WASHINGTON – So the bad news is that it is hot and sticky and muggy. Your skin makes tearing sounds when you get up from a plastic chair.
The good news? You just might be safer than when it was nice and balmy.
A curious aspect of high temperature is that while crime and aggression rise with the heat, beyond a certain point, you start to see less violent crime.
No one knows exactly why baking heat prompts badfellas to turn meek. We can speculate, of course. When it gets to 100 degrees in the shade, who can wear a hooded sweat shirt? Perhaps a .22 revolver feels icky-sticky.
Nor are the criminally minded the only ones affected. As we weigh whether to slug the guy who spills beer on us in a bar, at a certain temperature we apparently conclude there is something to be said for having an ice-cold beverage trickle down our torsos.
When scientists tracked the connection between the temperature and 911 calls for violent assault in Minneapolis and Dallas, they found a curvilinear relationship – crime rose up to a point, then fell – making the shape of an inverted “U.”
Temperature is not the only factor that affects fluctuations in the crime rate. The time of day, day of the week, population density, even whether a major holiday is under way, all have effects on crime.
Air-conditioning plays a role, too. If you remove the effects of sky-high heat in homes and office buildings, you bring people back into the range where they may be prone to slug each other.
So does alcohol. If people drink a lot of beer because it is super hot, you might not see the decrease in crime at very high temperatures because alcohol raises the risk of assaults.
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