# Is the rate of violence in the U.S. really greater now than, say,100 and a 150 years ago? **URL:** \ **Category:** Factual Questions\ **Created:** [March 7, 2018, 9:03am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-the-rate-of-violence-in-the-u-s-really-greater-now-than-say-100-and-a-150-years-ago/810174 "2018-03-07T09:03:28Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 16\ **Page:** 2
**Author:** ![Arkcon](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/96bed5/32.png) [@Arkcon](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Arkcon)\ **Post date:** [March 8, 2018, 8:46pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-the-rate-of-violence-in-the-u-s-really-greater-now-than-say-100-and-a-150-years-ago/810174/21 "2018-03-08T20:46:05Z")
On the day I was born, one century earlier, the newspaper for my hometown had a first page story – a man, distraught at the death of his wife, stood in the center of the street across from where my grammar school would be built, and he drank carbolic acid, dying there. I dredge up that anecdote whenever anyone says that horrifying things are a recent addition to newspapers, and the world in general. My hometown was not a major population center when I was a child, much less a century before I was born, so its not true that “tiny towns were more peaceful” as many people say. Bad shit happened in the “good ol’ days”, and the media widely reported on these sorts of events. Its what the media does, its what its there for. The carbolic acid is a nice twist. A 50% solution of phenol, drunk in public. That man decided to die in a lot of pain, for a very long time, probably convulsing in pain, and coughing up blood. I don’t think its as easy for a layman to buy these days, probably for just this reason. ---
**Author:** ![Elendil\_s\_Heir](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/7cd45c/32.png) [@Elendil\_s\_Heir](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Elendil_s_Heir)\ **Post date:** [March 8, 2018, 9:03pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-the-rate-of-violence-in-the-u-s-really-greater-now-than-say-100-and-a-150-years-ago/810174/22 "2018-03-08T21:03:36Z")
> [@SamuelA](#): > > …The Civil War was an act of treason and sedition committed by tens of millions of people… The Confederacy’s entire population was estimated at just over nine million people, not counting slaves, so this is a bit of an exaggeration. ---
**Author:** ![RickJay](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/bb73d2/32.png) [@RickJay](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/RickJay)\ **Post date:** [March 8, 2018, 9:26pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-the-rate-of-violence-in-the-u-s-really-greater-now-than-say-100-and-a-150-years-ago/810174/23 "2018-03-08T21:26:34Z")
> [@Arkcon](#): > > On the day I was born, one century earlier, the newspaper for my hometown had a first page story – a man, distraught at the death of his wife, stood in the center of the street across from where my grammar school would be built, and he drank carbolic acid, dying there. Baseball star Chick Stahl did the same thing, in 1907. He was found staggering out of his hotel room having drunk carbolic acid, and he swiftly died. Why he suddenly chose to kill himself remains a mystery to this day. Of course it was a major news story. ---
**Author:** ![constanze](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/f9ae1b/32.png) [@constanze](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/constanze)\ **Post date:** [March 9, 2018, 9:03am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-the-rate-of-violence-in-the-u-s-really-greater-now-than-say-100-and-a-150-years-ago/810174/24 "2018-03-09T09:03:31Z")
> [@Corry\_El](#): > > We should probably use murder as a proxy for ‘violence’ over long periods. Otherwise it’s a lot harder to find comparable stats over time or even define what ‘violence’ encompasses. Good start, because murder was usually considered a crime, when brawling or wife-beating was accepted. Still leaves the Problem that killing a black Person or Native American was mostly not considered a murder at all. ---
