Тег: Statistics

There aren’t actually that many rapists

Voluntarist

There aren’t that many violent people

Sometimes it seems that there are many people prone to violence all around us. Almost every day in the news, you can see how someone beat, maimed, or even killed someone else. Perhaps you often encounter various kinds of hooligans and “gopniks” on the streets. Therefore, it is difficult to even imagine how to fight violence if so many people commit it. However, this is a quite deceptive perception that does not correspond to reality. In fact, there are very, very few people prone to violence, and therefore, by applying certain strategies, the problem of violence is entirely solvable. Now we will perform a detailed calculation of the actual number of violent offenders to ensure that there really are not that many of them in society.

The peculiarity of acts of violence is that, in their visibility, they far outpace all other events. Millions of different events happen every day, but it is exactly a few cases of violence that end up on the front pages of news resources and on television broadcasts. Hundreds of thousands of people live beside you, leading their ordinary lives, and you don’t even notice them. On the other hand, you will easily notice a dozen hooligans whose behavior will naturally stand out strongly among everyone else. You see them; you don’t see the other people. That is the whole point. In reality, violent offenders and the acts of violence they commit are very, very few on the scale of society as a whole; it is simply that acts of violence are among the most noticeable deeds.

How does this assertion relate to real data? Let’s look at the statistics of violent crimes in Russia. Non-violent crimes do not interest us, as they are not related to the infliction of direct physical harm to a person or forced coercion. Material damage can be fully compensated, including obtaining compensation from the perpetrator himself by applying various reputational and financial sanctions, and moral harm can be avoided by not maintaining relationships with people who might inflict it (of course, there are situations where a person is forced to interact with someone against their will, but here everything again boils down to forced coercion itself). Only the infliction of physical harm and forced coercion are real problems. Furthermore, our topic is the determination of the number of violent offenders specifically, and not just dishonest and unscrupulous people.

In 2020, 2,044,221 crimes were registered in Russia. Of all crimes, 1.53% are murders (7,695), intentional infliction of severe physical harm (20,019), kidnapping (411), and rapes (3,535). Another 0.26% of crimes are robberies (5,280). Let’s also add 2.7% threats of murder or infliction of severe physical harm (55,223). Of course, this is not the infliction of physical harm itself, but we will consider these acts as failed attempts to commit violence by people prone to it. And finally, 1.66% of crimes consist of intentional infliction of moderate health damage (28,185) and battery (5,716). In total, about 6.1% of crimes are violent in nature [1].

We find that on average, 1,393 crimes were registered per 100 thousand people. Of these, 85 crimes are violent. Of course, far from all acts of violence are registered. This may include domestic violence, small fights, and many other cases. It would be quite reasonable to multiply this number by 4. I made this choice based on the results of a study by the Institute for Law Enforcement Problems at the European University, which discusses how many people actually report to law enforcement agencies and for how many reports a case is initiated. Unfortunately, the study does not have such a clear division of crimes by category as in the case of official crime statistics, so I will assume that about 25% of violent crimes fall into these statistics, based on the percentage of initiated cases for assault (55% of assault victims report to the authorities, and cases are initiated for 44% of reports) [2].

This gives us 340 acts of violence per year per 100 thousand people. The number may seem too small because some violent offenders commit violence frequently and regularly (for example, a bad parent may beat their child, or a bad husband may beat his wife every day). Therefore, for 1 act of violence, we will take all violent actions of one specific person toward another specific person, especially since the repeated commission of similar acts of violence by one person against another in official judicial proceedings will most likely be registered as one crime, and therefore will enter the statistics as only one crime. Out of 852,506 identified criminals, 492,107 (57.7%) had previously committed crimes. The statistics do not specify the number of previously committed crimes; most likely, in reality, 1 violent offender commits more than 2.36 acts of violence on average, but due to the lack of data, we will accept exactly 57.7% of acts of violence as those that do not increase the total number of violent offenders, but only indicate which of them committed violence again. Additionally, it is worth noting again that the vast majority of crimes you notice are non-violent in nature (most often they relate to the economic sphere), whereas we are considering exclusively the commission of acts of violence.

As a result, we find that 144 violent offenders are discovered per year per 100 thousand people, which is 0.144% of the total population, or 1 person out of 695. A very insignificant number, right? Some might say that in their place of residence there are clearly more violent offenders, however, the statistics we are considering concern all of Russia at once, where crime is distributed very unevenly. For example, if we consider severe violent crimes (including robbery), which make up 1.79% of all registered crimes in the general statistics, in Moscow they account for only 1.13% [3]. The total number of crimes registered in Moscow is 146,559, which is 7.2% of all crimes, which is also a more positive result than for Russia as a whole, since Moscow accounts for about 8.6% of the population.

