No Person Got Shot, Stabbed, Slashed, or Murdered in NYC Monday

[Admiral Yi]

Why the fuck do we care about Europe?

It's a place with rich history and culture, which we are deeply intertwined with by virtue of robust economic, diplomatic, military, and ancestral ties.  Many of their women are very attractive, some of them frighteningly so.  They possess a great deal of high quality art, and some of their cities are aesthetic marvels.  Some of their cuisine ranks among the best in the world, if not the absolute best.

[Valmy]

But no one was making comparisons till you came in blathering about Europe. Like it so much, go back!

Pardon me for targeting what is known to be humanly possible, and not just against own past experience.

Well we have to start somewhere.  REducing NYC murder rate to historic lows is a good start.

[jimmy olsen]

I think it looks like we're doing ok....

http://www.economist.com/blogs/dailychart/2011/10/homicide-rates

When was Afghanistan's last recored year, 1978?

[garbon]

Why the fuck do we care about Europe?

It's a place with rich history and culture, which we are deeply intertwined with by virtue of robust economic, diplomatic, military, and ancestral ties.  Many of their women are very attractive, some of them frighteningly so.  They possess a great deal of high quality art, and some of their cities are aesthetic marvels.  Some of their cuisine ranks among the best in the world, if not the absolute best.

Sorry but that answer has nothing to do with the spirit of my question.

[Gups]

The New York crime rate is really a marvel.  If it really ends up around 400 it will be lowest number of annual murders in NYC since pre-prohibition days.  When you compare the populations that is astounding.  Whatever they are doing I hope every city can.

The trouble is that we don't know why the crime rates are falling. In the UK homicides peaked 10 years ago and then started falling, there were only 550 last year.......in a population of 63m. Most of the other crimes are falling too, even though we are also in the 4th year of economic gloom and despondency, most of the "experts" predicted it would go up with economic hard times 

TAccording to Freakonomics we can thank the legalisation of abortion.

[Richard Hakluyt]

The trouble is that we don't know why the crime rates are falling. In the UK homicides peaked 10 years ago and then started falling, there were only 550 last year.......in a population of 63m. Most of the other crimes are falling too, even though we are also in the 4th year of economic gloom and despondency, most of the "experts" predicted it would go up with economic hard times 

I wonder how much of it's to do with ageing?

It may be astounding for a US city, but it's still way, way too high by European standards.  Germany, all of it, has about 200 murders per year.

Indeed.  Boris always likes that line when plugging London (recently in India) over New York as a city to do business in - we've more bookshops and less murder

Ageing is almost certainly a favourable factor, but the UK population has been ageing ever since the baby boom (largest cohort in the UK was 1963 IIRC, they were 18 in 1981). If ageing was the dominant factor we would have expected a reduction in crime in the 1990s, instead it greatly increased.