This is a list of sources I use in arguing about violence. I’m tired of losing my sources, and having to go hunt them down again, so I will keep them here for easy reference. I will try to keep this list updated as my sources change or I add new ones.
The UNODC figures. They’re out of date but still instructive.
Some enterprising Wikipedian took the UNODC data and put it into an interactive table for your viewing pleasure, so you don’t have to download the data and spreadsheet it yourself like I did.
You’ll note that the UNODC figures for US homicide are lower than the FBI figures. This is because the UNODC is based on “intentional homicide”, whereas the FBI figures roll together intentional homicide with “non-negligent manslaughter”.
I disagree with this guy’s conclusions, but he makes a good graph using the UNODC data: http://extranosalley.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/12/01UNMURDER.bmp
It irks me when people on the gun control side of the issue compare the figures for the United States only with “wealthy countries”. Interesting how the list always cuts off with the United States. There’s a word for this “cherrypicking”. They’re saying that the 100 or so countries lower down on the list don’t matter. This smacks of the ethnocentrism, classism, and, frankly, racism that those of us on the left are supposed to abhor.
Department of Justice Bureau of Justice Statistics.
Home page: http://www.bjs.gov/
Criminal victimization report 2014: http://www.bjs.gov/content/pub/pdf/cv14.pdf This lists stats for all criminal activity, first and foremost violent crime. Unfortunately, it only goes back to 1993. The file names are orthogonal, which makes it easy to look backward in the reports back to 1996. The 2015 report is not out yet, and probably won’t be for some time yet.
Homicide Trends 1980-2008: http://www.bjs.gov/content/pub/pdf/htus8008.pdf This shows that the homicide rate peaked in mid 1991 and has been declining continuously ever since.
Somewhere deep in the depths of the BJS there is a report with a graph of homicide rates from 1980 to 2005, IIRC, by month that shows the peak of our homicide rate happened in July of 1991, and it’s been declining ever since, but I can’t find the damned thing.
I’m not at this point sure where I got that 1985 figure for the peak of violent crime, but it appears I was wrong. I thought the peak of violent crime preceded the peak of homicide, but it looks like it was the other way around. Homicide peaked in 1991, and violent crime peaked in 1993. Interestingly, property crime peaked around 1974, and has been declining more or less continuously ever since. I may have gotten the 1985 figure from /The Better Angels Of Our Nature/, by Steven Pinker, which I’m going to have to reread, and check the references in order to have my ducks in a row. I may have conflated it with some other issue.
FBI
Home page: http://www.fbi.gov/
Uniform Crime Reporting Statistics: http://www.ucrdatatool.gov/ Build your own tables with the FBI data.
https://www.fbi.gov/about-us/cjis/ucr/ucr The Uniform Crime Reporting page.
The expanded data on race, gender, and ethnicity:
Disaster Center
They use the FBI statistics, and boil them down into easy to read tables. The page consists of two tables. The first table is population against total counts, and the second table is population and rates in terms of number/100,000/year. I don’t know where they’re getting the figures for 2013 and 2014 as the FBI doesn’t seem to have published those in final form yet.
FDLE
Florida’s Crime Counts 1971-2014
Again we see the trend. Violent crime peaked in Florida in 1990, so we actually led the nationwide trend in something for a change. Since 1990 the total count of violent crimes has decreased even as the population has increased.
The murder count has hovered around 1000 per year as the population has grown from 13.9 million to 19.5 million. Currently our murder rate calculates out to 5.029/100000/year for 2014, which puts us a bit over the national average.
The Brennan Center For Justice
The nutshell result of this study is “nobody knows for certain.”
National Law Enforcement Officers’ Memorial Fund keeps a list of LEOs killed in the line of duty throughout US history:
UCR preliminary report on 2014 LEO’s killed https://www.fbi.gov/about-us/cjis/ucr/leoka/2014
Back in December of 2013 the NY Post found that we’d had the fewest line of duty deaths among law enforcement officers since 1887. http://nypost.com/2013/12/30/fewest-police-deaths-by-firearms-in-2013-since-1887/
Politifact found half-truths on both sides of the issue:
Factcheck also found half-truths on both sides of the issue:
The Pew Research Center published a study that supports my conclusions. http://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2015/10/21/gun-homicides-steady-after-decline-in-90s-suicide-rate-edges-up/
The NY Times on assault style rifles:
If there is one piece of statistical legerdemain that proves precisely nothing it is this one from our friends at Mother Jones: http://www.motherjones.com/files/ownership-death630.png
The single most important resource I have for discussing violence, violent crime, and homicide is the book /The Better Angels Of Our Nature/, by Steven Pinker. Pinker is smarter than I am, better educated than I am, a better researcher than I am, and a better writer than I am, and his findings in BAON recapitulate my own from 20+ years of spare-time studying the issue. Pinker goes not only into the statistics themselves, but wonkishly deep into how he massaged the data to get to his conclusions.
Pinker’s sources on violence against children:
Finkelhor and Jones, et al:
The bottom line with their research is that crime and violence against children have decreased in every measurable way. Violence of all kinds about children has declined by 2/3 since 1970.
From Pinker, BAON, Chapter 7 section 20: “Jones and Finkelor also showed that during this time the rate of sexual abuse, and the incidence of violent crimes against children such as assault, robbery, and rape, also fell by a third to two-thirds. They corroborated the declining numbers with sanity checks such as victimization surveys, homicide data, offender confessions, and rates of sexually transmitted diseases, all of which are in decline. In fact, over the past two decades the lives of children and adolescents improved in just about every way you can measure.”
In Chapter 7, section 22, Pinker goes into how violence against children has declined to such an extent that people almost have to make up things to protect them from, to the extent that our overprotectiveness has resulted in a virtual straight jacket.
On the effects of environmental lead exposure (updated Feb 2016):
http://www.motherjones.com/environment/2016/02/lead-exposure-gasoline-crime-increase-children-health
On suicide rates: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_suicide_rate
Population data:
On statistics: http://www.statista.com/
Washington Post:
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