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> It's almost as if the article is equating less crime being prosecuted as less crime existing. There's a big issue with that. No, doing that would be silly. C

> It's almost as if the article is equating less crime being prosecuted as less crime existing. There's a big issue with that. No, doing that would be silly. Criminologists look at both prosecuted crime, crime reported in victim surveys, number of arrests and incarcerations and a whole host of other metrics before drawing conclusions. The good news (which no one ever believes :)) is that they all point in the same direction. See this fact sheet f.e https://www.ncjrs.gov/ovc_archives/ncvrw/2017/images/en_artwork/Fact_Sheets/2017NCVRW_CrimeTrends_508.pdf https://www.ncjrs.gov/ovc_archives/ncvrw/2017/images/en_artw...

tokyodude 8y ago
as a counter point according to this podcast there is a perverse incentive to under report so there may be a good reason not to believe. https://www.gimletmedia.com/reply-all/128-the-crime-machine-part-ii#episode-player https://www.gimletmedia.com/reply-all/128-the-crime-machine-...
Judgmentality 8y ago
I admittedly have not looked at the data in detail and maybe it's the cynic in me, but how much of that decrease in crime can be attributed to manipulating the data? For instance, in San Francisco, car breakins have been reclassified as a misdemeanor. And obviously this is anecdotal, but residents are so blasé towards the complete fucking shitshow that is SFPD (I actually rewrote that into something much gentler) that they don't even bother calling the police or reporting crimes. If it's gotten so bad that people don't even report crimes, and police make it difficult to report crimes (there are many stories about this - yes it's anecdotal), how can we expect the statistics to mean anything? The only thing I know for certain is I've been assaulted by homeless people more than once, including one who pushed me into traffic. After the first few times calling the police and having nobody show up for 30+ minutes I just stopped bothering. I've also seen someone rob a store while a cop was stationed at the entrance of the store for the sole purpose of stopping theft - the cop literally shrugged and said "what am I gonna do, chase after him?" Obviously I'm biased based on my experiences and I'm referring to the microcosm that is SF, but I absolutely unequivocally do not trust anything that comes from the SFPD. And I see no reason to trust other police departments either. For something a little less anecdotal, here's an interesting podcast that basically says once cops started tracking crime they just stopped reporting it. Goodhart's Law in action. https://www.gimletmedia.com/reply-all/127-the-crime-machine-part-i https://www.gimletmedia.com/reply-all/127-the-crime-machine-...
- matt4077 8y ago
  Just look at homicides. A dead body is somewhat impossible to hide from the statistics. Then, overlay that data with any other category of crime. Here's a google image search: https://www.google.com/search?q=murder+assault+rates&rls=en&source=lnms&tbm=isch&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwiP8qbcppThAhUPyFkKHZT-B2sQ_AUIDygC&biw=1287&bih=826#imgrc=rSbHge7DGraf0M https://www.google.com/search?q=murder+assault+rates&rls=en&...: What you will see is broad agreements of the trends, often including fluctuation in shorter terms. Your theory would thus require (a) some evidence that the police is now somehow hiding murders, or (b) that murders fell but other crimes (even attempted murder) were somehow exempt from the trend and the police in almost any jurisdiction managed to underreport all other crimes with almost perfect accuracy to reproduce the trend in murders. The comparisons across jurisdictions is interesting by itself: falling levels of violent crimes have been observed across a broad swath across North America, Europe, and beyond. It's somewhat unlikely that all these unrelated police forces somehow simultaneously decided to and succeeded in embarking on a corrupt campaign to falsify statistics. If anything, the prevailing winds should have led to more crime being reported. Something like rape or assault tend to be taken more seriously these days. In cases such as Spain, one would also expect today's statistics to be more accurate than they were in the 70s, when it still was a fascist dictatorship interested in projecting an image of stability and safety.
  - Judgmentality 8y ago
    > Just look at homicides. A dead body is somewhat impossible to hide from the statistics. Actually it's been posited before that Japan reclassifies murders as suicides in order to skew the data, and some believe other countries are doing this as well. There is a correlation between countries with low murder rates and high suicide rates. http://freakonomics.com/2009/10/29/fewer-murders-more-suicide/ http://freakonomics.com/2009/10/29/fewer-murders-more-suicid...
    - Pfhreak 8y ago
      Is that what you believe is happening in the parent post?
ALittleLight 8y ago
Perhaps I'm missing something, but that seems like a National Crime Victimization Survey (NCVS). How does a recent downward trend at the national level tell you anything about crime in San Francisco which actually seems to have significantly more crime than the National average and a recently rising crime rate? https://www.cityrating.com/crime-statistics/california/san-francisco.html https://www.cityrating.com/crime-statistics/california/san-f...
- bjourne 8y ago
  If I show you statistics claiming that American men are, on average, taller than American females, does that tell you anything about the height of San Francisco males?

tokyodude 8y ago

as a counter point according to this podcast there is a perverse incentive to under report so there may be a good reason not to believe. https://www.gimletmedia.com/reply-all/128-the-crime-machine-part-ii#episode-player https://www.gimletmedia.com/reply-all/128-the-crime-machine-...

