tennessee number 1 in violent crimes?

[vontar]

This seems a bit slanted.

 

This was sent to me on FB,

 

1. Tennessee

> Violent crimes per 100,000: 643.6

> Poverty rate: 17.9%

> Pct. of population with bachelor's degree or higher: 24.3%

> Property crimes per 100,000: 3,371.4 (10th highest)

 

Just doesn't seem right.

 

http://www.usatoday.com/story/money/business/2013/10/05/most-dangerous-states/2925679/

[macville]

I couldn't find the info on how that breaks down by county. Because I bet if you eliminated Shelby county, TN would drop towards the bottom. It's just like Cook County giving IL a bad name. Get outside that county and IL is a nice place to live. Or NY, or CA, etc.

[Monkeyman2500]

Me and the wife saw this last night on the news. I was wondering the breakdown myself.

[jgradyc]

I couldn't find the info on how that breaks down by county. Because I bet if you eliminated Shelby county, TN would drop towards the bottom. It's just like Cook County giving IL a bad name. Get outside that county and IL is a nice place to live. Or NY, or CA, etc.

I saw a similar article back last spring. I can't remember for sure, but I think it was murder rates and TN was pretty high up. I adjusted the figured to exclude Shelby and we dropped way down the list. Sorry I can't remember the specifics, but we were top ten (maybe 7 or so?) and dropped to mid-30s without Shelby County.

[jcoosi]

What's the old saying " One bad apple spoils the bunch "

[Guest 6.8 AR]

That is a clip from a piece of propaganda that circulated several
years ago. Don't believe any of it. I think it was posted around here
back when it was first published.

[Guest Lester Weevils]

Looks like similar to a thread a couple of years ago. At that time I looked up the fbi stats that the "violent crime" stat was calculated from, and if you do the math without tallying aggravated assault, TN falls down into the middle of the pack, and the "typical suspects" states get the top numbers.

Therefore I made a theory that TN has a definition of aggravated assault different from many other states. In TN you can be practically be guilty of aggravated assault if a little old lady sees your gun printing and gets real scared. Which ain't a "violent crime causing physical injury".

Or alternately, maybe TN really does have lots more bloody aggravated assaults than any other state, but doesn't seem likely.

[Guest PapaB]

On its website, the FBI instructs readers to avoid comparing state violence because rankings tend to be simplistic and ignore factors that influence crime, as well as the different ways crimes are measured and reported.

 

They're comparing apples and oranges. Different States define certain crimes differently. Some states call an assault aggravated only when a weapon is used to commit the assault (such as a stabbing), some states only require the weapon be visibly present (such as punching someone while holding a knife) and still other states only require you have a weapon on your person, or claim to have a weapon during the assault.

 

We've also seen in the FBI crime stats that some of the worst jurisdictions don't report all their stats (some don't report any).

 

Tennessee's ranking is more an indicator of the honesty in crime reporting by our law enforcement agencies, and the dishonesty of reporting by some other states.

[Guest Lester Weevils]

I may be remembering wrong, but apparently in TN you can commit aggravated assault by making a threat, or even "act in a threatening manner" while armed. IOW, an "assault" that doesn't even involve physical injury. Which in other states might be called brandishing or other names? Edited October 7, 2013 by Lester Weevils

[Pain103]

Well reporting standards are slightly different then the laws. If I were to say I'm going to punch you in the mouth and didn't actually use the physical force I could be charged with assualt but the report would be classified as intimidation. Also reporting standards also says an item use as a weapon to committ an assault is to be classified as an aggravated assault. But the item say might not classify as deadly weapon or cause enough bodily injury to be charged under law as aggravated assaulted.

I don't know anything about the other states' reporting standards to compare them to ours. But I would think there is some way they are evened out like a standard way of reporting from their state standard into NIBRS. So just knowing how our reporting standards are if the agg assault category is the one causing the most problem I wouldn't worry that people are consistently being beaten to a pulp or shot at. I'm surprised our robbery totals aren't higher. There are tons of drug related robberies that happen daily and we have to report that as a true robbery even though they stole the dopeman's drugs and iphone.

[Guest Lester Weevils]

Thanks Pain103 for the explanation.

 

There was a long thread in the past, on a newspaper article, where the reporter had tallied the various FBI categories to come up with TN appearing so violent, but I despair of finding the thread.

 

As best I recall, the aggravated assault stat skewed TN so high in a comparative ranking, but maybe I'm remembering it wrong.

