I agree that no particular statistic is overwhelming, but the weight of evidence certainly seems to call some of the “received wisdom” about crime control into question. However, the lack of statistical analysis in the piece makes it impossible to really answer your challenge, since we have no idea Just how significant these results are.

I posted this because I think we need some new thinking about crime, since our current approaches are so obviously broken. This is just one piece in the puzzle.

I’ve not written any poetry near as good since, but, considering the inspiration for this poem, perhaps we should hope I’m not so moved ever again. (Pun intended!)

1) I can only speak for myself, but I certainly don’t believe, and have never stated, that “all states behave in exactly the same murderous fashion at all times, and that differences among states are therefore non-existent or insignificant.” It’s obvious that’s not true. But all states share the same violent DNA, and all evolve towards oppression, albeit at varying paces.

2) As a Christian anarchist, I’m less interested in abolishing the state than in calling people to live in the reign of God, the only “arky,” as Vernard Eller terms it, with any real validity. Like the poor, we will likely always have the state with us. But to whatever extent possible, I think people should strive to live in a true community, rather than in the false community offered by the state.

(1) Anarcho-libertarian writers seem to be saying that all states behave in exactly the same murderous fashion at all times, and that differences among states are therefore non-existent or insignificant. This, it seems to me, is empirically and logically false. The Roman Empire of 70 CE did not behave in the same fashion as Costa Rica of 2008. Surely different states behave in different ways at various times, and these differences are important to the lives of ordinary people. I work in healthcare, and it makes an enormous difference in the lives of people I work with that the nation-state in which I live, the United States, has chosen not to implement the kind of government-run universal healthcare system adopted, to the benefit of working people, by most other developed countries. For anarchists to imply that this difference in state behavior is insignificant might be offensive to the millions of human beings who have been harmed by the health care policy of the American nation-state.

(2) Identifying the state as a uniquely evil human institution implies that it can or should be abolished. An abundance of evidence suggests that this is impossible to accomplish in a large human society. Ever since human beings began to build cities roughly 5,000 years ago, every large human population has created governments to organize its societal affairs. There is not a single recorded instance in the last 5,000 years of a large human population that existed without a government. Only small hunter-gatherer bands have done so. If anarchists are advocating a return to primitive hunter-gatherer lifestyles, they should say so. If, on the other hand, their only goal is to forever criticize The State without feeling the need to propose a viable alternative, then they should ask themselves how ethical it is to sit back and snark from the sidelines while the rest of the human race tries to save as many people as possible from global disasters like peaking energy supplies and biosphere collapse.