Give me a reason

A great song by Luther Vandross but not what I was thinking about.

At a lunch last week a fellow diner remarked on how violent Christchurch had become. There are so many murders, she said. There are "so many murders" in many places, I remarked which elicited a broad murmur of assent. A question arose, "Is it going to get better?". Yes, I replied, because everything is cyclical. I didn't add that I believe it'll get worse first and any improvement will probably be outside my life time. Pessimistic? Give me any half decent reason why it would improve.

I was reminded about this exchange by this morning's report in The Press that violent offending among youth is up 21 percent over the previous year (and that's just the ones the police have caught).