Monday, April 14, 2008

halving the homicide rate

hillary clinton unveiled an ambitious $4 billion proposal to halve the homicide rate in major american cities. the plan involves adding 100,000 new police officers and targeting gangs, drug markets, and illegal gun trafficking.

you might recognize (all of?) these elements from the 1992 clinton crime bill. this is great news for my teaching, since i can now dust off a killer essay question on the anticipated impact of 100,000 officers on the perceived certainty of apprehension and punishment. i'm also intrigued by the weapons interdiction aspects of the proposal. if you click on the chart above, you'll see how gun homicide rates have fluctuated wildly relative to non-gun rates over the past three decades.

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

You have got to be kidding REALLY??? WOW. I get and understand the coupe fighting on how their sone should be raised, I mean families have been doing it for years and I have heard where to raise them, what religion, and even what school they go to but never what street gang your child is going to be long. First of all why would you want to expose your child to that kind of lifestyle? Why not just go ahead and send him out to street to play alone he may be better off. You should want more for your child and want them to be better than you, if you cant do that than give them to a family that whos biggest argument to raise is religion or does he go for cookie monster and oscar the grouch. In my opinion to expose a child to that lifedtyle you are dooming them from the start and teaching them hate and a life of restuation and prison... in my opnion the same a child abuse you are not giving that child a fair shot at a real life. not the crappy one you did.