5 ms·

Crime often is getting worse while statistics saying the contrary are cherry-picked or plain lies. There have been numerous reports of police departments chang

Crime often is getting worse while statistics saying the contrary are cherry-picked or plain lies. There have been numerous reports of police departments changing their reporting and classification of crimes as their regions came under scrutiny for crime rates. Furthermore, sometimes the crime rate per capita goes down but the population size increases more than enough to make up for it. What you see on the news and the streets is absolute crime numbers, not how much of it exists per person in a given region.

dsfyu404ed 7y ago
>Crime often is getting worse while statistics saying the contrary are cherry-picked or plain lies. Outside a select few urban areas that actively have a policy of not engaging in enforcement action against petty property crime (which results in an increased amount of this crime per capita because the people that do it do it a lot more and more people do it at the margins) this is not true. Violent crime is down across the board and has been trending down since the 90s (though the decline isn't as steep as it used to be) by basically any measure you care to use.
jeffdavis 7y ago
No, what you see on the news is whatever sells news. If murder is commonplace, then it's not news. If murder is rare, each event becomes a media storm. Read The Better Angels of our Nature by Steven Pinker. Violence has consistently been on a long downward trend. There may be spikes localized by time or space, but it's doubtful we are reversing the trend on any long timescale or large area. Police can change some classifications here or there, but it's kind of hard to reclassify homicides.
- camjohnson26 7y ago
  Exactly. 561 people were murdered in Chicago in 2018, 337 people were killed in mass shootings across the entire United States. The media unsurprisingly focuses on the mass shootings because they are unexpected and rare.
  - guelo 7y ago
    The mass shootings are terrorism which are designed to terrorize as many people as possible, and it works. The homicide rate in Chicago is largely confined to south Chicago and it has been about the same for years, so it's not very terrorizing.
    - jeffdavis 7y ago
      What you say is probably true, but it raises the question: why always guns? Surely there are other ways to cause death and terror. I wonder if it's because it fits into a narrative? An isolated incident is more easily dismissed or forgotten. Getting back to the main topic, climate change has become a narrative, too, not just an isolated phenomena. Hurricanes, even if mostly random, become part of a larger story. I just finished reading 21 Lessons for the 21st Century, and it got me thinking a lot about narratives. Maybe people naturally have a strong desire to be part of a narrative. Perhaps the hero, perhaps a minor character in a big drama; or, if necessary, the villian.
    - tptacek 7y ago
      South and West Chicago (see HeyJackass.com), and it's very terrorizing, just not to white people. I live in Oak Park, just across the street from Austin. Oak Park is upper-income and heavily college educated, and hosts one of the best school districts in the area. Austin is solidly African American (due to historical redlining), has touch-and-go spots w/r/t poverty, sharply more crime, but also a sizable portion of middle class black families. White kids in Oak Park have almost nothing to fear from Chicago gang violence. The same is not true of black kids in Oak Park --- and we're well integrated --- and extremely not true of black kids in Austin. Kids in Oak Park have, for obvious geographical reasons, friends in Austin and vice versa. Oak Park kids have been shot and killed in parks across the street from Oak Park. It is a huge problem, and one that is easy for policy-types to overlook and downplay because it isn't a problem for white people.
      - camjohnson26 7y ago
        Sad but true. I live in northern Chicago and had to double check the murder rate because it doesn’t fit my experience at all. It’s easy to ignore a problem if it only has a small chance of affecting you.
- partialrecall 7y ago
  It's not murder that now seems more common in my neighborhood. It's property crime. Vandalism, litering, etc. The media doesn't report on this stuff so much. The perception of a trend comes primarily from my own observations.
  - jeffdavis 7y ago
    If homicides are down by a single person, it would take an awful lot of littering and vandalism before I said crime went up. I agree that all crime is something to be concerned about, and that minor crimes are easier to sweep under the rug with creative record keeping. But let's also keep in mind what's really important.
    - partialrecall 7y ago
      Property crime is the most visible and common sort of crime, and it's the sort of crime that has personally impacted me and my friends more than any other sort (I've been the victim of violent crime once, but the victim of property crime more times than I could ever remember.) I think for most people in normal situations, losing sleep over fear of murder is irrational. But concern about property crime is totally rational. It's the difference between a lightning strike and a termite infestation. One is certainly a lot more dramatic than the other, but which is more likely to actually visit your home? >But let's also keep in mind what's really important. Because of the factors mentioned above, I think I'm doing that.
DanBC 7y ago
There are two sources of crime statistics: police and FBI records, and then a survey of households called the National Crime Victimization Survey carried out by BJS. As you say police recorded crime isn't seen as reliable because there's too much variation across time and in different areas. The crime survey is seen as statistically sound though. https://www.bjs.gov/index.cfm?ty=dcdetail&iid=245 https://www.bjs.gov/index.cfm?ty=dcdetail&iid=245
Rebelgecko 7y ago
I can understand something like grand larceny into petty theft, but how are the police covering up crimes like murder in such great numbers? Are corpses with gunshot wounds being incorrectly categorized as accidental deaths? That seems unlikely since the number of accidental firearms deaths have been trending downward as well.
- newnewpdro 7y ago
  Just do a search on the subject, there's plenty of credible journalism trivially found.
  - SolaceQuantum 7y ago
    You're the ones making the claims, so you probably know the sources of credible journalism we should be looking for. Can you help in pointing us curious lurkers in that direction?
  - Rebelgecko 7y ago
    If it's trivial, would you mind sharing some journalism showing what the "real" American homicide rate is? I haven't been able to find any.

