Violence in England and Wales: does media reporting match the data?
BMJ 2019; 367 doi: https://doi.org/10.1136/bmj.l6040 (Published 29 October 2019) Cite this as: BMJ 2019;367:l6040
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As Geoffrey Pearson documented in his book, subtitled "A history of respectable fears",[1] the idea of a peaceful past is illusory, at least as far as published reports are available.
The last sentence of his BMJ editorial [2] 30 years ago was, "That the recorded incidence of violence is on the increase may show not that society is falling apart but rather that we live in an increasingly orderly society that tolerates criminal injury far less than in the uncivilised past."
1 Pearson G. Hooligan: a history of respectable fears. London: Macmillan, 1983.
2 Pearson G. The roots of violence. BMJ 1988; 297: 1352-3.
https://www.bmj.com/content/bmj/297/6660/1352.full.pdf
Competing interests: No competing interests
Dear Editor,
Humphreys et al (2019) set out a convincing case for whether trends in violence are moving in one direction or another and the rationale for using multiple sources of data when understanding trends in violence. However, while the authors state that “it is important to consider all the data before labelling the problem a national emergency”, they, ironically, do not even mention another source of information that is largely ignored when considering violence - ambulance call-out data.
Previous research, my own included (Boyle et al., 2015; Sutherland et al., 2017), has shown that ambulance call-outs for violence are a unique source of information that captures events not recorded in police crime data, or at different times of the day, and typically at a much higher volume than Emergency Department or hospital admissions data (see Figures 6, 7 & 12 in Sutherland et al., 2017: 37-40). As such, ambulance data may offer avenues to undertake preventative work if it captures events that would otherwise be missed in police or ED data. More importantly, if we are to build a complete picture of violence, we need to use all the sources available to us. I would strongly urge the authors to include ambulance data in any future work on this topic and would be happy to contribute.
Dr. Alex Sutherland
Boyle, A., Taylor, A., Giacomantonio, C. and Sutherland, A. ‘Using ambulance data to reduce community violence: critical literature review’, European Journal of Emergency Medicine, 23(4):248-252. http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/26629765
Sutherland, A., Strang, L., Stepanek, M., Giacomantonio, C. and Boyle, A. (2017) Using ambulance data for violence prevention: technical report. Santa Monica, CA: RAND Corporation. https://www.rand.org/randeurope/research/projects/ambulance-data-injury-...
Competing interests: No competing interests
People React to Changes rather than Absolute Levels
Dear Editor,
People are poor judges of absolute levels but keen observers of change - a somewhat weakened element of our more animalist past, where observing change in the immediate environment was critical to survival. Hence, it matters little to people that, while there may be a local increase in violence in recent years, that the overall regional or national rates are down over a period of decades. It's difficult to appreciate, whilst being mugged, that your situation may be part of an aberrant peak on a declining trendline.
The authors jump too quickly in assuming that fears, founded or unfounded, "...may increase people’s concerns about safety and encourage them to adopt protective behaviours, such as carrying weapons, with the unintended effect of increasing rates of violent injury." Protective behaviors include a wide range or responses, such as altering time & place of travels, increasing situational awareness, increasing home and business security, etc. In the hierarchy of protective behaviors, from avoidance to self-defense (fighting), resort to the latter marks a failure in the former precautions against systematic crime but may be a valid response to random crime. When burglaries are up, locks, cameras and dogs can help address such systematic crime. But when gang violence spills beyond intra-gang participants to include the public, prudent and sensible precautions may include attitudinal and physical preparation for self-defense. This manner of thinking has been assessed by some as a "uniquely American" way of thought and behavior, but the dismissal of self-defense as a valid response to violence may be the more rare reaction by a subset of a limited number of societies today.
Crime data, both violent and property, have been trending down in the USA for decades, while the gun stock has risen steadily to 423 million firearms in civilian hands in 2019. Gun control advocates argue that, with a declining crime and violence rates, it's the NRA in collusion with gun manufacturers that are pumping up false-fears to increase gun sales. At the same time, a increase in crime and violence has been attributed to the rise in number of guns. So crime and violence are dropping - you don't need a gun. But more guns has led to an increase in crime and violence - you shouldn't have a gun.
So yes, it's hard to find accurate numbers on crime and violence when levels are both increasing a and decreasing to suit those who hope to restrict access to, and use of, weapons for self-defense.
Competing interests: No competing interests