Re: Widely different reports of prison rape between UK and US
On 4 Aug 2005, at 7:10 pm, Gary Denton wrote: I keep looking into this and every time somebody does an international report there are different results. There is a problem of people reporting crime and of definitions. For example: Homicide rates in the U.S. far exceed those in any other industrialized nations. For other violent crimes, rates in the U.S. are among the world's highest and substantially exceed rates in Canada, our nearest neighbor in terms of geography, culture, and crime reporting. Among 16 industrialized countries surveyed in 1988, the U.S. had the highest prevalence rates for serious sexual assaults and for all other assaults including threats of physical harm. (Understanding and Preventing Violence 1993) Someone at Lew Rockwell - a hard conservative/libertarian site, also came to much the same conclusion - the crime rate data is screwed up so you can't get conclusive results on how gun ownership rates effect crime. 'Washington DC's homicide rate of 45.8/100,000 is more than a hundred times that of the capital of the European Union, Brussels.' http://www.ojp.usdoj.gov/bjs/homicide/homtrnd.htm [usdoj.gov] http://www.benbest.com/lifeext/murder.html#world [benbest.com] According to http://www.ojp.usdoj.gov/bjs/homicide/hmrt.htm the US homicide rate in 2002 had declined to about 5/100,000 from a peak of around 10/100,000 in the 1980s and 1990s. According to http://www.scotland.gov.uk/stats/bulletins/00119-27.asp the homicide rate in Scotland in 1997-1999 was 1.98/100,000 and in England Wales was about 1.45/100,000 and the USA rate was 6.26/100,000. The EU member states average was 1.7/100,000. -- William T Goodall Mail : [EMAIL PROTECTED] Web : http://www.wtgab.demon.co.uk Blog : http://radio.weblogs.com/0111221/ One of the main causes of the fall of the Roman Empire was that, lacking zero, they had no way to indicate successful termination of their C programs. -- Robert Firth ___ http://www.mccmedia.com/mailman/listinfo/brin-l
Re: Widely different reports of prison rape between UK and US
From my blog I had a link to a London commentary: How Blair's War on Terror differs from Bush's Britain follows the law. Almost every significant aspect of the investigation to bring the London terrorists to justice is the opposite of Bush's war on terrorism. From the leading role of Scotland Yard to the close cooperation with police, the British effort is at odds with the US operation directed by the Pentagon. Just months before the London bombings, upon visiting the Guantánamo prison, British counter-terrorism officials were startled that they did not meet with legal authorities, but only military personnel; they were also disturbed to learn that the information they gathered from the CIA was unknown to the FBI counter-terrorism team and that the British were the only channel between them. The British discovered that the New York City Police Department's counter-terrorism unit was more synchronised with its methods and aims than the US government was. Gary Denton Easter Lemming Liberal News Digest http://elemming2.blogspot.com On 8/4/05, Adrian Howard [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: On 4 Aug 2005, at 19:56, Ronn!Blankenship wrote: [snip] Perhaps apropos of the subject line, from CNN this morning concerning the recent bombings in London and showing some differences between UK and US reporting of crime in their own words: http://www.cnn.com/2005/US/08/04/london.bombings.briefing/ index.html [snip] See http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk/4746835.stm a mildly different perspective. Adrian -- ___ http://www.mccmedia.com/mailman/listinfo/brin-l
Re: Widely different reports of prison rape between UK and US
I keep looking into this and every time somebody does an international report there are different results. There is a problem of people reporting crime and of definitions. For example: Homicide rates in the U.S. far exceed those in any other industrialized nations. For other violent crimes, rates in the U.S. are among the world's highest and substantially exceed rates in Canada, our nearest neighbor in terms of geography, culture, and crime reporting. Among 16 industrialized countries surveyed in 1988, the U.S. had the highest prevalence rates for serious sexual assaults and for all other assaults including threats of physical harm. (Understanding and Preventing Violence 1993) Someone at Lew Rockwell - a hard conservative/libertarian site, also came to much the same conclusion - the crime rate data is screwed up so you can't get conclusive results on how gun ownership rates effect crime. -- Gary Denton http://www.apollocon.org June 23-25, 2006 Easter Lemming Blogs http://elemming.blogspot.com http://elemming2.blogspot.com ___ http://www.mccmedia.com/mailman/listinfo/brin-l
Re: Widely different reports of prison rape between UK and US
At 01:10 PM Thursday 8/4/2005, Gary Denton wrote: I keep looking into this and every time somebody does an international report there are different results. There is a problem of people reporting crime and of definitions. For example: Homicide rates in the U.S. far exceed those in any other industrialized nations. For other violent crimes, rates in the U.S. are among the world's highest and substantially exceed rates in Canada, our nearest neighbor in terms of geography, culture, and crime reporting. Among 16 industrialized countries surveyed in 1988, the U.S. had the highest prevalence rates for serious sexual assaults and for all other assaults including threats of physical harm. (Understanding and Preventing Violence 1993) Someone at Lew Rockwell - a hard conservative/libertarian site, also came to much the same conclusion - the crime rate data is screwed up so you can't get conclusive results on how gun ownership rates effect crime. Perhaps apropos of the subject line, from CNN this morning concerning the recent bombings in London and showing some differences between UK and US reporting of crime in their own words: http://www.cnn.com/2005/US/08/04/london.bombings.briefing/index.html -- Ronn! :) ___ http://www.mccmedia.com/mailman/listinfo/brin-l
