#society explicitly allows abuse and crime to keep its members broken and afraid

[level20mallow]

The most insidious lie the state tells you is that it can and will protect you from harm. That is a flat-out fucking lie. And it is the most insidious, because that promise is the basis by which people accept state authority over their lives, meaning they allow themselves to be tyrannized and subjugated for no real benefit.

We need only look at the statistics behind major crimes and apply the tiniest ass-hair of scrutiny toward how the state handles major issues in reality to see this.

Hit and runs

Florida: Only 1 in 8 hit and run drivers are actually cited for leaving the scene; only 30% of that number are ever actually convicted of anything.

Los Angeles: Police only solved 8% of all hit and runs in 2017

United Kingdom: Only 8 to 10% of all hit and runs were solved in 2017

Numbers on the issue are sporadic but the few we do have do not look good. Keep in mind, most hit and runs happen in major cities with cameras everywhere, a lot of them traffic cameras that scan license plates, so police have no excuse to just not find most of these people. It's safe to say, therefore, that it's not the circumstances or the victims' fault. It's clearly the police not wanting to do their job and a failure of the state.

Thefts

Pew Research has a lot to say about violent crimes in the U.S. in general, so we're going to casually rip off its charts to look at thefts specifically.

Have a look at those numbers for larceny, motor vehicle theft, and burglary. A lot of the time, people don't even report them, which I wholly blame on the failure of the state and people's increased recognition of that fact.

But look at the numbers we have. 69% of all car thefts are reported, and only 13.1% of that 69% are solved. That means only 9% of all car thefts are actually solved. That means, if you chose to steal a car, you'd get away with it 91% of the time!

Only 6% of the burglaries are solved, meaning if you chose to break into someone's house, you'd get away with it 94% of the time. (And you all wonder why right wingers obsess over the possibility of evildoers breaking into their house and killing their loved ones in the night)

Even robberies are only solved 18% of the time, so if you were ever wondering why Bruce Wayne donned the cape and cowl, there's your answer.

Alright, so now we're going to move on to the heavy stuff. And let me warn you now, these stats WILL piss you off or hurt you if you are sensitive to that sort of thing, so big fucking trigger warning for incoming rape and murder discussion. Don't say I didn't warn you.

Murder

We'll start you off gently. The Pew research numbers up above state that murders are solved 61% of the time, which people would assume by banana republic standards is pretty alright. But it's not the whole story, not by a long-shot. Those clearance rates (percentage of solved cases) used to be a lot higher -- the state used to actually attempt to do a good job -- but have dropped like a rock since the 1960s.

Case in point, Los Angeles. Have a look at this chart that I totally ripped off from CBS:

Look at that horrific shit. It went from 90% in 1965 to 55% in 2020. Like why even pretend the state has any meaningful authority if this is what they're going to allow to happen on their watch?

The Murder Accountability Project has national stats that really drive the point home:

Look at that. Throughout the 2020s so far, only half of all murders go unsolved. You see how on the left, the red bar and the gray bar almost touch, while on the right, they're both the same fucking size? And how the bars split apart and stayed apart since 1980, meaning this is not just because of the lockdowns. That means the state is failing in its most basic of functions: protecting the lives of its people, and therefore it should just be ignored and people need to start doing for themselves.

Oh, but it gets worse, friends. Much, much worse. So much so that I'm going to have to make a second post addressing the other, more horrible statistics that have come out.

And given that, I will actually have to place a giant fucking trigger warning when we look at them, because the numbers are so disturbing as to be terrifying, and without the right mindset walking in, they actually can damage the reader's trust in other people.

So look out for part 2, and consider yourself warned if you do.