There’s a mythology regarding temperature and violent crime – both increase in tandem up until a certain point, at which it becomes “too warm”. This study, a retrospective analysis of violent crime from a six-year period in Dallas, TX, generally confirms the increase in violence as the temperature increases.
The authors additionally propose, however, a curvilinear relationship based on the data that interprets an inflection point at 80-89 degrees a bit aggressively, considering they only have one data point above 80-89 with which to define the further trend. The absolute differences between total numbers of violent assaults in each temperature bracket are small enough, it’s a little hard to confidently say there’s a point at which it becomes too hot for violent crime. It makes sense, of course, but that’s more editorializing.
Perhaps they could attempt to externally validate these findings in Iraq – which seems awfully hot and violent. They also note there is a strong correlation between temperature and hours of daylight – but it seems as though that’d be rather difficult to control for one or the other.
And, tying this entire issue into climate change is another unusual matter entirely….
“Temperature and Violent Crime in Dallas, Texas: Relationships and Implications of Climate Change”
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3415828/