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Re:Portugal’s radical drug policy is working. Why hasn’t the... by r00fus on Wednesday December 06, 2017 @12:47AM (#15858847)
Hmm - do you have a cite on your claims about the UK? It's hardly fair to ask for citations when you give none.
Re:Portugal’s radical drug policy is working. Why hasn’t the... by crdoconnor on Wednesday December 06, 2017 @03:55AM (#15859633)
From what I remember the year handguns were banned was the year Harold Shipman's 100 odd patient deaths were reclassified as murders, leading to a spike that was characterized by the NRA as an increase in murder caused by banning handguns.
Re:Portugal’s radical drug policy is working. Why hasn’t the... by zaarn on Wednesday December 06, 2017 @02:54AM (#15859345)
I would naively assume that better healthcare means that people live longer and thusly the exposure to cancer risk runs for longer.

Effect: More people get cancer

Re:Portugal’s radical drug policy is working. Why hasn’t the... by toomanybeersies on Wednesday December 06, 2017 @01:28AM (#15859030)
Strictly speaking, Mexico has the lowest cancer rate (not death rate) of the OECD, so the USA should emulate them for healthcare.

On the flip side, Denmark has the highest cancer rate, so they must be doing something wrong.

The alternative explanation is that people in Mexico generally die before they can get cancer.

Re:Portugal’s radical drug policy is working. Why hasn’t the... by stretchwithme on Wednesday December 06, 2017 @02:29AM (#15859239)
Or could be cancer is not detected as well in Mexico before death or in autopsies. And perhaps Denmark is much better at that.
Re:Portugal’s radical drug policy is working. Why hasn’t the... by adventured on Wednesday December 06, 2017 @02:32AM (#15859256)
edit: I'd like to see the people downvoting my facts, counter how this doesn't amount to a wave or big surge of crime, these numbers are huge increases in a short amount of time.

---

Crime has seen a huge increase in Britain and it appears set to keep getting worse. Crime in London has increased dramatically. I'm not going to claim that's due to gun laws, however it is factually correct that crime is surging big time.

Acid attacks alone have skyrocketed in the last three years in London, tripling in that time to around 500 annually.

Jul 2017

"Police record 10% rise in crime in England and Wales, with 18% increase in violent crime and significant rise in murder rate"

https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2017/jul/20/official-fig...

April 2017

"Gun crime offences in London surged by 42% in the last year, according to official statistics. The Met Police's figures showed there were 2,544 gun crime offences from April 2016 to April 2017 compared to 1,793 offences from 2015 until 2016."

"Knife crime also increased by 24% with 12,074 recorded offences from 2016 to 2017."

http://www.bbc.com/news/uk-england-london-39578500

Oct 2017

"Violent crime soars by fifth as total offences recorded by police push past five million. ... The data, published by the Office for National Statistics, showed the number of violence against the person crimes logged by police went up by a fifth (19 per cent) to 1.2 million."

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2017/10/20/london-now-danger...

Re:Portugal’s radical drug policy is working. Why hasn’t the... by DanBC on Wednesday December 06, 2017 @05:09AM (#15859928)
> Crime has seen a huge increase in Britain

No, it hasn't. We've seen better recording, different definitions, better detection, and there have been several operations targetting gangs and street violence and weapons.

Importantly: police recorded crime statistics are not reliable, and so we don't use them in the UK. We use the ONS, which doesn't rely on police recording.

> "Knife crime also increased by 24% with 12,074 recorded offences from 2016 to 2017."

Does this only mean wounding using a knife, or does it include people carrying a knife?

We have strict knife laws in the UK, and there have been several police operations targetting people who carry knives. So the figure you quote includes people who were carrying, but not using, knives.

Here's what ONS says: https://www.ons.gov.uk/peoplepopulationandcommunity/crimeand...

> This fairly flat trend continues that seen in recent years, with no significant year-on-year change since the survey year ending March 2014. However, the cumulative effect of this downward trend has seen a statistically significant decrease of 25% in the latest survey year compared with the year ending March 2013. The longer-term reductions in violent crime, as shown by the CSEW, are also reflected in the findings of research conducted by the Violence and Society Research Group at Cardiff University. Findings from their annual survey, covering a sample of hospital emergency departments and walk-in centers in England and Wales, show that serious violence-related attendances in 2016 showed a 10% fall compared with 2015 and continue a generally long-term downward trend.

