{"id":652,"date":"2009-04-01T07:16:06","date_gmt":"2009-04-01T13:16:06","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/crawler\/?p=652"},"modified":"2009-04-01T07:16:06","modified_gmt":"2009-04-01T13:16:06","slug":"is-violence-linked-to-recession","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/clippings\/2009\/04\/01\/is-violence-linked-to-recession\/","title":{"rendered":"&#8216;is violence linked to recession?&#8217;"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a title=\"Creative Commons licensed photo by SoulRider_222 on flickr.com\" href=\"http:\/\/www.flickr.com\/photos\/31019817@N02\/3258971773\/\" target=\"_blank\"><img decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignleft\" src=\"http:\/\/farm4.static.flickr.com\/3508\/3258971773_cb629dbb6c_t.jpg\" border=\"0\" alt=\"Desert Eagle 9mm\" \/><\/a>The <a href=\"http:\/\/www.csmonitor.com\/2009\/0330\/p02s01-usju.html\">Christian Science Monitor<\/a> ran an interesting story earlier this week in which a number of criminologists were consulted about whether recent shootings, murders, and other violent crimes could be linked to the economic downturn in the United States. The paper cites a number of cases that have made the headlines in recent weeks:\u00a0 &#8220;Four Oakland, Calif., police officers shot down. An Alabama man strolling a small town with a rifle, looking for victims. Seven elderly people shot dead at a North Carolina nursing home. And on Sunday, six people, including four kids, died in an apparent murder-suicide in an upscale neighborhood in Santa Clara, Calif.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p><!--startclickprintexclude--> <!--endclickprintexclude--><\/p>\n<blockquote><p>The details in all these cases are still emerging. In most, the exact motive has yet to be determined \u2013 or may never be fully          understood. On a broader level, however, such incidents may be happening more often because an increasing number of Americans feel desperate          pressure from job losses and other economic hardship, criminologists say.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;Most of these mass killings are precipitated by some catastrophic loss, and when the economy goes south, there are simply          more of these losses,&#8221; says Jack Levin, a noted criminologist at Northeastern University in Boston.<\/p>\n<p>Direct correlation between economic cycles and homicides is difficult to prove, cautions Shawn Bushway, a criminologist at the University at Albany in New York. But an economic downturn of this breadth and depth hasn&#8217;t been seen since data began to be collected after World War II, he also points out. &#8220;This is not the average situation,&#8221; Mr. Bushway says.<\/p>\n<p>Still, criminologists do say that certain kinds of violent crimes have risen during specific economic downturns. The recession in the early 1990s &#8220;saw a dramatic increase in workplace violence committed by vengeful ex-workers who decided to come back and get even with their boss and their co-workers through the barrel of an AK-47,&#8221; Mr. Levin says.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p><a href=\"http:\/\/www.csmonitor.com\/2009\/0330\/p02s01-usju.html\">Read more.<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The Christian Science Monitor ran an interesting story earlier this week in which a number of criminologists were consulted about whether recent shootings, murders, and other violent crimes could be linked to the economic downturn in the United States. The paper cites a number of cases that have made the headlines in recent weeks:\u00a0 &#8220;Four [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":17,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[39074],"tags":[29,39116,36,131,133],"class_list":["post-652","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-sightings","tag-class","tag-crime","tag-economics","tag-economy","tag-violence"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/clippings\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/652","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/clippings\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/clippings\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/clippings\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/17"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/clippings\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=652"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/clippings\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/652\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":654,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/clippings\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/652\/revisions\/654"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/clippings\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=652"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/clippings\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=652"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/clippings\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=652"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}