**Author:** ![constanze](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/f9ae1b/32.png) [@constanze](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/constanze)\ **Post date:** [March 9, 2018, 9:09am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-the-rate-of-violence-in-the-u-s-really-greater-now-than-say-100-and-a-150-years-ago/810174/25 "2018-03-09T09:09:25Z")
> [@RickJay](#): > > 1. Transit. If you wanted to get away with a crime in the 19th century, in many respects it was ludicrously easier than today; there weren’t many photographs around, nothing in the way of formal identification, limited communications, no fingerprints, not much in the way of paper trails. I think there’s another aspect especially for the Wild West: not only could murderers (bank Robbers etc.) easily escape, hide, and re-surface, outside the town itself, it would be easy to hide a murder. A Person/ group rides away from a town or fort to prospect for Gold, hunt for pelts or start a farm. Next spring, they don’t come back. Did they die of exposure? Starvation after breaking a leg? Eaten by grizzly bear? Killed by Native Americans after starting a fight? Killed in their sleep by Native Americans having a grudge after a fight with another Group? Found Gold but returned to a different town? Found Gold and where killed and robbed by a criminal? Still today, the big National parks in Western US can easily hide bodies, and wildlife can dispose most traces, if you take the valuables (or throw them into a lake…) ---
**Author:** ![Capn\_Carl](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/838e76/32.png) [@Capn\_Carl](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Capn_Carl)\ **Post date:** [March 9, 2018, 9:31am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-the-rate-of-violence-in-the-u-s-really-greater-now-than-say-100-and-a-150-years-ago/810174/26 "2018-03-09T09:31:54Z")
> [@DSeid](#): > > You may be interested in Pinker’s book “The Better Angels Of Our Nature: Why Violence Has Declined”, briefly discussed [here](https://www.npr.org/2016/07/16/486311030/despite-the-headlines-steven-pinker-says-the-world-is-becoming-less-violent). > > He documents pretty exhaustively that violence has in fact been in a long term decline. “Follow trendlines not headlines” as they say. Pinker’s book might be the best non-fiction book I’ve ever read. And it’s not just the U.S. that has seen this decline in violence. It’s everywhere. We are a violent species, but we’re getting better. ---
**Author:** ![Corry\_El](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/ecae2f/32.png) [@Corry\_El](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Corry_El)\ **Post date:** [March 9, 2018, 3:14pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-the-rate-of-violence-in-the-u-s-really-greater-now-than-say-100-and-a-150-years-ago/810174/27 "2018-03-09T15:14:12Z")
> [@constanze](#): > > Good start, because murder was usually considered a crime, when brawling or wife-beating was accepted. > > Still leaves the Problem that killing a black Person or Native American was mostly not considered a murder at all. In the stats given in Roth ‘American Homicide’ it seems the last statement wasn’t actually true by and large. Statistics of that time do seem to include killings of and also killings _by_ Natives. Again the highest rate given in that book IIRC was for Arizona ca. 1870, 577 per 100,000 including killings _by_ Natives, 171 per 100k not counting Natives. A lot of the killings by Natives were presumably of Natives so no reason to think either stat excludes Native victims. And another section of the book contrasts the violence rate in New England in the 17th century in periods of civil conflict and peace with Natives. So I doubt what you said is generally true, outside of military action v Natives in semi-formal ‘Indian Wars’, though internal warfare is obviously another form of violence broadly speaking. But again the high rate of violence in the ‘Wild West’ in late 19th century of all kinds wasn’t that significant to national stats because so relatively few people, Native and white. As for blacks, if sticking to ‘100 and 150 yrs ago’ that’s post slavery so the issue of how to count the institution of slavery wrt ‘violent society’ doesn’t enter in directly. But it again it seems killings of all races tended to be included in statistics (again separate from military actions v Natives). Whether murders with non-white victims were investigated or punished with the same vigor is a somewhat different question. In fact the super high murder rates reported in parts of the West in 19th century, California particularly, were to a large extent the result of violence between/among ‘anglo’, Native, Spanish speaking and Asian. It’s the reason the rates were so high (for example 230 per 100k in a period in CA in the 1850’s he quotes) rather than transracial crimes not being included. The uncertainty about what % of murders were ever reported then v now is probably at least somewhat more elevated when it came to crimes against or among non-whites I’d grant. But that would probably have been most significant in places which were already very violent by today’s standards. Race probably isn’t that much of a factor in the accuracy of comparing say the NY murder rate in 1896 at the time of ‘The Alienist’ to now’s. They appear to be around the same. If anything the 1896 rate might overstate homicidal violence more compared to now because of the greater likelihood victims of attempted murder dying of their wounds back then, than understate it because more murders weren’t reported then due to racial bias or other reasons. ---