Re:Portugal’s radical drug policy is working. Why hasn’t the... by mmjaa on Wednesday December 06, 2017 @10:16AM (#15861624)
>knife laws

Solve nothing.

Re:Portugal’s radical drug policy is working. Why hasn’t the... by abiox on Wednesday December 06, 2017 @12:04PM (#15862702)
what do you mean?
Re:Portugal’s radical drug policy is working. Why hasn’t the... by msg3 on Wednesday December 06, 2017 @03:13AM (#15859456)
Funny, I must have missed this massive wave of crime.

From the same Guardian article:

"The policing minister, Nick Hurd, said that crime, as measured by the crime survey, was down by a third since 2010 and by 69% since its 1995 peak."

From the BBC article:

Martin Hewitt, assistant commissioner responsible for territorial policing, said: "Similar to the rest of England and Wales, crime rates in London are rising, but many of these are still at a much lower level than five years ago and are against the backdrop of significant reductions in resources.

Re:Portugal’s radical drug policy is working. Why hasn’t the... by adventured on Wednesday December 06, 2017 @03:18AM (#15859478)
You don't think a tripling of acid attacks, a 20% increase in violent offenses, a 24% increase in knife attacks, a 42% jump in gun offenses - all in such a short amount of time, amounts to a wave of crime?
Re:Portugal’s radical drug policy is working. Why hasn’t the... by pjc50 on Wednesday December 06, 2017 @04:31AM (#15859778)
The acid attacks seem to have been a consequence of loosening regulations on acid sales: http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/politics/government-aci...
Re:Portugal’s radical drug policy is working. Why hasn’t the... by msg3 on Wednesday December 06, 2017 @03:24AM (#15859514)
No.
Re:Portugal’s radical drug policy is working. Why hasn’t the... by adventured on Wednesday December 06, 2017 @03:44AM (#15859585)
Please enlighten as to what would qualify as a wave of crime then, in your opinion.

A 600% increase in acid attacks? A 200% increase in gun offenses? A 70% increase in knife crimes?

Re:Portugal’s radical drug policy is working. Why hasn’t the... by Richs99 on Wednesday December 06, 2017 @03:57AM (#15859639)
A 600% increase in what was a tiny number to start with is not a "crime wave"
Re:Portugal’s radical drug policy is working. Why hasn’t the... by adventured on Wednesday December 06, 2017 @04:22AM (#15859744)
~500 acid attacks annually in London, growing as rapidly as it has been the last three years, is not a tiny number nor a trivial matter.

London has a lot of knife crime. A 24% increase in such a short amount of time is not a tiny increase in that either.

Re:Portugal’s radical drug policy is working. Why hasn’t the... by toomanybeersies on Wednesday December 06, 2017 @05:52AM (#15860127)
So from 80, to 500, in a population of almost 9 million?

That's not to mention that we need to look at numbers in a long term trend, looking at 1 or 2 years of data doesn't show the full story.

Re:Portugal’s radical drug policy is working. Why hasn’t the... by msg3 on Wednesday December 06, 2017 @05:14AM (#15859957)
Something not based on cherry-picking statistics.
Re:Portugal’s radical drug policy is working. Why hasn’t the... by r00fus on Wednesday December 06, 2017 @03:04AM (#15859408)
You show figures for the past year, yet the most recent legislative acts were both 10 (VCRA) and 20 (Firearms act) years ago.

I agree both that you're factually correct and that your data does not at all support your earlier assertion that "banning guns increased gun crime".

So % are increasing, but the overall per-capita UK gun crime and death is still woefully below the good ol US of A as per: https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/world/2016/06/16/gun-vio...

Re:Portugal’s radical drug policy is working. Why hasn’t the... by adventured on Wednesday December 06, 2017 @03:14AM (#15859464)
> I agree both that you're factually correct and that your data does not at all support your earlier assertion that "banning guns increased gun crime".

You just made a mistake there.

I didn't assert earlier that banning guns increases gun crime. Someone else said that.

Re:Portugal’s radical drug policy is working. Why hasn’t the... by croon on Wednesday December 06, 2017 @04:45AM (#15859832)
So you're just presenting random facts that don't relate to the conversation?