"A man shot my mommy" lesson here for all of us

[MicroBalrog]

So let me get this right:

1. The property and violent crime rates track almost together. The violent crime rate peaked in 1990, and the property crime rate peaked in 1980, both coming back approximately to their 1968 level.

2. Divorce rates peaked in about 1980s, and has fallen slightly since, but has not dipped past the 1973 level of about 16%. In 1968 the divorce rate was about 12%. I couldn't find a track with crime, but I don't dig charts unless they're obviously screaming in my face, so don't take it as an argument against your point.

3. The marriage rate has been falling, and the amount of single-parent households has been rising since 1950, as well as the fertility rate for unmarried females.

[Perd Hapley]

True. However, a failing family can fail even with both parents firmly in place. I watch this every day with my neighbors.

Oh, knock it off.  No one ever said that two parents make a family perfect.  The point was that family problems (including a lack of one parent) are a major contributor to other problems, such as crime, etc.

[gunsmith]

I'll be printing that off as an object lesson for the next CCW class.


Evil POS needs to be fed through a wood chipper. 

Exactly the lesson I was referring to, not sociozoology.

If yer keys and address are stolen, it may be worse than you think.

[MicroBalrog]

Oh, knock it off.  No one ever said that two parents make a family perfect.  The point was that family problems (including a lack of one parent) are a major contributor to other problems, such as crime, etc.

What was said, again and again, was that the lack of one parent (and specifically the spread of 'broken' families) was one of the main causes of violent crime.

Families with one parent are not inherently broken

[grampster]

There is no single cause for why some people become the way they do.  Life is always complicated.   

I spent 37 years in the insurance business.  That put me into close proximity to thousands of families over the years.  One thing that I noticed was that good solid families produced monsters sometimes.  Miserable, disfunctional families produced some children who turned out to be good, productive people sometimes.  Made me scratch my head more than once during those years.

[Perd Hapley]

Micro, this is what I make of the first three graphs. 

Divorce increasing since the late fifties, more than quadrupled by 1979, dropping slightly over the next 25 years, but still almost four times more common than in 1957. 

Violent crime increasing since the early sixties, more than quadrupled by 1991, then slacking off until it was "only" two and half times more common than in 1960.

Property crimes increasing since the early sixties, until the number tripled in 1981 and again in 1991, then dropping to "only" twice the rate of 1960.

[RocketMan]

Bottom line:  Does young Mr. Myers know right from wrong?   All the dysfunctional family stuff aside, does he know right from wrong?
If he is truly mentally disabled to the point where he cannot make that distinction, then yes, perhaps somewhere along the way the system has failed in that it did not remove him from society (or otherwise deal with the issue so that society was protected).
If he is not mentally disabled to the point where he cannot make that distinction, then spare me the "poor misguided youth" BS.

edited for spelling.

[dogmush]

I'm with Rocket Man

I really don't care why.  Meyers has shown a pattern for increasing violence in his crimes, ending with the death of this woman.  If he could have been rehabilitated, the time is past.  Kill him, or lock him up, but he needs to be removed from society.  Say whatever you want about single parent homes, theere's plenty of evidence to show that at this point, Meyers is very likely to do this again if they let him out. So don't.

As a side note, props goes to Mom, who took on a guy holding a shotgun with a kitchen knife.  That took guts.

[Matthew Carberry]

Crime tracks more closely with poverty than household makeup.  Household makeup has a large effect on income and thus tangentally on crime rates via poverty.

It's the poverty, not the "broken homes".

Married poor couples produce more criminals than married better off couples.

Single poor households produce more criminals than single better off households.

What tracks with both as a factor based almost solely on income is family history and local environment.

Grow up in a high crime area and you are statistically more likely to fall into crime.

Grow up with criminal relatives and cohort and the same is true.

Avoid both, even if in poverty, and you have a better chance.

Marital morality is secondary to actual environment, which is most directly related to income criminologically.