Talk:Crime woo

work in progress--BenB (talk) 03:44, 5 August 2010 (UTC)
 * Aren't all Wiki articles? 03:46, 5 August 2010 (UTC)
 * shut up you you you, meanie logical poopie head. haha i know with 85% certainty that i won that debate!!!!--BenB (talk) 03:48, 5 August 2010 (UTC)
 * I agree with PFoster that this is in desperate need of some sources... hopefully this shouldn't be necessary if some much-needed work is done. 04:20, 5 August 2010 (UTC)

just about every sentence in this article...
...is a claim that needs a citation, onr that goes beyond "everybody knows this." Deny this and lose all credibility. P-Foster (talk) 04:20, 5 August 2010 (UTC)

I'm working on it. Like i said work in progress, I will get around to adding citations soon--BenB (talk) 04:21, 5 August 2010 (UTC)
 * Yeah, I just looked through the template list for ten minutes and we don't have anything that means "needs sources." Should I make one? 04:22, 5 August 2010 (UTC)
 * That would be awesome. P-Foster (talk) 04:25, 5 August 2010 (UTC)

Just added a few cites, more to come--BenB (talk) 04:28, 5 August 2010 (UTC)
 * Here's the template:

I don't think it's necessary now. You're doing good work, BenB. 04:43, 5 August 2010 (UTC)
 * I wouldn't call a link to wikipedia a "source". 04:26, 6 August 2010 (UTC)

" obvious what the sentence is getting at. no need for a fact tag here"
if it's so obvious, it shouldn't be hard to get a citation. The claim itself is actually problematic in that it's not the case that "whenever some horrific crime goes down the media jumps all over it"--there are always more and less "deserving" victims in the media's eyes. Of the hundreds and thousands of missing children all around the world, why did one white British girl get global media attention? Of all the people who go missing in Latin America or the Caribbean, why did one white American girl get national attention for months? How many people were murdered in the US last year? which ones made the national media, and why? To just assume that the media treats all horrific crimes with an equal sense of shock/dismay and sensation is to overlook a lot of what stories we tell ourselves about crime and who its victims are. P-Foster (talk) 04:37, 5 August 2010 (UTC)
 * Get off the grass. Of course I don't think the media jumps on every single violent story, but it does focus for long periods of time on particular ones that go on and on and on.  I don't know where you are from but where I live almost the entire news segment is violent crime after violent crime and I think that this is leading to the perception that crime statistics are going up, even though they are actually going down.  Perhaps the sentence can be worded better but its not the sort of thing that we need a fact tag for.  --DamoHi 05:16, 5 August 2010 (UTC)
 * Give well-known examples? 04:04, 8 August 2010 (UTC)

Also...
Psychic detection should be mentioned. And articlised. Totnesmartin (talk) 22:38, 5 August 2010 (UTC)

Grafitti
I removed the bit about grifitti. There is strong evidence to suggest the conditions of a neighborhood are directly linked to the crime rate. This is known as the "Broken Window Theory" The premis is that criminals congregate in places of urban decay because they percieve that no one cares about that area, which means they are less likely to be caught--BenB (talk) 02:21, 6 August 2010 (UTC)
 * I don't know - far too much hysteria over a purported crime epidemic is really a mindset that uppity Negroes, kids loitering around with their hats on backwards and baggy pants, skateboarders, pawn shops and check cashing stores, etc. = "crime". So it goes with graffiti and broken windows.  Graffiti and broken windows mean there is "crime" in the neighborhood to many people, when the only thing they really signify is graffiti and broken windows in the neighborhood.  This doesn't mean the latter two things shouldn't be cleaned up... Secret Squirrel (talk) 02:40, 8 August 2010 (UTC)

Broken window isnt about loitering skater boards and such nonsense. It says that the physical condition on a neighborhood IE Broken windows, unkempt lawns, grafitti, etc are symbolic indicators to criminals that it is OK to commit crimes there. hell the broken window theory was one of the things that caused such a drastic drop in the NYC crime rate--BenB (talk) 04:00, 8 August 2010 (UTC)
 * Learn how to indent successively. Also, the "broken window" thing relates to whatsisnames (ex Boston chief cop) work as NYC cop boss, and was written about by that Malcolm Gladwell "thinging point" (sorry for the lack of clarity) guy.  And, yes it is about everything like loitering skateboarders.  References will probably help you deter your detractors, especially if they aren't to WP.  04:08, 8 August 2010 (UTC)
 * Yeah mean like this

http://www.suffolk.edu/34417.html http://www.boston.com/news/local/massachusetts/articles/2009/02/08/breakthrough_on_broken_windows/ http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=743284 Just to name a few--BenB (talk) 15:51, 8 August 2010 (UTC)
 * Oh yeah, and I remember a big part of the NYC "project" was to clean graffiti off subway cars "daily". I think I remember that, anyway.  01:06, 9 August 2010 (UTC)

The media and crime
The media-reading public is partly responsible.

