What Was it About The Late 1960’s and the 1970’s?

[rekt noob]

May 31, 2018 6:50:33 GMT thomasmichael said:

May 31, 2018 6:34:31 GMT fasterpussycat said:

 

Anyways, this has nothing to do with my original question as the homeless are rarely serial killers (and certainly not in the 1970’s), but to point at Ronald Reagan and say he caused homelessness is just the height of partisan disingenuousness.

Who said anything about a particular political party doing it?Only you have brought that up.Reagan might not have started doing it in California,but he is definitely the one who started doing it nationwide during his presidency.

The movement against institutionalizing patients took root in the ’50s and ’60s, not just in California, but everywhere. It continued for decades.

The push to deinstitutionalize “asylums” was broadly supported in the West and industrialized countries due to overcrowding, abuses, the development and availability of community resources, better care options for the disabled, new psychiatric and antipsychotic drugs, etc.

The humanitarian goal was to open access to hospitals and local, community services and to stop warehousing people, not just the grossly mentally ill, but the disabled and people with treatable illness.

I think that movement definitely contributed to more of severely mentally ill, even the criminally mentally ill, being on the streets. Institutionalizing anyone for any reason became far more difficult. Local, community resources were also quickly stretched thin.

But speaking of California specifically:

1. California is known for “great” weather (compared to, say, Minnesota), and since the Dust Bowl days (if not earlier), people knew they could move there and live on the margins relatively easily.

2. Not because of politics, but because California was glorified in 1950s and ’60s culture as independent, earn-your-own-way, free-wheeling, etc. Government isn’t up everyone’s ss, etc. Think about the music and films, etc. Beach Boys, Gidget, beach culture, outdoorsiness, Hollywood.

And jobs. ... Lots of jobs.

3. And there was plenty of disillusionment when many people realized they couldn’t attain those things on their own once they got there.

4. Then there are the military bases, large “transient” populations from those huge bases after WWII and during/after Vietnam.

5. Oil and gas industry boomed, offshore drilling boomed, the aerospace industry boomed, highways were built, etc. Cities sprawled; suburbs grew.

6. There was an overall housing boom — white flight was real there, too, as urban areas lost property value and poverty rates skyrocketed.

7. The Greatest Generation started birthing the Baby Boomers from the early ’40s to mid-‘60s ... they would be JJD’s age in the ’70s.

8. Whiteness and the American Dream, so to speak. They were also easy targets — families were often trusting, busy building and paying off debt, hard-working and ... myopic. They had created their safe havens.

9. Perhaps they were also naive. Nobody really understood the tie between activities like peeping and potential violence. Psychology wasn’t broadly accepted by law enforcement at state and federal levels until the ’80s.

10. It was also a turbulent time in America. California held allure and hope for the fringe, and they came, too.

11. The population exploded. So did property crimes. (I’ve seen crime rate statistics from the ‘40s-‘00s, I’ll try to find that info again if anyone’s interested. The jump is startling.)

12. Local media was just that — local.

13. Then there’s the (often still believed) trope: Bad things didn’t happen to good people unless they put themselves into a dangerous situation. Crimes against women weren’t taken as seriously. (As evidenced by the rampant nature of these crimes.) Many didn’t (and still don’t) report rape and sex-related crime, or prowling, or even “just” having their home ransacked if nothing of “real” value was taken.

14. Suburban development didn’t fully consider things like curbing criminal behavior — people “moved away” from the crime in the cities, after all — and people like JJD took full advantage of those weaknesses.

TL;DR: It was a perfect storm of sorts.

Apologies for the super long post!

[cherylh]

Rekt Noob -- What a great post.

So right about the whole movement against institutionalizing mental patients. Here in California, the movement to close the big institutions was backed by both political parties, under the Lanterman-Petris-Short legislation. Bipartisan. As you say, the idea was to save money and to provide more humane, and community-based, treatment.

Point 9 is right on: Activities like "peeping" weren't considered serious, or as potentially leading to more serious offenses. Exhibitionism was also "a joke." The image of a guy in a raincoat holding it open to reveal himself was considered comedic. That peepers and flashers can go on to rape and murder wasn't understood.

And you had to be an adult, and maybe an adult woman, in the 70s to fully understand how rape was viewed by some -- many people thought it was almost impossible for a "nice" woman to be raped because she wasn't supposed to ever be in a situation where she could be victimized. If she was, something was wrong with her, or the men who should be protecting her.

The normal first questions women were asked if they were attacked were: 1) What were you wearing? and 2) What were you doing there?