**Author:** ![rbroome](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/838e76/32.png) [@rbroome](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/rbroome)\ **Post date:** [March 9, 2018, 4:09pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-the-rate-of-violence-in-the-u-s-really-greater-now-than-say-100-and-a-150-years-ago/810174/28 "2018-03-09T16:09:47Z")
> [@Corry\_El](#): > > That’s true, especially in recent decades. But OTOH if you tried to track shootings you’d just have a lot more trouble getting comparable figures. Even for murders the stats aren’t likely to be 100% comparable. They are I think though the best way to answer whether there was a _much_ more or less violence in a given place and time. So again Roth gives murder rates in Old West states/territories in the range of 70-577 per 100,000 per year. Medical treatment is obviously not a big factor in the difference between that and current overall US rate something like 5 per 100k/yr. It is worth noting the emphasis on recent decades-as in since the 1990s. Trauma care in the west has undergone a revolution due to all our recent wars. The death rate of people who get sophisticated care, starting in an ambulance, has fallen significantly due to the advances made in Iraq and Afghanistan. So now days just citing the homicide rate must be done carefully. The rate of assault and injury on the other hand is harder to measure but more reliable measure of actual crime. ---
**Author:** ![DSeid](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/dseid/32/20194_2.png) [@DSeid](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/DSeid)\ **Post date:** [March 9, 2018, 4:49pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-the-rate-of-violence-in-the-u-s-really-greater-now-than-say-100-and-a-150-years-ago/810174/29 "2018-03-09T16:49:28Z")
> [@rbroome](#): > > It is worth noting the emphasis on recent decades-as in since the 1990s. Trauma care in the west has undergone a revolution due to all our recent wars. The death rate of people who get sophisticated care, starting in an ambulance, has fallen significantly … Regarding long term trends, of course the technology used to do the killing has advanced too … Back when someone who wanted to kill needed to use a knife there were many more attempts that failed and fewer multiple homicides. The fairly sudden technological advance in weaponry was a large part of what made the Civil War so bloody for example. It also plays into mass shootings: the number of mass shootings has not increased but [the number killed in each mass shooting has increased](https://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2017/10/04/mass-shootings-more-deadly-frequent-research-215678)as the available weaponry has become more … efficient. But of course if one wanted to demonstrate that the decrease in homicides over the last several decades is not just because fewer people die due to better medical care then one would need to show that there are fewer _nonfatal_ violent crimes as well. This data is actually trivially easy to find and indeed [nonfatal violent crime has plummeted](https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/wonk/wp/2015/12/03/weve-had-a-massive-decline-in-gun-violence-in-the-united-states-heres-why/?utm_term=.662ed0dd5dc0) since the early '90s anyway. ---
**Author:** ![Corry\_El](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/ecae2f/32.png) [@Corry\_El](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Corry_El)\ **Post date:** [March 9, 2018, 9:15pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-the-rate-of-violence-in-the-u-s-really-greater-now-than-say-100-and-a-150-years-ago/810174/30 "2018-03-09T21:15:44Z")
> [@rbroome](#): > > It is worth noting the emphasis on recent decades-as in since the 1990s. Trauma care in the west has undergone a revolution due to all our recent wars. The death rate of people who get sophisticated care, starting in an ambulance, has fallen significantly due to the advances made in Iraq and Afghanistan. So now days just citing the homicide rate must be done carefully. The rate of assault and injury on the other hand is harder to measure but more reliable measure of actual crime. AFAIK this thread is titled ‘rate of violence say 100, 150 yrs ago’ so not emphasizing recent