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Originally Posted by ianathuth
People forget when looking at crime in the USA that there are five times as many people living there as in the UK. In general, people in the UK only get to hear about the really brutal multiple killings, etc in the USA or the odd British subject that is murdered whilst on holiday over there. Many over here take these odd events to be the everyday norm and their judgement is even more clouded by TV shows being mainly American and featuring law and order subjects. If you look at violent crime in the USA it has dropped significantly in the last ten to fifteen years and fallen by 50% in the last ten years. One of the main reasons for this was the introduction of tougher sentencing laws in the late 80s.
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I said crime rate (i.e. %) not total number of crimes.
Another thing that helps is that fact that prisons are not as bad as they used to be so that there is a more of a chance that offenders can improve themselves and lessen the chance of them re-offending (the positive way).