Reply #54: you're getting warm...

[theanarch]

...a few years back i read an article of a statistical survey which suggested countries that experience a war are likely to have ten years of higher-than-average violent crime rates...doesn't seem to matter who started it or won, it's the experience itself that triggers the higher rates...a lot of it has to do with a "war" mentality that makes violence as a means of conflict resolution more acceptable, which is internalized by the population and expressed domesticly. Given that the US instigates a major war about every 12-15 years, these results should not be surprising. Otherwise, crime (in general) tends to follow economic trends (up in periods of rising unemployment and income insecurity) and demographics (spiking when baby boomers and boomlets reach 13/4 to 25--by which time they've either grown up, are in jail, or dead).