Social and legal analysts from all political and economic persuasions are at a loss for satisfying and complete explanations of America’s dropping violent crime rates. A similar phenomenon is occurring simultaneously in many other advanced western nations – even with better healthcare systems than ours. May I suggest a few obvious explanations that we all may have over-looked?
The U.S. and many advanced western nations are simply getting older and fatter. If you are not a young, slim and healthy criminal, getting away is no longer a simple matter of “feet do your thing.” Even quickly getting in and out of vehicles can get to be an annoying challenge if you are out of shape. “What’s that delicious smell? Let’s stop and check it out.”
Thus, you don’t see many guys who use walkers trying to rob a retail establishment. The heist gets more surreal as you must return to find your misplaced glasses and prescription drugs. It’s not even fun for the police anymore. After the dispatcher’s call, they can calmly finish their coffee and donuts and still make it there while you are still trying to shuffle away just a few blocks from the crime scene. It’s almost not even worth the arrest and all the paperwork, except the police figure you might be gunning for the free medical care offered to most long-term convicts.
If you’re too fat and you drop your gun, it’s a real pain bending over to pick it up – worse yet if it falls under a car or piece of furniture. (Or the gun gets lost in your rolls of fat and you shoot yourself in the leg – how embarrassing.) If you’re part of organized crime, you can easily convince yourself of another helping of Cannoli instead of shooting the person sitting across the table from you – he may pick up the tab. Again, getting up stairways, through tight doorways, and even ambling down the street to struggle into a way-too-small get-away vehicle become just too many impediments if you’re packing on extra pounds in addition to extra heat.
Older and fatter people become more pre-occupied with their own physical conditions, thus discussing diseases, symptoms and medical care, and endlessly comparing and reviewing various favorite foods and restaurants, that thoughts of crime take a back seat. In fact, besides health and food, nothing else begins to matter, including killing off your spouse for the huge insurance payoff. You suddenly realize the money is not really enough, and why bother with the exercise when you are too old and fat to start over with someone else. Instead, just continuing to sit on the couch chowing down on snacks while watching another mindless TV show, looks like a better option. “Damn – I sat on the remote and now I have to get up again.”
Is it no wonder that in war we generally send teenagers and twenty-something’s to capture some enemy sanctuary after they have to cross through dangerous territory. “Glad to go Sir. We’re the invincibles and we don’t even buy health or life insurance.” If the same mission were presented to a bunch of overweight 40-year-olds with spouses, jobs and families, they wouldn’t even leave camp. “You want us to go where and capture what? With our high insurance deductibles and co-pays? Are you crazy Sir?”
Crime flourishes when people are younger, thinner, poorer, and not preoccupied with families, jobs and keeping up with the suburban neighbors. However, permitting large numbers of educated and uneducated young and healthy people to endure prolonged periods of unemployment may become a recipe for future social and criminal unrest. So for all those lamenting the dropping crime wave in the U.S., just wait, it could very well change in a few years with long-term economic stagnation.
Marc Pascal, ranting happily sitting in front of his computer and eating cookies in Phoenix, AZ – Merry Christmas and Happy 2010 to Everyone!