SAFETY FIRST. I was poking through some old crimes statistics last night in search of some half-remembered fact and noticed that the violent crime rate for women in 2005 was half of what it was in 1973, which is as far back as the U.S. Dept. Justice statistic go, and less than half of what it was for men in 1973. A lot of us think of the late 1980s/early 1990s as a particularly violent time, partly because of the crack epidemic, but these statistics show that the early ’70s were even worse for men. Who knew.
–Garance Franke-Ruta
