However, the survey they cite is not credible. Without any one of these components, an individual cannot commit murder. Murderous impulses occur only to a very small percentage of the population, to those who are sufficiently jealous, angry, drunk, drugged,insane, irrational, pathological, self-destructive or deceived enough to seriously contemplate killing someone. The more permanently ones we see as repeat offenders in our criminal justice system. The difference can be attributed to social factors like the availability of mental health treatment, substance-abuse programs, family counseling, poverty, media violence, racial tensions and hostilities, or any of countless other imaginable factors that contribute to the murderous impulse.
Some social factors appear to have enormous impact on violent crime.
Many sociologists do not consider it an accident that the crime wave that hit America in the 60s and 70s coincided with the first television generation coming of age. Dr. Brandon Centerwall has produced one of the most famous studies, which found that the mere introduction of television into a region causes its crime rate to double as soon as the first television generation comes of age. The second is income inequality. Two separate studies, one from Harvard, the other from Berkeley, compared state crime rates to their income inequality rates, and found that the states with the most inequality had the highest rates of homicide, violent crime and incarceration. In the U.S., the rising murder rate has accompanied a rising level of income inequality.