decades. And in recent decades the US crime violent crime rate has a dropped a lot, though more in some places than others. For example back to graph of NY murder rate since 1800, by far the largest change is from 1960’s to 90’s and back down since. Comparatively the differences between most of 19th century and now are much smaller than between now and the early 1990’s. Anyway as was stated, change in the rate of surviving attempted murder doesn’t turn out to change the picture of US crime decline since the 1990’s all that much. It actually could be more of a factor comparing murder rates of 100-150 yrs ago in ‘civilized’ parts of the US to now. Fictional portrayals tend to tell us that even the East was a much more violent, dog eat dog, place then than now. But raw murder stats don’t necessarily support that, whereas the US West had a relatively tiny population then. And today’s stats in comparison to stats from long settled parts of the US in the 19th century, relatively similar to start with, could actually be significantly flattered relatively by the higher survival rate of shootings now. Under-reporting of murder would probably cut the other way to some extent, but besides the subconscious tendency to treat period piece movie and TV depictions as actual history, how do we know a statistically significantly greater proportion of murders were entirely swept under the rug in big US cities in the 19th century than now? ---
**Author:** ![md2000](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/73ab20/32.png) [@md2000](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/md2000)\ **Post date:** [March 9, 2018, 10:02pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-the-rate-of-violence-in-the-u-s-really-greater-now-than-say-100-and-a-150-years-ago/810174/31 "2018-03-09T22:02:06Z")
_Freakonomics_ argues that a possible factor in the recent drop in violent crime is Roe v Wade. The pregnancies that were typically aborted would often produce offspring who would grow up in those disadvantaged situations - broken homes, single mothers, poverty, bad urban environments - that produced criminals. Much of the violent crime is committed by men in the 18 to 30 age range; as much of a generation of criminals failed to appear, crime dropped. I would also contest any issue of murder rates and slavery. Remember slaves were someone’s property. Without seeming too callous about the subject - people did not simply kill another person’s slaves willy-nilly. It was if nothing else a very expensive property crime. Slave owners were free to kill their own slaves, and I’m sure some did; but generally, that too was sufficiently expensive that the incidence was (I hope) rarer than Tarantino would have us believe. That’s not to suggest some owners were not non-lethally cruel and sadistic. ---
**Author:** ![Elendil\_s\_Heir](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/7cd45c/32.png) [@Elendil\_s\_Heir](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Elendil_s_Heir)\ **Post date:** [March 9, 2018, 10:45pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-the-rate-of-violence-in-the-u-s-really-greater-now-than-say-100-and-a-150-years-ago/810174/32 "2018-03-09T22:45:13Z")
A great letter on that subject: [To My Old Master - by Shaun Usher - Letters of Note](http://www.lettersofnote.com/2012/01/to-my-old-master.html) ---
**Author:** ![MEBuckner](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/mebuckner/32/2896_2.png) [@MEBuckner](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/MEBuckner)\ **Post date:** [March 10, 2018, 12:18am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-the-rate-of-violence-in-the-u-s-really-greater-now-than-say-100-and-a-150-years-ago/810174/33 "2018-03-10T00:18:53Z")
> [@md2000](#): > > It was if nothing else a very expensive property crime. Slave owners were free to kill their own slaves… Even that was not necessarily the case, at least in theory. From the [1798 Constitution of Georgia](http://georgiainfo.galileo.usg.edu/topics/government/related_article/constitutions/georgia-constitution-of-1798#Article%20IV) (ARTICLE IV, Section 12): > [@](#): > > Any person who shall maliciously dismember or deprive a slave of life shall suffer such punishment as would be inflicted in case the like offence had been committed on a free white person, and on the like proof, except in case of insurrection by such slave, and unless such death should happen by accident in giving such slave moderate correction. The [1845 Constitution of Texas](https://tarltonapps.law.utexas.edu/constitutions/texas1845/a8): > [@](#): > > [The legislature] shall have full power to pass laws which will oblige the owners of slaves to treat them with