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0 pointscbsmith4y ago0 comments

Murder can absolutely be a crime of opportunity. I think you're limiting your thinking of murder to premeditated cases where someone selects a target and then does whatever they need to do to get that target, and it didn't matter where that target was.

Let's assume for a moment that that was actually the case... wouldn't an area with a high murder rate be indicative of a lot of murder victims in the area, rather than murderers? I mean, if someone is murdered in New York City, and proximity to other people doesn't matter, it would follow that the murderer is just as likely to be in Cheyenne, WY as NYC. ;-)

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giantg24y ago· 2 in thread

"Murder can absolutely be a crime of opportunity."

Can, but not usually. It's more likely to be a crime of passion.

80% of murder victims knew their attackers.

"I mean, if someone is murdered in New York City, and proximity to other people doesn't matter, it would follow that the murderer is just as likely to be in Cheyenne, WY as NYC. ;-)"

You're conflating necessary means to commit a single occurrence with population level causes. I'm questioning whether population density is a cause of murder. Which I don't see why it would be.

cbsmithOP4y ago

I'm not sure about the 80% number, but I know the number is certainly high.

> Can, but not usually. It's more likely to be a crime of passion.

Crimes of passion require opportunity for that passion. They tend to not occur with people you've not been in the vicinity of. If you're in a more densely populated area, you're more likely to be in the vicinity of more people and know more people. It's not necessarily causal, but it is an emergent statistical phenomenon.

> You're conflating necessary means to commit a single occurrence with population level causes. I'm questioning whether population density is a cause of murder. Which I don't see why it would be.

The narrative is that the political leadership is encouraging/enabling/whatever criminals, not victims, who reside in the area. If you are arguing that geography doesn't impact the distribution crime, then the victims would be spread throughout the country.

It's not that population density causes murder, but it affords more opportunity.

I think we all understand that murderers are much more likely to know and live near their victims. It should not be surprising that more densely populated areas would have a higher murder rate. What is surprising is when the less densely populated areas have the higher rate.

giantg24y ago

"It's not that population density causes murder, but it affords more opportunity."

I still don't think this opportunity explains the higher rate, at least not a 3-5x difference. Opportunity is only one small part. I would think that socioeconomic factors are the bigger issue, and that some predictors or correlated metrics might be more common in cities.

I get that someone in a denser area is going to come into contact with potential situations more often. But when we're talking about decades of opportunity to be exposed to such a scenario, I would expect the difference to be negligible as the exposure becomes an eventual given.

The claim that someone in the city knows more people is a little suspect. You can live in a small town and know hundreds or thousands of the people in the small town(s) near you. Everyone knows everyone, being in your neighbor's business, and can lead to a lot of gossip, opportunity/drama.

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