“There is good reason to believe that climate change will become one of the major forces driving crime as the century progresses,” Emory University sociologist Robert Agnew writes in “Dire Forecast: A Theoretical Model of the Impact of Climate Change on Crime,” a study published in Theoretical Criminology last year. Citing droughts, famine and extreme weather, Agnew predicts that “as individuals, groups, and states struggle to cope with the effects of climate change, their ability to legally adapt to further effects will decline.”
So, harsher climes could mean bloodier crimes. But is it ever too hot to engage in violence? A study this month in the Western Journal of Emergency Medicine says that high temperatures mean more violent crime — until they don’t. …
In other words, when the mercury rises above 90, criminals take a Gatorade break.
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