Though it has been around for thousands of years, it wasn’t until the 20th century that marijuana was first criminalized. The United States didn’t declare the use of this substance illegal until the 1930s with the Marijuana Tax Act of 1937. In the US, the ’60s and ’70s saw an epidemic of marijuana use, which [...]
The FBI recently released preliminary crime statistics for 2009, and there’s good news in the numbers. Violent crime, which includes murder, forcible rape robbery and aggravated assault, was down 5.5 percent in the US in 2009. The percentage change is compared to 2008 crime rates. Additionally, property crime including burglary, larceny-theft and motor vehicle theft [...]
A long history of high crime rates in the United States led to the enactment of a number of versions of the three strikes law in various states. It all began with Washington’s Initiative 593, which was passed in 1993, establishing that criminals convicted of felonies or, as it stated, “more serious offenses,” for the [...]
If you’ve spent any time around a college campus this trend might surprise you, but according to the National Institute on Drug Abuse (NIDA), the United States is seeing significant improvements in the occurrence of drug abuse. NIDA has conducted research and studies among high schoolers and found that, with the exception of marijuana, illicit [...]
There’s always a danger in making any general statement or conclusion, but the latest crime statistics show some extremely interesting trends as to what areas of the country are the safest, and which aren’t. Despite the reputation of the south as the God-fearing, church-going folk, crime rates below the Mason-Dixon line are relatively high compared [...]