[quote=“gum”]
[quote=“MiG”]Are you saying that the murder rate would be higher if it weren’t for the emergency room? If so, does that mean that the attempted murder rate is much higher? Surely a crime that needs advanced trauma care to save someone would be reported by the ambulance attendants, doctors, nurses, right?
Well? Are attempted murder rates climbing like crazy?
Nope.
Bad logic, clouded by your ideology.[/quote]
Yes our murder rates would be much higher if our medical system had stagnated since 1970. As would our death rates from any other cause of trauma, or diseases such as heart disease, cancer, etc. Most people accept that the death rate from cancer and heart attacks is much less than it was in 1970. Would you not expect the death rate from violent trauma to have dropped as well? Or has all of medicine advanced in the past 40 years, except trauma care which has stood still for some unexplained reason? I think you have demonstrated bad logic, clouded by your ideology.
I don’t have an ideology, other than an affinity for the truth and an instinctive revulsion toward those who ignore, bend, or flat out deny the truth. Argue against ideas, not an alleged ideology.
I would be delighted if putting money into social programs and education would decrease our crime rate, and if a soft and rehabilitative approach to criminals would turn them around. Experience has shown that this does not work. A small percentage of our population is complete scum. The best solution would be to lock them up until they are too old to harm anyone.
Ignoring what is right and wrong and just focusing on the costs, take a look at the total lifetime costs of our mollycoddling approach to criminal justice, versus the up-front cost of jailing someone for 20 years. The math would look like this: imprisoning someone for 20 years costs a few million dollars. Letting them run loose on the streets costs a few hundred thousand dollars in police services, a few hundred thousand dollars in insurance claims, a couple of million for long-term care for the guy whose brain the criminal bashed in, a few hundred thousand in legal aid, probation officers etc, and who knows how much money spent preventing, repairing, or replacing all the things destroyed or stolen by the criminal over all of those years. When you look at the total cost to society in dealing with repeat offenders, the most cost-effective approach is long-term incarceration.[/quote]
Um, I just asked a simple question, which you have ignored.
If trauma care is the cause of a declining murder rate, it should result in a higher attempted murder rate. Unless doctors and nurses and ambulance drivers are in on the liberal conspiracy to under-report crimes as well.
But you can reply to this with another long post, ignoring this flaw in your logic. Just like you did in a previous thread, and just like you have already (twice) in this one.