Legal briefs

Free speech

A new Gallup poll shows that 69% of Americans distrust the media. This is almost certainly because journalism has given way to censorial political propagandizing. It is not surprising that an overwhelming majority of Americans hold this view. The real question is who are these gullible 31% that do trust the media?

By the way, I don’t think Judex counts as media, so you are safe here.

More free speech

Populace, according to their website, is a non-partisan think tank that publishes unbiased research findings, if there is such a thing. You can check them out here. Recently, the organization released a document called the Social Pressure Index: Private Opinion in America. Again, according to the website, the Social Pressure Index is “a private opinion research study that reveals Americans’ true opinions about sensitive topics. They employ complicated research techniques to get at Americans’ privately held opinions that most are afraid to express in public. The results show that we are more alike than it seems.

According to the study, 58% of Americans believe most people cannot share their honest opinions about sensitive topics in society today. Over 60% of Americans admit to “self-silencing.” That is, they stay quiet rather than express their opinion in public. Despite people believing the country is divided and being afraid to share opinions in public, the study revealed that 90% of demographic groups are privately on the same side of issues as controversial as abortion, school choice, and immigration. This is good news. It underscores the danger of censorship, and supports more speech, not less.

Crime

Some have been claiming recently that crime is down. The primary data on the U.S. crime rate comes from the FBI uniform crime reporting database. It is true that the FBI’s database has been showing a 2.1% drop in crime for 2022, after continued record highs for several years. This FBI database relies on crime reports submitted by police agencies across the country. Recently, major metropolitan areas such as New York City, Los Angelas and Chicago have stopped submitting crime data to the FBI. So, sure, with large urban centers not reporting crime, it appears to be down.

However, there are ways to compensate for the missing data. The FBI recently did some extrapolation work on the 2022 data (I’m not totally sure what this means; it has something to do with math). After doing so, they released an updated 2022 report that shows crime actually increased that year by 4.5%. You can read about it here.

The new increase in crime data squares with other measures that demonstrate crime is up. The U.S. Bureau of Justice Statistics compiles annually the National Crime Victimization Survey. The agency surveys roughly a quarter of a million people per year asking about their exposure to crime. The most recent survey found that the violent victimization rate increased from 16.5 per 1,000 persons in 2021 to 23.5 per 1,000 persons in 2022. Similarly, motor vehicle theft victimization increased from 4.3 victimizations per 1,000 households in 2021 to 5.5 victimizations per 1,000 households in 2022. Further, the survey found that only 42% of violent victimizations are reported to police. That data is here.

So, to recap, crime is at record highs. Most of that crime is not reported to police, and much of the crime that is reported to police, particularly in urban areas, is not reported to the FBI. And it is the inaccurate FBI data that some rely on to convince us that the crime we see with our own eyes is actually decreasing. And now the revised FBI report confirms crime is going up. But if you are a faithful Judex reader, you knew that already.

More crime

A couple of weeks ago, I wrote about the British chicken registration law. You can read that post here. To briefly recap, the U.K. recently decided to require people to register their chickens with the government and made it a crime to possess an unregistered chicken. This did not go over so well. In protest, aggrieved Brits flooded the government website by registering roasted chickens, chicken nuggets, rubber chickens, and all other manner of chicken permutations. So many people did this that the website crashed.

When American colonials rejected overburdensome British government regulation, they poured tea into the Boston harbor. Over 250 years later, Brits in the motherland have undertaken The Great Chicken Rebellion setting forth, let us hope, a new birth of freedom.

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