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Murder Is Like a Disease (No, Really)
pigrabbitbear writes "With a homicide rate historically more than three times greater than the rest of the United States, Newark, N.J., isn't a great vacation spot. But it's a great place for a murder study (abstract). Led by April Zeoli, an assistant professor of criminal justice, a group of researchers at Michigan State University tracked homicides around Newark from 1982 to 2008, using analytic software typically used by medical researchers to track the spread of diseases. They found that "homicide clusters" in Newark, as researchers called them, spread and move throughout a city much the same way diseases do. Murders, in other words, did not surface randomly—they began in the city center and moved in 'diffusion-like processes' across the city."
Of MSNBC's race card.
My wife thinks it's the artificial hormones in beef.
If most murders are drug-related, this could be modeling the spread of drug markets by proxy.
10 PRINT CHR$(205.5+RND(1)); : GOTO 10
I could murder a cup of coffee!
Does the study take into account gang culture and revenge killings?
That's what is viral. And gangs.
Murder is not the "disease", per se, but rather it is a symptom or outcome of other processes; namely, economic downturns that manifests themselves in lost jobs, lost homes, broken families, substance abuse and the ensuing and inevitable upturn in desperation and violence,
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.. Dexter Morgan about that.
Or rather, the way American culture deals with economic downturns.
How else would you explain why Greece (which undeniably had a much worse economic crisis) has a lower murder rate than the USA?(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_intentional_homicide_rate)
Realistically though, I doubt murder rate can be so easily explained. There are many factors involved, one of which is economics.
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NO ONE said it is a disease, but it spreads LIKE a disease.
Learn to read properly.
Is there no better use for research funding than to study the self-evident and report the obvious?
It is obvious to you that murder acts like a disease? What is self-evident about it?
There might be some use in this if it led to an accurate predictive formula for preemptive intervention, but I see nothing about that in TFA or the summary.
Did you even read TFA?
..so that police might potentially identify problem areas as they are emerging—or perhaps, one imagines, before they emerge./quote/ Sounds to me like it might lead to an accurate predictive formula for preemptive intervention.
How is this "junk science." They don't say that murder IS a disease. Just that it can be analyzed in the same way a disease can be analyzed.
I'd believe it. I've seen enough mental illness up close and personal to believe that they are, against all reason, somewhat contagious under the right circumstances.
I am John Hurt.
The homicide cluster is spreading straight towards my home !!!
Because to one, it's all over; the other . . . !!
And you meant, HOMICIDE !! Murder is a legal term !!
Exactly my thoughts. "Drug-related" murder is a special class of murder. It's special because it wouldn't exist without prohibition. In fact, the honest way to describe it would be "prohibition-related murder", because it isn't drugs that fuel the murder; it's government policy.
It's helpful to people planning morge, hospital, and police resources. Making sure that your manpower is ready for clusters of murders and have the tools to handle the dead, injured, and evidence is useful. It's also useful to the communities to realize and have hard numbers to back up their needs for containment of such dangerous events, and to help them innoculate against the outbreak spreading by education and community outreach.
CDC vectoring tools would seem to be potentially useful. What is the timetable of such "outbreaks" ? Are control efforts better spent on dealing on each outbreak, as it occurs, or on broader "innoculation" via employment programs and drug rehabiliation?
The headline says "Murder is like a disease"
oh who am i kidding no one under 35 still reads slashdot...
In the book "Connected" by Christakis and Fowler, it is argued that violence (but also hapiness, depression, etc) spreads through social networks. So if a friend of your friend was involved in either side of a murder, chances increase dramatically that you will, too. Your emotional states and their associated beliefs and actions are contagious, first and foremost to those around you that know you, then those who know them, and so on. The analogy with a disease, jumping from host to host through social networks, is quite adequate.
disclaimer: I am a you row pee'n
"might potentially" and "perhaps, one imagines" don't sound like scientific conclusions to me. Perhaps they do to you. Liberal arts major?
Scruting the inscrutable for over 50 years.
The first step is admitting that you are powerless over your disease. Join Murderer's Anonymous today!
lead poisoning is contagious?
Yes. LIKE. L-I-K-E...!!!
It does NOT say : "Murder is a disease"
Are you that daft to not understand the difference? Retarded? Thick?
I never really thought that was not understood.
We want to save money, for example. In business, we want to lose less money so, in food production, they add preservatives or use ingredients with longer shelf lives. The consequence of this falls to the consumer and back to society as a whole as it deals with increases in health problems such as diabetes. The "blame" is on the individual but also on society but also on the suppliers who make these decisions... because they want to save money.
We want to earn a living, as another example. When the establishment doesn't wish to allow outsiders to participate in the market, markets of other colors are born and developed.... you know, like grey and black markets. ALL markets of all colors and tones require defense and enforcement. The white markets are supported, defended and enforced by the established government. The other markets use other means and most often, by gangs and the like.