humanity; to provide for their necessary food and clothing; to abstain from all injuries to them, extending to life or limb; and, in case of their neglect or refusal to comply with the directions of such laws, to have such slave or slaves taken from such owner and sold for the benefit of such owner or owners…Any person who shall maliciously dismember, or deprive a slave of life, shall suffer such punishment as would be inflicted in case the like offence had been committed upon a free white person, and on the like proof, except in case of insurrection by such slave. The [1861 Constitution of Alabama](http://avalon.law.yale.edu/19th_century/ala1861.asp) (Article VI, “Slavery”): > [@](#): > > The humane treatment of slaves shall be secured by law…Any person who shall maliciously dismember or deprive a slave of life, shall suffer such punishment as would be inflicted in case the like offense had been committed on a free white person, and on the like proof, except in case of insurrection of such slave. None of that is to deny the genuine cruelty and horror of slavery in America. These various provisions are still very far from justice; they have obvious “loopholes” (“unless such death should happen by accident in giving such slave moderate correction”; “except in case of insurrection by such slave”); and the reality on the ground may well have been even worse than the provisions of laws and constitutions would imply. ---
**Author:** ![md2000](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/73ab20/32.png) [@md2000](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/md2000)\ **Post date:** [March 10, 2018, 6:50am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-the-rate-of-violence-in-the-u-s-really-greater-now-than-say-100-and-a-150-years-ago/810174/34 "2018-03-10T06:50:37Z")
Another loophole was, I presume, that slaves could not give testimony against free men in court? So the number of allowable witnesses to malicious behaviour would usually be fairly limited. And as those laws demonstrate, that while the institution of slavery was intact, people practicing it were by no means uniformly cruel and callous, and did not consider slaves not human. they simply considered them lesser humans. (IIRC there’s a Lincoln quote to that effect, something along the lines of “slaves are entitled to freedom too, even if they are lesser than us.”) The original justification for African slavery when enslavement of Europeans was dying out, was that since they were heathens, exposing them to Christianity by taking them from their homeland was doing them good. ---
**Author:** ![furryman](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/furryman/32/99_2.png) [@furryman](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/furryman)\ **Post date:** [March 10, 2018, 6:59pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-the-rate-of-violence-in-the-u-s-really-greater-now-than-say-100-and-a-150-years-ago/810174/35 "2018-03-10T18:59:45Z")
I think that at least part of the problem is how many murders were actually reported in the 1800’s. One of my ancestors vanished in the late 1800’s. Did he starve to death? Was he murdered? No one knows. ---
**Author:** ![Voyager](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/voyager/32/133_2.png) [@Voyager](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Voyager)\ **Post date:** [March 10, 2018, 10:46pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-the-rate-of-violence-in-the-u-s-really-greater-now-than-say-100-and-a-150-years-ago/810174/36 "2018-03-10T22:46:46Z")
> [@Steven\_Estes](#): > > Watching the local news–with its unending series of abductions, rapes, and murders–one gets the impression that America s now a much more violent place than it was, say, a hundred and a hundred and fifty years ago. > Well, it may be. > Or it may just seem to be because there is so much more media coverage. Exactly. Availability is the principle that your estimation of the probability of something depends on how many instances of it you are exposed to. For instance, most people think that the homicide rate is higher than the suicide rate (it isn’t) because homicides get reported in the news and suicides mostly do not. Ditto with the danger of air travel versus car travel. The Bay Area is pretty safe, but it is not hard for the news programs to find four or five crimes to fill out the hour, and if not they use footage of a nasty crime from the other side of the country. So it is not surprising that many people think that their home will be invaded any minute now. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-the-rate-of-violence-in-the-u-s-really-greater-now-than-say-100-and-a-150-years-ago/810174.md?page=1)