PUTTING CRIME INTO PERSPECTIVE: THE CHANCES OF DYING VIOLENTLY—OR FROM OTHER CAUSES
One final way to grasp the big picture involves weighing the relative threats posed by different types of misfortunes. The chance of being harmed by a criminal needs to be compared to the odds of being hurt in an accident or of contracting a serious illness. The study of comparative risks rests on estimates of the likelihood of experiencing various negative life events. One purpose of studying comparative risks is to determine what kinds of threats (crimes, accidents, or diseases) merit greater precautionary measures by both individuals and government- sponsored campaigns. (A list of calamities could be expanded to include plagues, fires, and natural
disasters such as floods, tornadoes, earthquakes, and hurricanes.) Once the chances of being stricken by dreaded events are expressed in a standardized way, such as rates per 100,000 people, the dangers can be compared or ranked, as they are in Table 3.2. The data is derived from death certificates filed in all 50 states and the District of Columbia. It is collated by the National Center for Health Statistics into a National Vital Statistics System (Xu et al., 2014).
The nationwide data assembled in the first column of Table 3.2 pertains to people of all ages, both sexes, and varying backgrounds. The statistics in column 2 indicate that overall, about 800 out of every 100,000 Americans died in 2010. That year, the number of deaths from natural causes (diseases) greatly exceeded losses of life from external causes (accidents, suicides, and homicides). In particular, heart disease, cancer, and stroke were by far the leading causes of death in the United States at the end of the first decade of the twenty-first century. As for other untimely demises, more people died from accidents (including car crashes) than from homicide (murders plus deaths by “legal intervention”—justifiable homicides by police officers as well as executions of death row prisoners). In fact, more people took their own lives through suicides than lost them due to violence unleashed by others (homicide was added to the bottom of the list and did not rank in the top 10 leading causes of death). Tentatively, it can be concluded that most people worry too much about being murdered and ought to focus more of their energies toward their health, eating habits, and lifestyles instead.
However, this inspection of comparative risks surely doesn’t seem right to some readers. For exam- ple, dying from Alzheimer’s disease might be a very real and scary prospect to aging baby boomers, but it is off the radar screen for most millennials. The useful- ness of comparing the mortality rates assembled in the second column of Table 3.2 to each other is limited. The reason is simple: The data in the second column of the table ignores the key factor of age. Column 2’s figures about the causes of death describe the dangers faced by the “average” American, a social construct that each person resembles to some extent. But the actual odds a specific individual faces may differ tremendously from this fictitious composite norm.
V I C T IM I Z AT ION IN T H E UN I T ED S T AT ES : AN OVE RV I E W 89
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Besides age, the most important determinants of mortality rates are sex, race/ethnicity, social class, and place of residence. To make more mean- ingful comparisons, some of these key variables, especially age, must be controlled, or held constant (see Fingerhut, Ingram, and Feldman, 1992). Death rates for young adults appear in the third column of Table 3.2.
Comparing the rates in column 3 to those in column 2 reveals some sharp differences. For exam- ple, of all Americans between the ages of 20 and 24 (of both sexes and all races), only 87, not 800, out of every 100,000 died in 2010. For people in their early twenties, homicide was a real threat—the third leading cause of death—after accidents (espe- cially involving motor vehicles) and suicides. Few young adults died from heart attacks, cancer, strokes, influenza, or other diseases like HIV/ AIDS (NCHS, 2013). Also, although this is not shown in the table, within every age group, being murdered loomed as a greater danger to boys and men than to girls and women, and to racial minori- ties as compared to members of the white majority. These observations raise an important issue. Besides comparative risks, victimologists have to also study
differential risks. The perils facing different groups (in terms of age, sex, race/ethnicity, social class, and other factors) can vary dramatically. Dif- ferential risks will be scrutinized in the next chapter.
Another problem with risk comparisons is that the ranking represents a snapshot image of a fluid situation. Thus, Table 3.2 captures a moment fro- zen in time—the relative standing of dangers of accidents, diseases, and lethal violence in 2010. But it cannot indicate underlying trends. The chances of something terrible ending a life can change for everyone substantially over the years. That is why yearly data must be assembled into tables and graphs in order to spot trends.
For example, an encouraging downward trend in fatal accidents took place during the 1980s. Deaths due to plane crashes, falls, drownings, fires, and poi- sonings all dropped during that decade, probably as a result of greater safety consciousness, new devices such as smoke detectors and car seats for children, and new policies such as mandatory seat belt laws and tougher penalties for drunk driving. By 1990, the risk of dying in a car crash had fallen to its lowest level since the 1920s, according to a study by the National Safety Council (Hall, 1990). During the