isn't aligned with US interests, frequently cozying with Cuba and China D:.
Oh right its America's fault that there is violence in South America. And Venezuela is totally a puppet of the US.
I happened to graduate from a high school in El Salvador a few years back. Unlike Mexico it doesn't have the economy to support an effective police force so they simply let gangs go at each other. Until this year I believe El Salvador had the highest # of homicides per capita with 15 deaths a day (the country is the size of pea).
Anyway, a 16 year old kid I was sponsoring was walking home from school when he and his entire class was abducted by a gang and was given the offer to join. I don't mean "offer" as a euphemism by the way, it was a real choice. The kid ended up declining but the rest of the class willingly decided to join the gang. They are now most likely part of a murder statistic.
What you have to understand is that these kids have genuinely no reason to stay in school and pursue a "normal" lifestyle. The government of El Salvador is corrupt to the point where public officials are selected by "recommendation letters" and not bureaucratic exams. Monopolies hold every aspect of business and only offer jobs in between (incompetent) family members. The security guard for the Korean Embassy in El Salvador holds a Masters Degree in International Relations and can speak 5 languages fluently. With his job, he supports his brother, who happens to hold a Masters in Civil Engineering, but can not find anyone willing to hire him. The guy considers his family lucky.
People turn to gangs because they have been ignored by a system that chooses to discriminate based on bloodlines. They turn to gangs because at least in a gang, if you break an arm, someone will get your back. They turn to gangs because otherwise they would starve to death. There's no point in attending school when no business will offer you a job, you're too poor to relocate, and the government will not support you.
The rich and powerful decry these gang members as inhumane animals who commit atrocities when in reality they are 16 year old children looking to secure their future in the only way they can. The politicians starve children into become gang members. When you take away someone's right to a future, and the freedom of choice, there isn't much left. And in the end, the ruling elite end up using the gang violence (that they themselves are responsible for) as propaganda for even more laws that strip people naked and support discrimination against the poor.
When I left El Salvador, I ran into a classmate of mine on the airport. He was about to board his family's private plane. He was a selfish, ignorant, C- student... and the automatic inheritor of a multimillion dollar vehicle import company.
I can't really explain how parts of Latin America are far more violent than the average African nation, but some others (like Chile, Uruguay and Argentina) are as safe as Western Europe.
The drug traffic certainly adds to it, but I think it's just too easy to blame it all on drugs. There seems to be something really wrong with andean and central american culture, but I can't really say what it is.
You know what seperates Chile from just about every other south american nation? It isn't aligned with US interests, frequently cozying with Cuba and China D:.
Uhmmm I'm not sure if you are very informed on how our country works, we are a free market country, our interests are the ones that interest us, nobody decides what we are interested in but ourselves, and we generally dont accept foreign intervention, not even in the eartquake we recived foreign help, we solve our problems by ourselves and as a free market country, we trade with everyone, so that makes us a pretty stable economy, plus we know the U.S.A even though claims to have a free market economy, in the end does apply some national protectionism, so it isn't the best country to trade with. We are neutral, we are hard working, we solve our problems by ourselves, we are very open to the world market, but we are reclusive in terms of foreigners, and we have strict policies, that's what makes us different.
On January 16 2012 02:51 isleyofthenorth wrote: no surprise that only the US out of the highest developed countries made that list with their gun laws etc
Blaming the U.S. out of every developed country due to their "gun laws etc" shows a very high amount of ignorance to the overall cause of these issues. If you think that the people causing these crimes own a legal firearm, you are sorely mistaken.
And for the record, I am very anti gun. These cities are infested to the core with drug and gang problems, neither of which concern the issue of firearm laws at all.
Here's a question: IF gun laws were part of the problem would you support changing them?
The intentional homicide rate in the US is 4.8/100,000
The EU average is around 1.5. If the US had the same homicide rate it would mean about 10,000 less deaths per year. Maybe gun laws don't make a difference at all. Maybe they are responsible for 10% or 50%. Where would you draw the line?
If you're not sure what the effect is, is it ok to dismiss it out of hand? You may be supporting a policy that causes thousands of deaths each year. Don't you feel a responsibility to actually inform yourself, instead of taking the position that seems most convenient?
First of all i am against gun control and own a handgun, with that out of the way I dont believe u can say outlaw guns in U.S. and u'll have the same murder statistics as in Europe, with Mexico being next to us how fucked their situation is and how easy it is getting stuff across the border, all that gun control will accomplish are more gun cartels and a lot more violence and highly unlikely anything will change except law abiding citizens will have less guns, if situation in Mexico changes then i might be ok with stricter gun control laws until then i am against it.
Are you kidding me??! Don´t you know where all the guns from cartels come from??! They don't come from Mexico! we DO have a strict gun control!! they buy them in easy-to-be-armed United States. And also if our situation here is difficult is because of the huge drug market the US is. Do you know about operation Fast and Furious? If you don't, let me tell you that the US government in an absolutely failed "intelligence" operation introduced almost 2,000 weapons to our territory directly to cartel´s hands. I understand if you are a gun lover and they make you feel more of a man or something. But if the US doesn´t want to outlaw guns, they really should not outlaw drugs either. Reading your comment really makes me worry about how misinformed you people may be about the real situation and the shared responsibilities here. It is not easy at all to pass things from Mexico to the US, but from the US to Mexico it's really easy. You really are so wrong it scares me. Do people around you actually think the same as you?? Do you not see the big picture?? Do you just sit and tink- hey those mexicans are really screwed up, but thank god they're on the other side so that won´t affect me?? I would really, very respectfuly towards you and your co-nationals, like to know the answer. Please don't be offended, Misinformation is not your fault at all. I'm asking as a friendly neighboor.
I've reviewed the list and to my mind, it is no wonder that there is so much violence in the cities of Latin America, as this is due to drug distribution http://www.oplaces.com/291. And drugs are always about money and weapon, so that is why Lain America is that violent region. Plus, this area is not that developed, and people there live in poor conditions, so here is the answer: drugs, poverty and low level of life.
On March 31 2016 15:40 Christian Harris wrote: I've reviewed the list and to my mind, it is no wonder that there is so much violence in the cities of Latin America, as this is due to drug distribution http://www.oplaces.com/291. And drugs are always about money and weapon, so that is why Lain America is that violent region. Plus, this area is not that developed, and people there live in poor conditions, so here is the answer: drugs, poverty and low level of life.
EPT
Top 20 all south of the United States.
![[image loading]](http://n.i.uol.com.br/ultnot/mapa_violencia.jpg)