The development of organized crime which I described above also has other negative impacts on society. Among these are the glorification of the lifestyle in art. We see it every day through our comical portrayal of pirates [the high seas, wooden ship variety] and we see it in more modern ways as well. But the crimes against people afftected by unregulated (and even regulated) killing and other violence takes its toll on the hearts and minds of the people who live among these events. As death and killing becomes more frequent and more expected, the notion of defending one's self with deadly force becomes increasingly more acceptable. And the very definition of "defense" also twists itself into convenient shapes to suit the motivations and interests of those doing the killing and violence.
We have all sorts of behaviors which require regulation. The restriction or limitation of market participation, for example, leads to crime. We saw it in alcohol prohibition. We saw it in religious freedom restrictions. We see it today with more contemporary drugs. But we are also seeing it in other markets as well. The content publication industry finds itself incredibly threatened by digital technologies in that there is no medium to hold the content and therefore they aren't exactly a publication in the classical sense of the word. But nevertheless, we see the same patterns... government support, defense and enforcement. And it most certainly stems from the few trying to hold onto their territory and to prevent others from participating in the markets they have controlled.
To say murder is "like a disease" is to fail to see the over-all pattern of human behaviors... the causes which lead to effects which lead to more causes and more effects. Of course that comparison begins to break down somewhat when you determine which disease(s) murder is most similar to and which it is not though the generalities tend to hold true. But the root cause of both disease and of murder is human behavior and human nature.
Human nature is best overcome by law and regulation. It is really as simple as that. If someone says "what about God?!" Then you are simply saying "religious law" instead of just law.
people in intense poverty, with no hope of escape, and virtually no access to mental health services are a little more prone to violence.
Man, I wish it was my job to gather pointless stats of the obvious.
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How else would you explain why Greece (which undeniably had a much worse economic crisis) has a lower murder rate than the USA?
-Vastly smaller population
-More homogenous population/culture
-Different culture
-Lack of gangs and drug cartels from around the world
-Fewer people in poverty and smaller gap between have/have nots.
But we're all exactly the same right? Cause differences dont matter....
that said, it has nothing to do with an economic downturn or cultural response to it. you people are extrapolating string theory from someones random observation about apples falling. it's a simple study of one city, one with a traditionally higher than average crime rate..it's Jersey. what do you expect? No one likes Jersey. Seriously though. We dont go grab our guns and kill people because of recessions. That's a BS line of thought. People with the economic means (or incentive like a job) to leave a bad place for a good place tend to do so. This leaves behind a population of people without said means. Said people have a disproportionately higher crime rate. It's like having a weak solution of acid, nearly harmless by volume, and concentrating it by evaporating off the water til a single drop will melt your face off.
The guy who said the election was rigged won the presidency with the second-most votes.
Maybe that's why he put "disease" in quotes, which is a way of indicating that a term isn't being used precisely. You could read it as "Murder is not the problem, per se, but rather it is a symptom or outcome of other problems" and it would not only make perfect sense, it would actually reflect what the person was obviously trying to say.
Too much truth for anyone to handle.
I saw a frontline special not long back about an epidemiologist that put that same theory into motion. He thought if you could just stop the violence, these areas would economically develop because people wouldn't be so afraid to move their businesses there. He created a program that tried to be police neutral (as to gain the trust of the people on the street). The group basically walks the streets and tries to keep an ear to the street. When violence has occourred, they do what they can to stop that violence from turning into murder, which in turn would turn into several retaliatory murders. They've been very successful in bringing down the violence, not sure if his theory on economics has been fruitful yet.
"using analytic software typically used by medical researchers to track the spread of diseases" you miraculously discover that murder spreads like disease.
I'm betting that if you used analytic software typically used by:
(forestry) researchers that you would discover that murder spreads like (animal) populations.
(pick something) researchers that you would discover that murder spreads like (pick something) populations.
Funny getting a concealed permit in NJ is next to impossible. In other recent news they're talking about the high crime rate in Chicago another city known for not allowing concealed weapons. Rather than study the problem, how 'bout letting the honest, law abiding citizens carry legally and watch the crime rate drop drastically as it has in other places? Places that allow private, honest, law abiding citizens that pass background checks to carry weapons have drastically lower crime rates. All the liberal, leftist, gun controlling areas that won't let someone have the right to defend themselves have higher crime rates. Statistics prove this. Stop wasting time and money researching murder as a disease and just let people exercise their rights and the rest will take care of itself.
Disease is caused by microbes, murder is caused by macro-organisms. Makes sense there would be similar patterns.
I live in a majority spanish neighborhood and there's really no murder problem, the last murder was some white guy who killed his girlfriend, it's usually domestic violence related shit with spanish people...but over in the black section of the city...oh fuck last year there was some guy running around with a pump shotgun blowing people's heads off in the street, random murders every week, non-fatal shootings every day. blacks are like muslims, when there's just a few mixed in with civilized people they're ok but as soon as they gain critical mass the bloodshed begins. sorry, it's the truth.
Some people are just asking to be killed and the only thing keeping them alive is this silly law that says you can't kill them. I think that maybe every 10 years or so we should just legalize murder for a month or two. Let's give everyone the opportunity to go out and whack somebody. I'll bet that 99.99% of the people who get killed will be people that the world will be better off without.
