KittenKoder
Senior Member
I think the best advice I can give women is to not be alone outside at night. It's not safe anywhere. If I ever had to be alone, I definitely would have had my guard up, especially at 2 in the morning.
Statistically you are no less safe now than 50 years ago at any time, the time period that such crimes occur is about even. Best advice is to learn to defend yourself, there are many free classes, and hope you are the millions of lucky ones who are never attacked. Many survivors have a saying, one which I have come to know too well, living in fear is not living. The big difference between now and 50 years ago is that too many have become disconnected from society, fewer attackers got away with it and if it happened in public people did something to help as much as they were capable instead of just ignoring it. Oddly it's our excessive use of digital "social networking" that can be blamed, but that's a different topic. In some neighborhoods they are now reforming real life social networks and these are showing a lot of promise. While we can't force people to do this I think we should all participate a little. I know almost everyone in my building, and I know that if something happened to me they'd be on the phone if not actively helping, as I would for any of them, and it doesn't just extend to those we live with, we would do the same for anyone we see being harmed. It's that kind of caring that we are lacking.
Statistically, this neighborhood, heck this city is a lot more dangerous than it was even 30 years ago. We have multiple murders every year now, when I was a kid there was one murder and it was talked about for years. None of the homes in this neighborhood were robbed, I now know of 3 that have been robbed recently. Plus two people who's cars were stolen. And that's just in a 3 block radius.
The number increases when the population increases, but the percentage of criminals does not. You have to factor in the recent increases in population, which in the US is almost an explosion in population levels. Perspective is often blurred by the media, since they never show the actual percentages only the number of crimes. Chances of something happening are based on the percentage though.
Oh, unless you have a recent change in laws like we did (making our sentences too soft in many areas here).