5 ms·

> Who wouldn’t want science and empirical evidence to guide policy decisions. One look at crime stats and this will not be a favorable idea.

by fein 8y ago

rpedela 8y ago
Care to elaborate?
- sattoshi 8y ago
  I assume this is a reference to the crime per race per capita numbers.
- deleted 8y ago
  [deleted]
- Forge36 8y ago
  I think what OP alluded too is not understanding preexisting bias. "Where should police patrol" ->where crime is highest. Where is crime highest ->existing reports point to X neighborhood having the most arrests. Without asking "why" it may ignore That neighborhood is black, so historically racist decisions lead to extra patrolling (but no evidence of increased crime rates) which led to more arrests.
  - fein 8y ago
    I don't think there's any pre existing bias influencing Chicago crime stats. There aren't any racist decisions that created that situation. Edit: As of posting this was at -2. HN, sometimes you amaze me. For the absolute leftist bias this site attempts to maintain, you REALLY don't want to approach the question of why black on black crime is so high, while in other comparable economic situations with different ethnicities the intra-racial crime stats are much lower. It's an issue that should be discussed and not dismissed with downvotes.
    - Dylan16807 8y ago
      The claim that no racist decisions have been a cause toward crime stats in Chicago is laughable. They've had extensive effects throughout the country.
  - xamuel 8y ago
    Your logic could be misleading if not parsed carefully. It's not that police shouldn't patrol where crime is highest--of course they should patrol there, if they know where that is. Rather, the point is that "most arrests" is not necessarily an accurate way to detect where crime is highest.
    - Forge36 8y ago
      Precisely. Thank you for clarifying!
  - darawk 8y ago
    Yes, except this is trivial to normalize for - just track arrests per cop. I feel like I constantly see criticisms like this, that use extremely naive metrics as straw men to argue against the idea of measuring things. It's extremely misguided (I know you're just explaining what he meant and not necessarily promulgating that idea yourself).
    - bildung 8y ago
      Sure, but then a conservative outcry is guaranteed: "Everybody can see that blacks are more criminal, the statistics show it clearly. But now the government is trying to hide it by gaming the data!" As the public doesn't understand statistics it would be easy to make that claim a truth by repeating it a few times.
      - zaarn 8y ago
        Everyone manipulates statistics in their favor, be that to support a claim ("the numbers say that if we do X then Y", guns/less gun deaths, social healthcare/improve quality of life) or to cause outcry ("you can't say X is/are/has Y, the numbers are Z", gender A/higher standard deviation for Q/sexist, monopolies/damaging/biased) regardless of the side of politics you are on in the US. Statistics are hard and the implications of some result are sometimes not intuitive. People don't care about what a standard deviation is, they just want more standard deviation than the other people over there because that makes them better.
      - darawk 8y ago
        I'm not sure what your point is here: "Sometimes people lie or obfuscate...therefore let's not bother with the truth" ?
        bildung 8y ago
        More like: "In a political context gathering data is not at all a guaranteed way to get further to the truth." I don't want to make a case for dismissing an empirical approach per se! An current example from Germany right now: There's a part of the country that's in uproar because of new immigrants that came in 2015. Some people felt threatened and demanded more police in public spaces were immigrant youth gathers. So more police is present at those public spaces. Naturally this resulted in them being aware of more violent events (mostly groups of immigrant kids scuffling), which made the immigrant share of violent crimes double, and people feel "rightfully" afraid, as the stats now proof their suspicions! But the reality of course is that German kids have fights in public, too; police just didn't take note and so those fights don't end up in the data gathered.
  - 08-15 8y ago
    This is easy. What are we optimizing for? Crime fighting effectiveness of police officers. Can we measure that? Sure, it's number of convictions per officer-hour of patrol. You could have pointed out that number of arrests per area is the wrong measure and why. That would have been rational. Instead, you chose to drag identity politics into it. Brilliant.
    - Forge36 8y ago
      I'm not saying "crime arrests per area is wrong". @xamuel explained it better than I could: >It's not that police shouldn't patrol where crime is highest--of course they should patrol there, if they know where that is. Rather, the point is that "most arrests" is not necessarily an accurate way to detect where crime is highest.
      - 08-15 8y ago
        > I'm not saying "crime arrests per area is wrong". But that's what you should have said if you were making a rational argument. Instead you made it a political statement by playing the racism card.
- TangoTrotFox 8y ago
  Here are the murder offender data from the FBI [1]. Your job is to bring down murder rates. You have limited resources. How would you now allocate them using "evidence based policies"? [1] - https://ucr.fbi.gov/crime-in-the-u.s/2015/crime-in-the-u.s.-2015/tables/expanded_homicide_data_table_3_murder_offenders_by_age_sex_and_race_2015.xls https://ucr.fbi.gov/crime-in-the-u.s/2015/crime-in-the-u.s.-...
  - rayiner 8y ago
    The solution based on that data is clearly to cancel men.
    - bachbach 8y ago
      It was called Dueling. An elegant way to select for the most violent young men and has genuine advantages over prison.
- joncrane 8y ago
  I think the comment above yours may be misleading. Perhaps lawmakers are following a different set of metrics (contributions from private prison industry) when considering their rulemaking.