 

Because murders were not "drastically out of line" in the TN ranking, one would suspect that if an unusually high number of violent assaults involving weapons are happening in TN-- Then this ought to have tilted up the murder stats-- Unless either Tennessee victims are unusually damage-resistant, or alternately Tennessee attackers are unusually ineffective. :) But dunno really.

Edited October 7, 2013 by Lester Weevils

[TripleDigitRide]

Bogus or not, violent criminals should be put to death immediately after being found guilty. No second chances for violent criminals.

[Jesse]

If everyone was nice like me. Nobody would ever be murdered. But we cant all be cool like me. :)

[Guest nra37922]

Remove Memphis from the equation and I bet we drop out of the top 15

[Dustbuster]

Well reporting standards are slightly different then the laws. If I were to say I'm going to punch you in the mouth and didn't actually use the physical force I could be charged with assualt but the report would be classified as intimidation. Also reporting standards also says an item use as a weapon to committ an assault is to be classified as an aggravated assault. But the item say might not classify as deadly weapon or cause enough bodily injury to be charged under law as aggravated assaulted.

I don't know anything about the other states' reporting standards to compare them to ours. But I would think there is some way they are evened out like a standard way of reporting from their state standard into NIBRS. So just knowing how our reporting standards are if the agg assault category is the one causing the most problem I wouldn't worry that people are consistently being beaten to a pulp or shot at. I'm surprised our robbery totals aren't higher. There are tons of drug related robberies that happen daily and we have to report that as a true robbery even though they stole the dopeman's drugs and iphone.

Fwiw stats are also manipulated to minimize or maximize the end result. A home invasion with 5 deaths can count as a robbery only or 5 homicides.so don't believe the stats as the gospel. Former mnpd chief ronal serpas was a master of stats in more ways than one...most stat compilers respond to the person who hired them.... The mayor. Increases in violent crime make the chief look bad, increases make certain hoods look bad also for reason. Fudged stats may also help agencies or municipalities get more fed funding to help fight the "increase" in crime. Stats are a necessary Jekyll and Hyde.
I often wonder if Memphis classifies mv deaths as homicides....


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk 2 of course it ate my spelling.

[TMF]

67% of statistics are made up right on the spot.

[Guest TresOsos]

Leave it Memphis.

[Dirtshooter]

I agree with TripleDigitRide, My philosophy has been if the perp is proven guilty either hang him/her at dawn next morning with all the TV and radio crews present a mandatory order by the Govenor. I guarantee crime rate will drop drastically. Personally I don't think there should be prisons at all, I believe there should be two forms of punishment, caning and hanging. The kid that spray painted the car several years ago in Singapore I believe and all the hooplah about how caning was barbaric but I bet he ain't ever even thought about spraying another car. If a guy gets a DWI now he loses his driving license, more than likely loses his job, then his wife leaves him and all this could have been solved with a proper caning. He could be back at work in a few days and I bet you he would not be caught DWI again. I know some would say that this is too harsh, but I bet it would work. Look at all the money we would save by not having any prisons, we could have nice state parks put in their place. Paul Harvey said we have the highest percentage of our population in prison, that in itself shows it doesn't work.

[Dustbuster]

67% of statistics are made up right on the spot.

aint that a fox news thang LOL?

[Jonnin]

This seems a bit slanted.

 

This was sent to me on FB,

 

1. Tennessee

> Violent crimes per 100,000: 643.6

> Poverty rate: 17.9%

> Pct. of population with bachelor's degree or higher: 24.3%

> Property crimes per 100,000: 3,371.4 (10th highest)

 

Just doesn't seem right.

 

http://www.usatoday.com/story/money/business/2013/10/05/most-dangerous-states/2925679/

 

Poverty rate may not account for cost of living here.  Depends on who did it and what metrics were used, but you can live like a king in parts of TN on wages that would not get you a box in the gutter in CA or NY.

 

Violence per person in a fairly low population / mile state is skewed.  Look at it in terms of incidents per day and TN is NOT a contender.  Look at it in terms of per 100 people, and it jumps up.   Chattanooga has been feeling like it was getting to be a "bad" city yet the actual number of shootings this year so far barely rival a week of what went down when I lived in atlanta...

 

Higher education is a problem here.  This is tied to the ability to do well on low wages, point #1.  Many see the effort and costs of a degree as not worth it.

 

Property crimes are the same as violence --- when you count incidents, we look pretty good.  When you count incidents per x people, it looks bad again. 

 

So basically 4 numbers that say the same 2 things -- 1) our cost of living is low and 2) we have a higher than average % of criminals or some very active repeat offenders.

[DaveS]

Every single morning, I wake up and watch Channel 5 News. Every single morning they report that at least 3 people had been shot over night. What the hell?

 

DS