New Study: Invincible America Assembly Reduced Homicides and Violent Crime

A new study has found that the community Invincible America Assembly reduced the rate of homicides by a total of 21.2% over the four-year period when attendance was at its peak, and reduced the rate of violent crime by a total of 18.5% over the same period.

The study estimates that 8,157 homicides were averted by the significant shift from an increasing to a decreasing trend in homicide rates.

Published earlier this month in the journal SAGE Open, the study established baseline rates of homicide for the whole U.S. and violent crime for a sample of 206 urban areas with a population over 100,000 during the period of 2002–2006, and then compared that baseline with the period 2007–2010.

The researchers found that a rising trend of U.S. homicide during the baseline period 2002-2006 was reversed during the 2007-2010 intervention period. In the case of violent crime, the study found a highly significant shift from a flat trend in 2002-2006 to a declining trend in 2007-2010. The probability that the reduced trend for homicides could simply be due to chance was reported to be less than 3 in 10,000 million million and less than 3 in 100 million for violent crime.

Murder rates declined by 28.4% over 2007-2010 in the sample of 206 urban areas with population over 100,000, where crime rates are much higher.  Although the 206 cities included only 19.7% of the U.S. population, 47.4% of the estimated total number of homicides prevented were in these urban areas. Thus the areas of the U.S. with highest homicide rates showed the biggest declines.

From January of 2007 through December 2010, the Assembly was above or near the threshold of 1,725 participants, the size predicted to have an influence on the U.S. This threshold represents the square root of 1% of the U.S. population.

“Given that there are now multiple studies showing a highly significant relationship between a large group practicing the Transcendental Meditation and TM-Sidhi programs and decreased violence, this obviously has implications for crime prevention,” said research professor Michael Dillbeck, lead author of the study.

This study is the latest in a series of studies spanning decades that have suggested that a sufficiently large group practicing an advanced program of the Transcendental Meditation technique, the TM-Sidhi program, is associated with decreased social violence.

Nine peer-reviewed articles, comprising 14 studies, have now been published.

The earlier studies were for periods of several weeks or months. This current study was based on group practice over a number of years, which gave researchers an opportunity to study potential long-term changes.

They used a battery of diagnostic tests to establish the validity of the key statistical assumptions of the analysis, which utilized “broken-trend intervention analysis” of outcomes, a form of interrupted time series analysis.

In the study the authors discuss alternative hypotheses, such as economic trends, incarceration rates, seasonal cycles, demographic changes, and policing strategies, but found they weren’t sufficient to explain the observed reduction.

The study, titled “Societal Violence and Collective Consciousness: Reduction of U.S. Homicide and Urban Violent Crime Rates,” was coauthored by professor Ken Cavanaugh. Click here to view or download the complete paper.

Jim Karpen is a writer by trade, with a special focus on technology. He has a Ph.D. in English and studied the impact of the computerization of language. In addition to writing for iPhone Life magazine, he has also been writing a column about the Internet for the Iowa Source since 1994. He also edits and publishes the MUM Review.