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UN Report Reveals Odds of Being Murdered Country By Country
ananyo (2519492) writes "A new UN report (link to data) details comprehensive country-by-country murder rates. Safest is Singapore, with just one killing per 480,000 people in 2012. In the world's most violent country, Honduras, a man has a 1 in 9 chance of being murdered during his lifetime. The Economist includes an intriguing 'print only interactive' (see the PDF) and has some tongue-in-cheek tips on how to avoid being slain: 'First, don't live in the Americas or Africa, where murder rates (one in 6,100 and one in 8,000 respectively) are more than four times as high as the rest of the world. Next, be a woman. Your chance of being murdered will be barely a quarter what it would be were you a man. In fact, steer clear of men altogether: nearly half of all female murder-victims are killed by their partner or another (usually male) family member. But note that the gender imbalance is less pronounced in the rich world, probably because there is less banditry, a mainly male pursuit. In Japan and South Korea slightly over half of all murder victims are female. Then, sit back and grow older. From the age of 30 onwards, murder rates fall steadily in most places.'"
In order to live as long as possible, I have decided to have gender reassignment surgery to become a woman, and I will move to Antarctica and start a utopian lesbian society, since there are no murders there. I haven't worked out the details yet, but it seems like a no-brainer.
This is a hacked account, for which the owner can not be held responsible.
I have lived 2 years in Singapore, and indeed it is a tremendously safe place. Nobody worries about taking a shortcut through an alley, something not done in most western cities. It does mean that my local friends were often uncomfortable when traveling abroad, all countries seem dangerous after you've experienced Singapore.
It may not be a democracy, but we have to admit, they do a lot of things RIGHT. It is a pleasure to live there, as long as you have no political ambitions.
Yes, because the U.N. is known for shoddy science.
The data files include the source of the figures, generally reported by the WHO instead of the national police in those countries where the official figures may be suspect. If there are official complaints about the figures, they'll likely come from the ambassador of Bananazuela who will claim that the figures for his tourist-friendly country are too high.
John
A women may be less likely to be murdered but more likely to be raped.
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This post contains no rudeness or derision of any kind. All arguments are friendly. Terms and exclusions may apply.
The US murder rate is more than double that of the rest of the western world. Despite the four points I listed being the biggest differences between your country and the other Western democracies. Your personal refusal to even consider any possible improvement in that situation is endemic of the problem that causes your chance of being murdered to be more than double that of any other western citizen.
I'm glad you're OK with your odds, after all, you choose them.
What the UN report leaves out is one important factor in the US: about half of the perpetrators and victims of homicide are young African American males, completely out of proportion to their prevalence population; that's what accounts for most of the difference between US and other Western murder rates.
Gun control isn't going to help reduce those murder rates. Nor can those murder rates be explained through racism or bias in the justice system. Until politicians get serious and address this issue, African Americans are going to continue to get killed and locked up at a frightening rate. Unfortunately, our current president has been totally ineffective in doing anything about it.
I have more of a problem with you cherry picking Canada, Australia, NZ, and England, despite those countries having very little in common with the U.S. and causes for violent crime.
The U.S. falls into the category of large, moderately urbanized countries with large open borders to less industrialized countries, high wealth and wealth disparity, and ethnically diverse populations. Most of the western world is not that way at all, and those properties breed the root cause of the majority of violent crime in those countries, which is the illegal drug trade.
Countries that share those features include Russia, Brazil, Mexico, South Africa, and China. Surprise, surprise, those other countries are all at least or much worse off then the U.S. is, despite some having the strictest gun ownership laws in the world (Russia), all having socialized healthcare, and the US. Actually having a pretty good education system for most of the country (not underserved inner-city areas) when reported the same way other countries are.
China is the outlier, in that it does not have either high violent crime rates or a violent drug trade, but my theory is that this is because the vast majority of the country lives in squalor and acts as a buffer to help shield the cities, and those cities have their crime rates dilutes by the shield.
Simple facts are that gun control reduces gun crime but increase violent crime. Education and healthcare raise the standard of living, but don't provide disincentive for crime in the drug trade. You are right about inequality as a facet of this.
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Exactly, which is why you always see mass shootings at gun shows, gun stores, and gun ranges where there's lot of guns, lots of ammunition, and lots of gun-obsessed people.
Thankfully, there are some places where that sort of thing isn't tolerated, like schools, malls, and US Postal offices. Ahh yes, gun-free zones, where violence is a thing of the past.
-- "Government is the great fiction through which everybody endeavors to live at the expense of everybody else."
When I was in US, I was very puzzled at the lack of empathy in public discourse towards prison rape. This was especially surprising since US leads the world in incarceration rate
These are related statistics. They both stem from the idea that criminals, all criminals regardless of crime, are somehow different from regular folks and not deserving of compassion. It's not something that you'll ever hear explicitly stated, but implicitly when people talk about the need to be "tough on crime" and the unshakable faith that ever harsher sentences are the right approach to addressing the problem.
Wait a moment, are you saying that there are people who might ignore the gun-free zone signs and carry a gun anyway? What kind of person would even think of doing such a thing?
But your point is well taken. I think the best way to go is to stop everyone but the police and the military from carrying guns, just like they do in Mexico. Then we could enjoy Mexico's legendarily low violent crime rate right here in the United States.
-- "Government is the great fiction through which everybody endeavors to live at the expense of everybody else."
You have no evidence for that - it's just a nice excuse to make you think that the US isn't as messed up as it is. You also seem to be woefully ill-informed of the diversity in many places in Europe which rivals (or beats) the diversity in many violence-soaked places in the US. So to recap: you are making excuses for your country based on nonsense, in some childish attempt to not have to think about the intrinsic issues in the US which makes it one of the most dangerous countries in the developed world. You do realise you, and those who think like you, are causing harm to the US, right? As you gladly dismiss any criticism as being European propaganda, ensuring the harm continues unabated, just so you can feel all warm and fuzzy on the inside. You're clearly an intelligent person, so I have no idea what happened to you to skew your brain this way.
Damn, your parents really hated you to give you name like 'holophrastic'.
I would also point out that the "US" - commonly condemned in such statistics - is probably the least homogenous country in the world. As such, it's probably useful to look at the state by state rankings, both positively and negatively:
(ranked by deaths per 100k)
1. District of Columbia 30.8 http://www.city-data.com/forum...
-Styopa