I could see how this could be seen as pattern. Justice is expensive, jobs hard to get, people are you have money. Your desperate. Unless the person is civilized and has sense of strong morality, it doesn't matter if they have a gun, knife or sword, their more likely do something they can do with bare hands.
A really sick and sad problem. People saying ban the gun should realize that gun owners generally are responsible people. They went though alot trouble to get a their weapon. These Licenced gun owners sometimes have to go through alot trouble paper work, background checks (some places) to own and maintain a these gun. Thugs on the street just steal them, buy in black market. Volience on the streets are done by the desperate, stupid or twisted.
People in the US, maybe more than Century ago, had more moral values and far more civilized than they are now. Killing unfortunately in this day and age is easy, we (generally) grew up in safe environments. Who going expect some thug or crazy attacking us and trying kill us?
Murder is a social disease, one that too easy get away with. Going jail (sometimes) makes those people become even more sick not wanting fit in society depending on where you go. Its a sad world.
Murder is caused by mental problems in the widest sense, which are caused by poverty, social conflicts, and "true" mental illness, etc. So it is not at all surprising that it works and spreads like a disease.
I always said: A murderer needs a *therapy*! Not prison! He/she needs *help*! Not hatred! The latter (prison/hatred) will only cause MORE murder to happen.
So: Your choice, fuckers! Do you want more murder? Hm? Because what you're doing right now shows that you clearly *love* for more murder to happen! (Or unfathomable stupidity and ignorance.)
... make me think of Redjac?
File under 'M' for 'Manic ranting'
In the sciences, writers are expected to be truthful about the limitations of their conclusions.
This gives know-nothings the opportunity to quote them out of context and misinterpret those statements.
Come on... this is Criminology 101 - Crime and criminal actions are the symptoms of anger, hopelessness, unmet expectations, and the lack of accessibility to comfort reasonable to the actor.
...And why does there need to be an NRA and not a NRPGA?
I'm glad you continued your comment after this line. I read "NRPGA" as a merger of the National Rifle Association and the Pro Golfing Association and immediately wondered:
The possibilities are fantastic!
In the US the situation is radically different, and not just because of the culture. There are almost as many guns as people there,
Yeah, bullshit. [citation required].
I love it when Europeans speak about our country - it doesn't take them long to open their pieholes before they show themselves to be profoundly ignorant. Like when Jeremy Clarkson gets up and talks about "fat americans" - except we have a lower obesity rate than the UK by a wide (pardon the pun) margin.
Gun ownership in our cities is extremely low because laws tend to be toughest in them, permits are hard to get ahold of, and people you share living space with, like roommates, tend to not appreciate having a gun around. Gun ownership tends to be highest in the least populated areas, and used mostly for recreation, hunting, or in some cases, protection from wild animals (bears, for example.)
Make sure you exclude military and police weapons, by the way.
Please help metamoderate.
They found that "homicide clusters" in Newark, as researchers called them, spread and move throughout a city much the same way diseases do. Murders, in other words, did not surface randomlyâ"they began in the city center and moved in 'diffusion-like processes' across the city."
I think that's called "white Flight."
It's typical Negro behavior, that's easy. But the hard part is, how do we punish the whites who notice?
http://newarknj.areaconnect.com/statistics.htm
It bothers me for my black friends and I hate to be one of those guys, but when I watch the news it's often black male youth committing the crimes around my town. If you look at this Newark's demographics, it is over 53% black, less than 27% white, with other races mixed in at small amounts. Is this more of the poor black on black crime problems?
So... if someone murders me, I'm then more likely to go on and murder in the future? D:
Don't just stand there, get that other dog!
Is there no better use for research funding than to study the self-evident and report the obvious?
It is obvious to you that murder acts like a disease? What is self-evident about it?
Don't know about the above poster, but it's obvious to me.
Subject to same patterns because it spreads by the same method: people through their contacts & travels. The spread of murder, second hand cars and fad collector-card games probably all follow a pattern vaguely like disease.
Are you a football player by chance? Or are you just being obstinately stupid? "Might potentially" and "perhaps, one imagines" means "more study is warranted".
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What is this world coming to when University of Michigan students have to go to Newark to study murders? We used to rock the murder numbers! - HEX
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There might be some use in this if it led to an accurate predictive formula for preemptive intervention, but I see nothing about that in TFA
TFA says
..so that police might potentially identify problem areas as they are emerging—or perhaps, one imagines, before they emerge.
I never said that it was a scientific conclusion. But it sounds like this stud could, potentially, lead to an accurate predictive formula. Of course it might not. But it seems to warrant further study. My point was TFA indicates it could lead to a prediction, something the OP fails to see in TFA.
All right, here's your goddamn citation.
I was genuinely expecting there to be more guns than people in the US. But it looks like 1:1.
Why do I suspect the Univesity of Michigan has a lot of access to google groups and is delivering, well budget, for it? Murders DO CLUSTER when they are schizophrenic in origin, by natural mechanisms already exposed there. You can search for an algebraic-like formulation in one of the posts. Their model MUST MATCH the theory per force. Danilo J Bonsignore
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Parts of Detroit are warzones the police won't enter, and India has a horrific murder rate. It's just not tracked in the lower castes. The world is a far, far worse place than you think it is...
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