From these calculations, of course, it is impossible to draw exact conclusions about how many violent offenders we have in society at a specific moment, i.e., at what level their number remains. However, as we have seen, the growth of violent offenders is minuscule, and it should be noted that there is also a decrease in violent offenders; they are no more invulnerable or long-lived than other people. Quite the opposite—violent offenders live less on average, as they more often expose themselves to risk due to active participation in violent clashes, whereas other people will not initiate them and will try to avoid them. The absolute number of violent offenders will, of course, grow with population growth, but their percentage ratio to the total population, all other things being equal, will not change.

Note that this result, revealing one violent criminal per 695 people per year, is the worst possible scenario, since we made a series of assumptions in the worst direction: all threats of murder and infliction of severe physical harm were taken as unsuccessful attempts to commit violence; the number of registered violent crimes was multiplied by 4 because many people do not report to law enforcement agencies or they do not initiate a case upon report; we assumed that 1 violent offender commits 2.36 acts of violence on average, but this would be true only for a single recidivism (whereas many violent offenders have multiple). There are all grounds to assume that the real number of violent offenders is many times smaller. However, it is not possible for us to find it, so we calculated the worst possible value, below which it certainly cannot be.

Another important point to mention is that we considered only cases of inflicting fairly serious physical harm. The least brutal of violent crimes that can be found in official statistics is battery. Of course, there are many more people capable of violence that is very weak compared to battery, for example, hitting someone with a fist once or intentionally pushing. This is the kind of violence you notice most often, which is why it may seem to you, again, that there are many violent people. Of course, this violence is also a problem, but far from such a large one, considering the following factors:

1) such violence is not enough to maintain a violent hierarchy of dominance in society (one form of which in human society is the state), nor can it seriously threaten people in general;

2) it is very easy to control through upbringing, condemnation, as well as the threat of ostracism and other reputational methods;

3) it is easy to defend against using simple means of self-defense, such as pepper sprays;

4) its danger is not that great, so there is no need for a priority struggle against it; it is sufficient only to concentrate efforts on fighting violence exhibited by a small percentage of brutal violent offenders, and weak violence can be dealt with later.

From everything we have now considered, a simple conclusion can be drawn—real violent offenders are not that many; they make up a very tiny percentage of the population. This means that the deterrence, and in perspective the complete eradication of violence, is a completely achievable goal, which clearly does not face the problem that there are too many violent offenders and therefore we cannot deal with all of them.

Sources:

1. State of crime in the Russian Federation for January – December 2020: https://мвд.рф/reports/item/22678184/

2. Crime and victimization in Russia: https://enforce.spb.ru/images/analytical_review/irl_rcvs_memo_29.10.pdf

3. Departmental statistics for January – December 2020: https://epp.genproc.gov.ru/web/proc_77/activity/statistics/result?item=58390629

What do you think regarding the statistics published by PLUM, according to which losses from cartel agreements exceed spending on antitrust policy? What do you think about PLUM in general? Has it gone downhill?

Ultra-sexy dragon

I’ll start from the end. The channel you are asking about is called “Platinum Thoughts of Young Leftists.” The theses proposed for consideration are indeed the platinum thoughts of young leftists. So why should I think that the channel has gone downhill? On the contrary, it has finally achieved harmony of form and content; it is wonderful.

But seriously, one unsuccessful article or series of articles does not yet write off a channel, especially if it is the product of collective efforts.

On the channel PLUM-TV, several notes were published with examples of how cartel agreements harm consumers, and how state antitrust measures benefit consumers. At the same time, it is not difficult to provide examples of how cartels fail to comply with their own agreements for reasons obvious in terms of economic theory (it is profitable for each participant to break the agreement). It is also not hard to find examples of how state antitrust measures harm consumers.

PLUM concludes from this that the state is a quite viable tool if it is properly tuned. Proponents of AES conclude from this that facts are simply events interpreted through one theory or another, statistics are the result of processing many facts using a theory on how facts should be processed, and the results of statistical research are simply an emotional plea in a political struggle, but by no means an argument in a dispute over which theory is correct—since in selecting countless events into what is called a fact, a certain theory is already being applied, meaning that proving a theory using facts is a distortion. PLUM concludes from this that AES is a faith, not a scientific theory, insofar as it is so deaf to facts. Proponents of AES point out that mathematics is also deaf to facts, describes its own little models and generally doesn’t care whether perfect circles exist in reality. This, however, does not prevent it from being successfully applied to real life—though not to everything and not blindly.

In general, this is a long-standing dispute, many spears have been broken, and generally, it is clear that both induction and deduction should be applied carefully. As for whether the state should be given a chance to improve, or whether it should be razed to the ground, I have touched upon this repeatedly in my previous posts. For example, you can refresh your memory with the post on under what circumstances libertarians might consider their teaching a false idea.