> Who wouldn’t want science and empirical evidence to guide policy decisions. One look at crime stats and this will not be a favorable idea.

by fein 8y ago

> Who wouldn’t want science and empirical evidence to guide policy decisions. One look at crime stats and this will not be a favorable idea.

rpedela 8y ago

Care to elaborate?

sattoshi 8y ago
I assume this is a reference to the crime per race per capita numbers.
deleted 8y ago
[deleted]
Forge36 8y ago
I think what OP alluded too is not understanding preexisting bias. "Where should police patrol" ->where crime is highest. Where is crime highest ->existing reports point to X neighborhood having the most arrests. Without asking "why" it may ignore That neighborhood is black, so historically racist decisions lead to extra patrolling (but no evidence of increased crime rates) which led to more arrests.
- fein 8y ago
  I don't think there's any pre existing bias influencing Chicago crime stats. There aren't any racist decisions that created that situation. Edit: As of posting this was at -2. HN, sometimes you amaze me. For the absolute leftist bias this site attempts to maintain, you REALLY don't want to approach the question of why black on black crime is so high, while in other comparable economic situations with different ethnicities the intra-racial crime stats are much lower. It's an issue that should be discussed and not dismissed with downvotes.
  - Dylan16807 8y ago
    The claim that no racist decisions have been a cause toward crime stats in Chicago is laughable. They've had extensive effects throughout the country.
- xamuel 8y ago
  Your logic could be misleading if not parsed carefully. It's not that police shouldn't patrol where crime is highest--of course they should patrol there, if they know where that is. Rather, the point is that "most arrests" is not necessarily an accurate way to detect where crime is highest.
  - Forge36 8y ago
    Precisely. Thank you for clarifying!
- darawk 8y ago
  Yes, except this is trivial to normalize for - just track arrests per cop. I feel like I constantly see criticisms like this, that use extremely naive metrics as straw men to argue against the idea of measuring things. It's extremely misguided (I know you're just explaining what he meant and not necessarily promulgating that idea yourself).
  - bildung 8y ago
    Sure, but then a conservative outcry is guaranteed: "Everybody can see that blacks are more criminal, the statistics show it clearly. But now the government is trying to hide it by gaming the data!" As the public doesn't understand statistics it would be easy to make that claim a truth by repeating it a few times.
    - zaarn 8y ago
      Everyone manipulates statistics in their favor, be that to support a claim ("the numbers say that if we do X then Y", guns/less gun deaths, social healthcare/improve quality of life) or to cause outcry ("you can't say X is/are/has Y, the numbers are Z", gender A/higher standard deviation for Q/sexist, monopolies/damaging/biased) regardless of the side of politics you are on in the US. Statistics are hard and the implications of some result are sometimes not intuitive. People don't care about what a standard deviation is, they just want more standard deviation than the other people over there because that makes them better.
    - darawk 8y ago
      I'm not sure what your point is here: "Sometimes people lie or obfuscate...therefore let's not bother with the truth" ?
      - bildung 8y ago
        More like: "In a political context gathering data is not at all a guaranteed way to get further to the truth." I don't want to make a case for dismissing an empirical approach per se! An current example from Germany right now: There's a part of the country that's in uproar because of new immigrants that came in 2015. Some people felt threatened and demanded more police in public spaces were immigrant youth gathers. So more police is present at those public spaces. Naturally this resulted in them being aware of more violent events (mostly groups of immigrant kids scuffling), which made the immigrant share of violent crimes double, and people feel "rightfully" afraid, as the stats now proof their suspicions! But the reality of course is that German kids have fights in public, too; police just didn't take note and so those fights don't end up in the data gathered.
- 08-15 8y ago
  This is easy. What are we optimizing for? Crime fighting effectiveness of police officers. Can we measure that? Sure, it's number of convictions per officer-hour of patrol. You could have pointed out that number of arrests per area is the wrong measure and why. That would have been rational. Instead, you chose to drag identity politics into it. Brilliant.
  - Forge36 8y ago
    I'm not saying "crime arrests per area is wrong". @xamuel explained it better than I could: >It's not that police shouldn't patrol where crime is highest--of course they should patrol there, if they know where that is. Rather, the point is that "most arrests" is not necessarily an accurate way to detect where crime is highest.
    - 08-15 8y ago
      > I'm not saying "crime arrests per area is wrong". But that's what you should have said if you were making a rational argument. Instead you made it a political statement by playing the racism card.
TangoTrotFox 8y ago
Here are the murder offender data from the FBI [1]. Your job is to bring down murder rates. You have limited resources. How would you now allocate them using "evidence based policies"? [1] - https://ucr.fbi.gov/crime-in-the-u.s/2015/crime-in-the-u.s.-2015/tables/expanded_homicide_data_table_3_murder_offenders_by_age_sex_and_race_2015.xls https://ucr.fbi.gov/crime-in-the-u.s/2015/crime-in-the-u.s.-...
- rayiner 8y ago
  The solution based on that data is clearly to cancel men.
  - bachbach 8y ago
    It was called Dueling. An elegant way to select for the most violent young men and has genuine advantages over prison.
joncrane 8y ago
I think the comment above yours may be misleading. Perhaps lawmakers are following a different set of metrics (contributions from private prison industry) when considering their rulemaking.