From a Question

posed 3 years ago about the difference between crime rates in London and New York etc. on Yahoo answers. The respondent called himself, My Name Is Josef Stalin.

It's not the police, it's not the people being 'more' civilized, nor is it that the British have been pretty much disarmed. The reason the murder rate is so low is that the US lives in a virtual cage of ultra violent media and a drug culture that over the years has been turned into a military operation by both Law enforcement and the drug dealers themselves.

In England and Europe in general most murders are professional hits , terror attacks and rare street crime. The common man in Europe simply isn't in a position to feed himself or his family with crime. The industry just isn't there the way it is in the US. Another reason is the huge population and the fact that in the US the economy isn't consistent from one area to the next. Social programs do NOT feed the American poor the way Neo-Cons claim it does. There are areas of the US that have been third world since the 1970s. You have certain towns in the US where you haven't had a murder in 5+ years and at the time time urban slums with 3-4 murders a month. Why? Media and the fact that these areas were designed to be sh*tholes.

Take for example your comparison of New Orleans to London. London doesn't have the poverty and hopelessness that New Orleans. London's ghettos are a socialists wet dream. Drugs are contained, the poor are "more or less" well fed and crime isn't a necessity for an industrialize prison system. Basically the some of the poor (NOT ALL, I'm not generalizing) in London find their drug/poverty/welfare style of life ok -- it's consistent and government is always there for you no matter what. In New Orleans you have rampant racism, a drug war, unemployment, taxation with out representation and no hope. If you put the people of London in that environment and at the same time had a clandestine stash of weapons floating around..... you'd get the same result; a high murder rate. No matter where you are from if you're hungry your level of humanity and morality goes down to nil