Judgmentality 8y ago

I admittedly have not looked at the data in detail and maybe it's the cynic in me, but how much of that decrease in crime can be attributed to manipulating the data? For instance, in San Francisco, car breakins have been reclassified as a misdemeanor. And obviously this is anecdotal, but residents are so blasé towards the complete fucking shitshow that is SFPD (I actually rewrote that into something much gentler) that they don't even bother calling the police or reporting crimes. If it's gotten so bad that people don't even report crimes, and police make it difficult to report crimes (there are many stories about this - yes it's anecdotal), how can we expect the statistics to mean anything? The only thing I know for certain is I've been assaulted by homeless people more than once, including one who pushed me into traffic. After the first few times calling the police and having nobody show up for 30+ minutes I just stopped bothering. I've also seen someone rob a store while a cop was stationed at the entrance of the store for the sole purpose of stopping theft - the cop literally shrugged and said "what am I gonna do, chase after him?" Obviously I'm biased based on my experiences and I'm referring to the microcosm that is SF, but I absolutely unequivocally do not trust anything that comes from the SFPD. And I see no reason to trust other police departments either. For something a little less anecdotal, here's an interesting podcast that basically says once cops started tracking crime they just stopped reporting it. Goodhart's Law in action. https://www.gimletmedia.com/reply-all/127-the-crime-machine-part-i https://www.gimletmedia.com/reply-all/127-the-crime-machine-...

matt4077 8y ago
Just look at homicides. A dead body is somewhat impossible to hide from the statistics. Then, overlay that data with any other category of crime. Here's a google image search: https://www.google.com/search?q=murder+assault+rates&rls=en&source=lnms&tbm=isch&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwiP8qbcppThAhUPyFkKHZT-B2sQ_AUIDygC&biw=1287&bih=826#imgrc=rSbHge7DGraf0M https://www.google.com/search?q=murder+assault+rates&rls=en&...: What you will see is broad agreements of the trends, often including fluctuation in shorter terms. Your theory would thus require (a) some evidence that the police is now somehow hiding murders, or (b) that murders fell but other crimes (even attempted murder) were somehow exempt from the trend and the police in almost any jurisdiction managed to underreport all other crimes with almost perfect accuracy to reproduce the trend in murders. The comparisons across jurisdictions is interesting by itself: falling levels of violent crimes have been observed across a broad swath across North America, Europe, and beyond. It's somewhat unlikely that all these unrelated police forces somehow simultaneously decided to and succeeded in embarking on a corrupt campaign to falsify statistics. If anything, the prevailing winds should have led to more crime being reported. Something like rape or assault tend to be taken more seriously these days. In cases such as Spain, one would also expect today's statistics to be more accurate than they were in the 70s, when it still was a fascist dictatorship interested in projecting an image of stability and safety.
- Judgmentality 8y ago
  > Just look at homicides. A dead body is somewhat impossible to hide from the statistics. Actually it's been posited before that Japan reclassifies murders as suicides in order to skew the data, and some believe other countries are doing this as well. There is a correlation between countries with low murder rates and high suicide rates. http://freakonomics.com/2009/10/29/fewer-murders-more-suicide/ http://freakonomics.com/2009/10/29/fewer-murders-more-suicid...
  - Pfhreak 8y ago
    Is that what you believe is happening in the parent post?

ALittleLight 8y ago

Perhaps I'm missing something, but that seems like a National Crime Victimization Survey (NCVS). How does a recent downward trend at the national level tell you anything about crime in San Francisco which actually seems to have significantly more crime than the National average and a recently rising crime rate? https://www.cityrating.com/crime-statistics/california/san-francisco.html https://www.cityrating.com/crime-statistics/california/san-f...

bjourne 8y ago
If I show you statistics claiming that American men are, on average, taller than American females, does that tell you anything about the height of San Francisco males?