'In this area everybody goes round being nice to each other and the worst that happens is somebody drops a bit of litter' is not news.

'This area has an average number of parking fines/other minor everyday incidents' is not news.

Crimes (particularly bizarre ones/those in which purportedly upright members of society are the perpetrators) are considered newsworthy.

On D.A.R.E. and Homoeopathy
I remember in first or second grade when some people from D.A.R.E. came in. They gave each of us little coloring books. Although I vaguely remember a few pages, in the clearest memory I have there was a page which headed the whole thing. It began with saying that drugs are used in medicine, and shows an anthromorphized elephant with a stomachache taking an antacid and feeling better. Then, it says that taking drugs when you are healthy will make you sick, showing the elephant with a stomachache. I concluded from this that taking Medicine X which cures Symptom Y when you are not sick will cause you to feel Symptom Y, almost like homoeopathy, but without the diluting bull. Fortunately, the cognitive dissonance with germ theory allowed me to prevent going down this line of delusion. Discuss. The Heidelberg Kid (talk) 18:48, 30 January 2012 (UTC)
 * Kids are dumb. --145.94.77.43 (talk) 19:12, 30 January 2012 (UTC)

What is crime woo
I don't really understand this page. can someone who does, make our intro paragraph actually reflective of the sub sections? According to our into, crime woo is a fascination with the darks side of law, which seems more like why we write myster novels, than the attemt to use a fear of criminals to sell products or something.Godot   Grow a vagina 03:52, 2 February 2012 (UTC)
 * Uh, yeah, this could use at least a bit of a rewrite. This seems to be more about moral panics than woo, per se. However, there is a lot of crime woo. Lie detectors, penile plethysmographs (used to allegedly test for pedophilia), "psychic" investigators, racial profiling, etc. Nebuchadnezzar (talk) 04:08, 2 February 2012 (UTC)
 * I think all of this stuff is interesting, I just hate the intro, as it doesn't explain anything. [[Image:Pink mowse.png|25px]]Godot   Grow a vagina 04:16, 2 February 2012 (UTC)
 * I think we could split it into two sections: Moral panics and pseudoscience. "Tough on crime," for example, could go in the former and psychics hired by legal agencies, as another example, could go in the latter. I don't know much about this stuff, though. Nebuchadnezzar (talk) 04:21, 2 February 2012 (UTC)

Truth Serum
Regarding this: "Also in this category are things like alleged "truth serums", actually just narcotic drugs that aren't effective in eliciting truthful confessions." The word "narcotic" only really refers to opioid drugs - using it as a catch-all term for any drug, illegal or otherwise, is incorrect. With this in mind, drugs used as "truth serums" are usually from the barbiturate family although sometimes blends of opiates / opioids, barbs and or benzos can similarly depress the central nervous system and interfere with judgment and higher cognitive function. Scopolamine with morphine was a popular combination at one point. They can produce good results by lowering the inhibitions of the person being questioned making them more eager to talk and by also lowering any barriers they may have erected in their mind to hide the truth, but there is no easy way for the questioner to reliably tell the difference between truthful confession and intoxicated fantasy. Another important point to remember about such drugs is that they leave the subject very open to suggestion and persuasion, making it very easy for an un-ethical interrogator to coax and prod them towards remembering and confessing to events that never happened.

--Myk

Lead poisoning
I'm wondering whether lead poisoning ought to be mentioned in this article. It apparently correlates with crime rates. See here or here. I don't know if there is much to the claim though. Bismarck (talk) 10:53, 17 February 2014 (UTC)
 * I came to this talk page to ask the same question. We all know that lead has effects on neurological development. And we all know that some of those effects can make people aggressive. Now is there something to this hypothesis? And if not, might we as Rationalwiki do some debunking? Pizzameister (talk) 18:48, 28 January 2016 (UTC)
 * Like this: Lead-crime hypothesis? MarmotHead (talk) 18:54, 28 January 2016 (UTC)
 * Thanks. Maybe this should be linked more extensively Pizzameister (talk) 19:54, 29 January 2016 (UTC)

D.A.R.E.
What does the acronym stand for - Daleks Are Really Everywhere?

Perhaps there could be a mention of crime novels - murder is the only crime worth investigating (and all too often 'the resident nutter diddit'). 82.44.143.26 (talk) 17:52, 19 January 2016 (UTC)

Crime novels woo
Murder constitutes 95%+ of all crime.

'The police' only have one crime at at time to consider - any other crime that happens is somehow linked to the first murder. The police have a near 100% success and conviction rate - and they never arrest the 'freelance crime detector' on suspicion of multiple murder. 31.51.114.49 (talk) 21:43, 18 April 2017 (UTC)