Re: Widely different reports of prison rape between UK and US
On 4 Aug 2005, at 19:56, Ronn!Blankenship wrote: [snip] Perhaps apropos of the subject line, from CNN this morning concerning the recent bombings in London and showing some differences between UK and US reporting of crime in their own words: http://www.cnn.com/2005/US/08/04/london.bombings.briefing/ index.html [snip] See http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk/4746835.stm a mildly different perspective. Adrian ___ http://www.mccmedia.com/mailman/listinfo/brin-l
Widely different reports of prison rape between UK and US
- Original Message - From: William T Goodall [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: Killer Bs Discussion brin-l@mccmedia.com Sent: Monday, August 01, 2005 6:59 PM Subject: Re: Gulags http://www.spr.org/en/academicarticles/odonnell.html Why is it that an aspect of prison life that appears to be so tightly woven into the prisoner's experience in the United States is not to be found in any concentrated form in the UK? I've followed this discussion, and it is interesting that this one report's findings was accepted without any thought to cross referencing. So, I decided to do that. First, almost by coincidence, the Justice department has released the first official survey of rape in US prisons. http://news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=storyu=/nm/20050731/us_nm/rights_rape_dc_1 There were less than 4000 reported cases of inmate-on-inmate rapes last year. That translates into about a 0.2% probability for a person in prison. The report itself indicated that this number was low, giving a number of reasons why prisoners would not be forthcoming about being raped. So, I'll not pretend that the US number is low. But, this report indicates that the reported rape rate in US prisions is lowwhich can be compared to the survey results in GB. Unless one can show that there is not significant underreporting in surveys in GB, like there is in the official US report, then one needs to consider that the differences are the differences when one compares apples and oranges. Second, there is the question of the more polite British society. Well, for a more polite society, the violent crime rate is very highsignificantly higher than the US. Looking at the Ecconomist report: http://www.economist.com/displayStory.cfm?Story_ID=513031 one sees that the British report having experienced violent crime at twice the rate seen in the US. There is a greater than 5x difference in the rates of car theft. One might ask, but what about official reported numbers? They are about the same. It's interesting that the officially reported violent crime rate and the survey crime rate in the US are about the same, while the survey crime rate in the UK is 2x higher than the official police number. Officially reported rape rates have been changing substantially in both the US and the UK...in different directions. In the US, it's fallen from about 0.25% to about 0.05% between the mid-70s and 2003 (the last reporting year. In GB, I only have numbers going back to '95, but during that time the officially reported rape rate increased from .009% to .025%. Clearly the gap is rapidly shrinking. All this is occuring even though the demographics for the UK doesn't show the second peak in the 10-25 age range that the US does. Since young males are responsible for much of the crime, this alone could be responsible for about a 10% difference in the crime rate. In short, the numbers do not lead one to easy conclusionsexcept the obvious one, prisoners are hesitant to complain about being raped in prison. Dan M. ___ http://www.mccmedia.com/mailman/listinfo/brin-l
Re: Widely different reports of prison rape between UK and US
On 4 Aug 2005, at 2:01 am, Dan Minette wrote: - Original Message - From: William T Goodall [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: Killer Bs Discussion brin-l@mccmedia.com Sent: Monday, August 01, 2005 6:59 PM Subject: Re: Gulags http://www.spr.org/en/academicarticles/odonnell.html Why is it that an aspect of prison life that appears to be so tightly woven into the prisoner's experience in the United States is not to be found in any concentrated form in the UK? I've followed this discussion, and it is interesting that this one report's findings was accepted without any thought to cross referencing. So, I decided to do that. It's a report by a criminologist published in a criminology journal with footnotes and everything! First, almost by coincidence, the Justice department has released the first official survey of rape in US prisons. http://news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=storyu=/nm/20050731/us_nm/ rights_rape_dc_1 There were less than 4000 reported cases of inmate-on-inmate rapes last year. That translates into about a 0.2% probability for a person in prison. The report itself indicated that this number was low, giving a number of reasons why prisoners would not be forthcoming about being raped. Whereas this report admits that it is completely flawed and more or less worthless. So, I'll not pretend that the US number is low. But, this report indicates that the reported rape rate in US prisions is lowwhich can be compared to the survey results in GB. Unless one can show that there is not significant underreporting in surveys in GB, like there is in the official US report, then one needs to consider that the differences are the differences when one compares apples and oranges. Second, there is the question of the more polite British society. Well, for a more polite society, the violent crime rate is very highsignificantly higher than the US. Looking at the Ecconomist report: http://www.economist.com/displayStory.cfm?Story_ID=513031 And this has *nothing to do with prison rape at all* -- William T Goodall Mail : [EMAIL PROTECTED] Web : http://www.wtgab.demon.co.uk Blog : http://radio.weblogs.com/0111221/ The three chief virtues of a programmer are: Laziness, Impatience and Hubris - Larry Wall ___ http://www.mccmedia.com/mailman/listinfo/brin-l
