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Philly Answers Youth Flash Mobs With Curfew Enforcement
Not that it's the first city to enforce a youth curfew, and not that kids on a crime-spree is the only variety of moral panic offered as a rationale, but Philadelphia is cracking down through increased enforcement of a youth curfew law after children and teenagers attacked two people in the Center City district — attacks which, according to police, were coordinated via text messaging.
In Philadelphia, a flash mob is literally a mob of disenfranchised, angry youth rioting violently for a short amount of time. They run through stores destroying things, they beat people up, they carjack people for a block, hundreds of these kids (if not pushing 1000 sometimes). They are quite literally flash riots.
http://www.ibtimes.com/articles/171638/20110629/philadelphia-flash-mob-2011.htm As a source (but I'm from there and know this personally to be true as well)
As a Philadelphian, I can vouch that a flash mob in Philly is not the same thing as a flash mob that you see on AT&T advertising campaigns. While a flash mob may make you think of a bunch of people dancing in unison to some obscure pop culture reference in a large public area, a Philadelphia flash mob is a band of nearly feral minority teenagers whose parent wants to get their drink on and expels them for the night from their section 8 houses in North Philadelphia. They then flood down in droves to the Center City business district and Old City/South Street area, where they attack people at random.
I am sorry if that comes off as bitter and slightly racist. I was involved in one of these on South Street a few months ago...the fear you feel is absolutely indescribable when you realize that kids as young as 10 were raised in a way where they feel assaulting and robbing people at random is an acceptable Saturday night activity.
> But I lived overseas where I could walk the streets at 3am without a care in the world... But the fact is the United States is suffering from serious cultural issues that perpetuates things like crime.
I think it depends on where you are. As a tourist, you're probably travelling in safe places - in part because dangerous places aren't the places that get a lot of tourist traffic. (I know, for example, that the tourist areas of Mexico are generally safe, but Mexico has a lot more problems with crime, drug cartels, and 3-4x the homicide rate than the US.) Also, you might be perceiving the US as very dangerous thanks to news reports, while you're judging other countries based on personal experience.
Assaults (per capita) http://www.nationmaster.com/graph/cri_ass_percap-crime-assaults-per-capita
# 1 South Africa: 12.0752 per 1,000 people
# 6 United States: 7.56923 per 1,000 people
# 7 New Zealand: 7.47881 per 1,000 people
# 8 United Kingdom: 7.45959 per 1,000 people
# 9 Canada: 7.11834 per 1,000 people
# 10 Australia: 7.02459 per 1,000 people
So, you're only 1%-8% more likely to be assaulted in the US than you are in New Zealand, the UK, Canada, and Australia.
Burglaries (per capita) http://www.nationmaster.com/graph/cri_bur_percap-crime-burglaries-per-capita
# 1 Australia: 21.7454 per 1,000 people
# 3 Denmark: 18.3299 per 1,000 people
# 4 Estonia: 17.4576 per 1,000 people
# 5 Finland: 16.7697 per 1,000 people
# 6 New Zealand: 16.2763 per 1,000 people
# 7 United Kingdom: 13.8321 per 1,000 people
# 8 Poland: 9.46071 per 1,000 people
# 9 Canada: 8.94425 per 1,000 people
# 17 United States: 7.09996 per 1,000 people
You're quite a bit less likely to have a burglary in the US than you are in Australia, Denmark, Estonia, Finland, New Zealand, the UK, Poland, or Canada.
Total crimes (per capita) http://www.nationmaster.com/graph/cri_tot_cri_percap-crime-total-crimes-per-capita
# 2 New Zealand: 105.881 per 1,000 people
# 3 Finland: 101.526 per 1,000 people
# 4 Denmark: 92.8277 per 1,000 people
# 6 United Kingdom: 85.5517 per 1,000 people
# 8 United States: 80.0645 per 1,000 people
# 9 Netherlands: 79.5779 per 1,000 people
# 11 Germany: 75.9996 per 1,000 people
# 12 Canada: 75.4921 per 1,000 people
# 13 Norway: 71.8639 per 1,000 people
The US ranks in the same ballpark as these other countries when it comes to total crimes per capita.
Car thefts (per capita) http://www.nationmaster.com/graph/cri_car_the_percap-crime-car-thefts-per-capita
# 1 Australia: 6.92354 per 1,000 people
# 2 Denmark: 5.92839 per 1,000 people
# 3 United Kingdom: 5.6054 per 1,000 people
# 4 New Zealand: 5.45031 per 1,000 people
# 5 Norway: 5.08143 per 1,000 people
# 6 France: 4.9713 per 1,000 people
# 7 Canada: 4.88547 per 1,000 people
# 8 Italy: 4.19755 per 1,000 people
# 9 United States: 3.8795 per 1,000 people
Car theft is quite a bit less common in the US than these other developed countries.
Rapes (per capita) http://www.nationmaster.com/graph/cri_rap_percap-crime-rapes-per-capita
# 3 Australia: 0.777999 per 1,000 people
# 5 Canada: 0.733089 per 1,000 people
# 9 United States: 0.301318 per 1,000 people
# 10 Iceland: 0.246009 per 1,000 people
# 12 New