Some debate below about the various parameters which shape social pathologies. One of facts which we are well aware of is that the United States has a lot of homicide compared to other developed countries. But another fact which is also well known is that a disproportionate number of these murders are committed by racial & ethnic minorities, as well as by particular subcultures (e.g., Southerners vs. New Englanders). So I took the state-by-state homicide rate and compared them to the international data for selection nations. Results below the fold….
| State |
Homicide/100,000 |
Nation | Homicide/100,000 |
| Japan | 0.5 | ||
| Hong Kong | 0.55 | ||
| Greece | 0.76 | ||
| Switzerland | 0.92 | ||
| Ireland | 0.95 | ||
| Norway | 1.07 | ||
| Denmark | 1.07 | ||
| New Zealand | 1.12 | ||
| Netherlands | 1.12 | ||
| Germany | 1.16 | ||
| Spain | 1.22 | ||
| Italy | 1.28 | ||
| New Hampshire | 1.4 | ||
| North Dakota | 1.4 | ||
| Maine | 1.4 | ||
| UK | 1.41 | ||
| Canada | 1.49 | ||
| Australia | 1.5 | ||
| Iowa | 1.6 | ||
| Iceland | 1.68 | ||
| Czech Republic | 1.7 | ||
| France | 1.73 | ||
| Slovenia | 1.79 | ||
| Utah | 1.9 | ||
| South Korea | 1.96 | ||
| Hungary | 2.05 | ||
| Delaware | 2 | ||
| Idaho | 2.2 | ||
| Minnesota | 2.2 | ||
| Wyoming | 2.2 | ||
| South Dakota | 2.3 | ||
| Nebraska | 2.3 | ||
| Portugal | 2.34 | ||
| Rhode Island | 2.4 | ||
| Oregon | 2.5 | ||
| Connecticut | 2.6 | ||
| Massachusetts | 2.6 | ||
| Vermont | 2.6 | ||
| Hawaii | 2.6 | ||
| Wisconsin | 2.8 | ||
| Finland | 2.83 | ||
| Washington | 3.1 | ||
| Montana | 3.2 | ||
| Yemen | 3.36 | ||
| India | 3.44 | ||
| West Virginia | 3.7 | ||
| United States | 4.28 | ||
| Colorado | 4.4 | ||
| Bulgaria | 4.46 | ||
| Kansas | 4.5 | ||
| New Jersey | 4.5 | ||
| Ohio | 4.5 | ||
| New York | 4.6 | ||
| Indiana | 5.1 | ||
| Georgia | 5.11 | ||
| Virginia | 5.2 | ||
| Pennsylvania | 5.2 | ||
| Oklahoma | 5.3 | ||
| Florida | 5.4 | ||
| Alabama | 5.6 | ||
| Alaska | 5.6 | ||
| Poland | 5.63 | ||
| Kentucky | 5.7 | ||
| Tennessee | 5.9 | ||
| Illinois | 6.1 | ||
| Texas | 6.1 | ||
| Missouri | 6.2 | ||
| North Carolina | 6.2 | ||
| Arkansas | 6.4 | ||
| Michigan | 6.4 | ||
| California | 6.7 | ||
| Georgia | 6.9 | ||
| South Carolina | 6.9 | ||
| Arizona | 7.2 | ||
| Nevada | 7.4 | ||
| Mississippi | 7.8 | ||
| Moldova | 7.81 | ||
| New Mexico | 8.9 | ||
| Maryland | 9.4 | Ukraine | 9.4 |
| Belarus | 9.83 | ||
| Lithuania | 10.29 | ||
| Latvia | 10.39 | ||
| Estonia | 10.73 | ||
| Louisiana | 12.7 | ||
| Mexico | 13.02 | ||
| Russia | 20.15 | ||
| District of Columbia | 35.8 |
I would be surprised by Finland…but then, I know that they’re crazy!!! In any case, somewhat less than half perpetrators of homicide are white. Assuming that 3/4 of the 45% of homicide perpetrators who are white are not minorities (i.e., Hispanic/Latino), and renormalize the rate by the smaller population (0.70 of Americans are non-Hispanic whites), you can crank down the rate of homicide for this demo to 2.06 or so. That’s basically in the high range for a European country. I suspect that this rough figure is correct since New Hamphsire is almost totally non-Hispanic white & from the least “rowdy” of the four Anglo-Saxon folkways which settled this nation, and it is somewhat below the projected homicide rate for non-Hispanic whites overall (it seems likely that whites from the American South & West are more violent than those from New England or the Upper Midwest judging by higher imprisonment rates).
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