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>> the spike in our murder rate is more likely the product of something else entirely: political instability. The murder rate was declining both long term and

>> the spike in our murder rate is more likely the product of something else entirely: political instability. The murder rate was declining both long term and in recent years, here is the annual homicide rate per 100,000 for the Trump years: 2016 5.4 2017 5.3 2018 5.0 2019 5.0 And in 2020, the rate was flat at the beginning of the year, even through the initial Covid lockdown. It only started spiking in June. And not just a spike, likely the largest increase in the homicide rate in US history. The author, by ruling out the protests as a cause of the increase in the number of people murdered, seems to make the implicit claim that protests can't cause political instability, that they can't decrease trust in government or "People’s faith in political institutions". But no evidence is presented for this implicit claim. There was so much focus on police killings last year that it seems to have cause people to be misinformed. In one survey, 44% of liberals and 20% of conservatives estimated the number of unarmed blacks killed each year by police to be over 1,000. That's two orders of magnitude higher than the actual number. How can that not have an effect on people's views of "the legitimacy of political institutions"? In any event, if you are going to make the case that "x" caused the massive recent spike in murder, you need to explain why "x" had an unprecedented spike starting in June of last year.

elipsey 6y ago
Six independent scholarly sources are cited within the first several paragraphs, whom the author claims arrived at similar conclusions. Your table doesn't include information prior to the current period of supposed political instability, so it does not contain enough information to identify a trend.
- rufus_foreman 6y ago
  What period is "the current period of supposed political instability"?
  - elipsey 6y ago
    Good question! It seemed to me that we were discussing something like the last 4-5 years at minimum, because the author identified a prior and continuing decline in surveyed trust of government and institutions, with especially low reported trust during that period. So I would think it helpful to look at homicide rates over the last decade or so for context. If we think 538 is a reputable source, maybe we could try this: https://fivethirtyeight.com/features/the-u-s-murder-rate-is-up-but-still-far-below-its-1980-peak/ https://fivethirtyeight.com/features/the-u-s-murder-rate-is-... It seems like there was a gradual decline from a ~9.7/100,000 in 1990, to about ~4.8/100,000 in 2014, followed by a smaller but sharp uptick of about %9-%10, to 5.3/100,000 as of 2016. Edit: bad math.
    - rufus_foreman 6y ago
      But it's looking like the 2020 rate is going to be up 30% year over year: https://www.washingtonpost.com/crime-law/2021/02/03/homicides-rose-2020/ https://www.washingtonpost.com/crime-law/2021/02/03/homicide... Do we have 30% less trust of government and institutions than we did last May? If so, what caused that?
      - elipsey 6y ago
        I don't know. My goal is to establish some baseline of fact and perspective before I start opining on causal relationships. Thank you for the link. I'm having trouble locating the national rate for 2020 -- Most reports seem to be from a sample of a few dozen cities. Maybe it takes more time to report the nation data? A %30 YoY increase is a dramatic increase, but also seems to be considerably lower than a few decades ago, if I'm understanding correctly?
        rufus_foreman 6y ago
        They're not going to have official US 2020 numbers for a while. The FBI is slow. We're relying on stuff like the Washington Post link where they look at less authoritative sources. And yeah we would still be lower than the murder rate from decades ago. 5.0 per 100,000 times .3 gets you 6.5, that's lower than the murder rate from 1968 to 1997 if you trust the numbers at http://www.disastercenter.com/crime/uscrime.htm http://www.disastercenter.com/crime/uscrime.htm. I lived through the 90s murder rate in a high crime city, I'll be doing that again as an old man I guess.
- coldtea 6y ago
  A useful question when reading scholarly studies, is: if they didn't arrive at similar conclusions, would they still get grants? Not saying whether they're right or wrong, but "scholars" outside of hard sciences tend to go with the flow that makes their continued employment, grants, earning of citations, avoiding negative press, and acceptance by their social peers (in party and other terms), easier.

elipsey 6y ago

Six independent scholarly sources are cited within the first several paragraphs, whom the author claims arrived at similar conclusions. Your table doesn't include information prior to the current period of supposed political instability, so it does not contain enough information to identify a trend.

rufus_foreman 6y ago
What period is "the current period of supposed political instability"?
- elipsey 6y ago
  Good question! It seemed to me that we were discussing something like the last 4-5 years at minimum, because the author identified a prior and continuing decline in surveyed trust of government and institutions, with especially low reported trust during that period. So I would think it helpful to look at homicide rates over the last decade or so for context. If we think 538 is a reputable source, maybe we could try this: https://fivethirtyeight.com/features/the-u-s-murder-rate-is-up-but-still-far-below-its-1980-peak/ https://fivethirtyeight.com/features/the-u-s-murder-rate-is-... It seems like there was a gradual decline from a ~9.7/100,000 in 1990, to about ~4.8/100,000 in 2014, followed by a smaller but sharp uptick of about %9-%10, to 5.3/100,000 as of 2016. Edit: bad math.
  - rufus_foreman 6y ago
    But it's looking like the 2020 rate is going to be up 30% year over year: https://www.washingtonpost.com/crime-law/2021/02/03/homicides-rose-2020/ https://www.washingtonpost.com/crime-law/2021/02/03/homicide... Do we have 30% less trust of government and institutions than we did last May? If so, what caused that?
    - elipsey 6y ago
      I don't know. My goal is to establish some baseline of fact and perspective before I start opining on causal relationships. Thank you for the link. I'm having trouble locating the national rate for 2020 -- Most reports seem to be from a sample of a few dozen cities. Maybe it takes more time to report the nation data? A %30 YoY increase is a dramatic increase, but also seems to be considerably lower than a few decades ago, if I'm understanding correctly?
      - rufus_foreman 6y ago
        They're not going to have official US 2020 numbers for a while. The FBI is slow. We're relying on stuff like the Washington Post link where they look at less authoritative sources. And yeah we would still be lower than the murder rate from decades ago. 5.0 per 100,000 times .3 gets you 6.5, that's lower than the murder rate from 1968 to 1997 if you trust the numbers at http://www.disastercenter.com/crime/uscrime.htm http://www.disastercenter.com/crime/uscrime.htm. I lived through the 90s murder rate in a high crime city, I'll be doing that again as an old man I guess.
coldtea 6y ago
A useful question when reading scholarly studies, is: if they didn't arrive at similar conclusions, would they still get grants? Not saying whether they're right or wrong, but "scholars" outside of hard sciences tend to go with the flow that makes their continued employment, grants, earning of citations, avoiding negative press, and acceptance by their social peers (in party and other terms), easier.