Re: Evil Nazis

In article <ftmba5$fsn$1@[EMAIL PROTECTED]
>,
 "Keith F. Lynch" <kfl@[EMAIL PROTECTED]
> wrote:

> cryptoguy <treifamily@[EMAIL PROTECTED]
> wrote:
> > We can look at periods when police forces didn't exist, or were
> > ineffective, to get some notion. Here's an interesting graph:
> 
> I can't see the graph, but my understanding is that murder rates were
> dropping long before there were police, and that the drop levelled off
> once police were introduced.  Is that what the graph shows?

I don't think the data are good enough to say if that's what happened. 
In my piece on 18th c. English criminal enforcement, I have one figure 
for indictments for homicide in the late 18th century, another for 
murders known to the police about a century later, and they weren't very 
different relative to population. But it's hard to know how comparable 
the two figures are.

-- 
 http://www.daviddfriedman.com/
http://daviddfriedman.blogspot.com/
 Author of _Harald_, a fantasy without magic.
 Published by Baen, in bookstores now