[rekt noob]

Jul 25, 2018 20:13:08 GMT cherylh said:

Rekt Noob -- What a great post.

So right about the whole movement against institutionalizing mental patients. Here in California, the movement to close the big institutions was backed by both political parties, under the Lanterman-Petris-Short legislation. Bipartisan. As you say, the idea was to save money and to provide more humane, and community-based, treatment.

Point 9 is right on: Activities like "peeping" weren't considered serious, or as potentially leading to more serious offenses. Exhibitionism was also "a joke." The image of a guy in a raincoat holding it open to reveal himself was considered comedic. That peepers and flashers can go on to rape and murder wasn't understood.

And you had to be an adult, and maybe an adult woman, in the 70s to fully understand how rape was viewed by some -- many people thought it was almost impossible for a "nice" woman to be raped because she wasn't supposed to ever be in a situation where she could be victimized. If she was, something was wrong with her, or the men who should be protecting her.

The normal first questions women were asked if they were attacked were: 1) What were you wearing? and 2) What were you doing there?

Thank you! So much truth in your post, too.

I’ll add a third question to your last paragraph, if I may: Not “what happened,” but “What did you do to * that guy off?”

That’s a loaded question, to be sure.

Thankfully, that’s changing. Too slowly, if you ask me, but it’s changing. And people like Carol Daly were trailblazers. Tremendous respect goes to her, as well.

[cleopatra]

I think it's as simple as less censorship.  And California has always been known to be very liberal compared to other states.

T.V. shows and movies were just beginning to get bold.  There was a time when if TV shows filmed scenes in married couples bedrooms, there had to be two separate beds, one for the wife and one for the husband.

I remember the HUGE controversy that surrounded the usage of the word "DAMN" in the movie Planet of the Apes before its release.  Don't even ask about what happened when a fraction of a second flash of one breast of an actress would be shown in a movie in the theaters.  The movie THE BLOB was considered super scary.

[rekt noob]

But there was so much more misogyny, willful avoidance of “uncomfortable” issues (like sex crimes, victimology,etc., and far fewer options to choose from. They were unrealistic. Disingenuous.

These days, there are options all across the board. Most things exist along the spectrums of opposing extremes, not one extreme or the other. Self-censorship is a thing today. Americans won’t tolerate government or establishment censorship. It’s literally disallowed in the first amendment.

At least there’s a choice most of us make to be more informed. Most people are like us, not unlike us.

Heck, and folks blamed violent media back then, too. So maybe not much has really changed in that regard, sociologically speaking.

[rogerses]

Mid-1960s is when first started to appear "self-realization" cults across America. The very first such cult I believe was established in the state of Iowa about 45 miles from Des Moines. Many cult members subsequently came to the "self-realization" that they wanted to murder people.

[hhunter4]

I would focus on demographics. Most rapes and murders are committed by young men say from 18 to 35 years old. Most rape victims are relatively young woman. I looked at some crime reporting statistics and the peak for both perps and victims is the early 20s and then tails off fairly rapidly with increased age.

Which state had the largest population? California did! The baby boomers were born between say 1945 and 1962, and they became a disproportionate percentage or bulge in the population. Those same babies were in their early 20s in the late 60s through the early 80s.

In addition, people in their 20s strike out on their own. Naturally they want to move where the sun is. They would have been attracted to the "mystique" of CA in popular culture, at least back then. So, in addition to CA being the place where those 20 somethings would naturally be in the highest numbers, there was a considerable influx of young people from other states.

Many other very relevant reasons have already been posted here that I agree with, but simple demographics and a normal profile of perps and victims can explain why the 60s and 70s (and CA in particular) produced so many headlines regarding murderers and rapists.

[oldguy]

As touched on above...the population movements created by WW2 and the baby boom by the returned vets had a lot to do with it . By the 1960's the rootless kids of the uprooted families were in crime prime time.

As for deinsttutionalization, it happened throughout the US in the 1950's-1960's. It got momentum from thestorors of neglect/abuse and was supported by the left and the right -just for different reasons. I worked at Phila State Hospital (now closed) and can tell you stories....like patients covered in maggots.

But on the whole, the movement went way too far. I can tell you stories about that too.

[f1guyus]

And sadly that demographic bulge that gave us a bunch of irresponsible (or worse) young people in the 60’s and 70’s is giving us a bunch of indigent elderly some of whom are living in tents about a 15 minute drive from my house. If you are on FB friend the Stockton PD Page And read the crime reports.