We often try to situate ourselves among people whom we consider to be safe - and we usually avoid dangerous people. Happily, and contrary to the image of America as a crime-ridden society, violent crime is statistically down over the last few years, especially for those living in middle-class, mid-western suburbs. But who is dangerous? Stereotypes can be misleading. Consider the following:
From 1976 to 2005, 18- to 24-year-olds – both male and more gentle females – committed homicide at a rate of 29.9 per 100,000. Twenty-five- to 35-year-olds committed homicides at a rate of 15.8 per 100,000. The murder rate for the general population includes both males and females. Inasmuch as males commit nearly 90 percent of all murders, the rate for males in those age groups is probably nearly double the male/female combined rates, which translates to about 30 to 55 murderers per 100,000 males aged 18 to 35. This gives us a baseline murder rate. Can we find demographic subgroups in which the murder rate is either significantly higher, or significantly lower, than this baseline rate?
The homicide rate among veterans of these wars 7.6 per 100,000 – or about one-third the homicide rate for their age group (18 to 35) in the general population of both sexes. But given the gender skew, the homicide rate among veterans is actually about one-tenth of the national average. The marks them as a safe group - perhaps because of strong respect for law and order.
On the other hand, the strongest predictor of whether a person will end up in prison is that he was raised by a single parent. By 1996, 70 percent of inmates in state juvenile detention centers serving long-term sentences were raised by single mothers. Seventy percent of teenage births, dropouts, suicides, runaways, juvenile delinquents and child murderers involve children raised by single mothers. Girls raised without fathers are more sexually promiscuous and more likely to end up divorced.
A 1990 study by the Progressive Policy Institute showed that, after controlling for single motherhood, the difference in black and white crime disappeared.
A study cited in the Village Voice found that children brought up in single-mother homes "are five times more likely to commit suicide, nine times more likely to drop out of high school, 10 times more likely to abuse chemical substances, 14 times more likely to commit rape (for the boys), 20 times more likely to end up in prison, and 32 times more likely to run away from home."
Many of these studies are from the '90s, when the percentage of teenagers raised by single parents was lower than it is today. In 1990, 28 percent of children under 18 were being raised in one-parent homes – mother or father, divorced or never-married. By 2005, more than one-third of all babies born in the U.S. were illegitimate.
That's a lot of social problems in the pipeline. Who's safe? Who's dangerous?