dsfyu404ed 7y ago

>Crime often is getting worse while statistics saying the contrary are cherry-picked or plain lies. Outside a select few urban areas that actively have a policy of not engaging in enforcement action against petty property crime (which results in an increased amount of this crime per capita because the people that do it do it a lot more and more people do it at the margins) this is not true. Violent crime is down across the board and has been trending down since the 90s (though the decline isn't as steep as it used to be) by basically any measure you care to use.

jeffdavis 7y ago

No, what you see on the news is whatever sells news. If murder is commonplace, then it's not news. If murder is rare, each event becomes a media storm. Read The Better Angels of our Nature by Steven Pinker. Violence has consistently been on a long downward trend. There may be spikes localized by time or space, but it's doubtful we are reversing the trend on any long timescale or large area. Police can change some classifications here or there, but it's kind of hard to reclassify homicides.

camjohnson26 7y ago
Exactly. 561 people were murdered in Chicago in 2018, 337 people were killed in mass shootings across the entire United States. The media unsurprisingly focuses on the mass shootings because they are unexpected and rare.
- guelo 7y ago
  The mass shootings are terrorism which are designed to terrorize as many people as possible, and it works. The homicide rate in Chicago is largely confined to south Chicago and it has been about the same for years, so it's not very terrorizing.
  - jeffdavis 7y ago
    What you say is probably true, but it raises the question: why always guns? Surely there are other ways to cause death and terror. I wonder if it's because it fits into a narrative? An isolated incident is more easily dismissed or forgotten. Getting back to the main topic, climate change has become a narrative, too, not just an isolated phenomena. Hurricanes, even if mostly random, become part of a larger story. I just finished reading 21 Lessons for the 21st Century, and it got me thinking a lot about narratives. Maybe people naturally have a strong desire to be part of a narrative. Perhaps the hero, perhaps a minor character in a big drama; or, if necessary, the villian.
  - tptacek 7y ago
    South and West Chicago (see HeyJackass.com), and it's very terrorizing, just not to white people. I live in Oak Park, just across the street from Austin. Oak Park is upper-income and heavily college educated, and hosts one of the best school districts in the area. Austin is solidly African American (due to historical redlining), has touch-and-go spots w/r/t poverty, sharply more crime, but also a sizable portion of middle class black families. White kids in Oak Park have almost nothing to fear from Chicago gang violence. The same is not true of black kids in Oak Park --- and we're well integrated --- and extremely not true of black kids in Austin. Kids in Oak Park have, for obvious geographical reasons, friends in Austin and vice versa. Oak Park kids have been shot and killed in parks across the street from Oak Park. It is a huge problem, and one that is easy for policy-types to overlook and downplay because it isn't a problem for white people.
    - camjohnson26 7y ago
      Sad but true. I live in northern Chicago and had to double check the murder rate because it doesn’t fit my experience at all. It’s easy to ignore a problem if it only has a small chance of affecting you.
partialrecall 7y ago
It's not murder that now seems more common in my neighborhood. It's property crime. Vandalism, litering, etc. The media doesn't report on this stuff so much. The perception of a trend comes primarily from my own observations.
- jeffdavis 7y ago
  If homicides are down by a single person, it would take an awful lot of littering and vandalism before I said crime went up. I agree that all crime is something to be concerned about, and that minor crimes are easier to sweep under the rug with creative record keeping. But let's also keep in mind what's really important.
  - partialrecall 7y ago
    Property crime is the most visible and common sort of crime, and it's the sort of crime that has personally impacted me and my friends more than any other sort (I've been the victim of violent crime once, but the victim of property crime more times than I could ever remember.) I think for most people in normal situations, losing sleep over fear of murder is irrational. But concern about property crime is totally rational. It's the difference between a lightning strike and a termite infestation. One is certainly a lot more dramatic than the other, but which is more likely to actually visit your home? >But let's also keep in mind what's really important. Because of the factors mentioned above, I think I'm doing that.

DanBC 7y ago

There are two sources of crime statistics: police and FBI records, and then a survey of households called the National Crime Victimization Survey carried out by BJS. As you say police recorded crime isn't seen as reliable because there's too much variation across time and in different areas. The crime survey is seen as statistically sound though. https://www.bjs.gov/index.cfm?ty=dcdetail&iid=245 https://www.bjs.gov/index.cfm?ty=dcdetail&iid=245

Rebelgecko 7y ago

I can understand something like grand larceny into petty theft, but how are the police covering up crimes like murder in such great numbers? Are corpses with gunshot wounds being incorrectly categorized as accidental deaths? That seems unlikely since the number of accidental firearms deaths have been trending downward as well.

newnewpdro 7y ago
Just do a search on the subject, there's plenty of credible journalism trivially found.
- SolaceQuantum 7y ago
  You're the ones making the claims, so you probably know the sources of credible journalism we should be looking for. Can you help in pointing us curious lurkers in that direction?
- Rebelgecko 7y ago
  If it's trivial, would you mind sharing some journalism showing what the "real" American homicide rate is? I haven't been able to find any.