16 ms·

Murder rate rose by almost 30% in 2020 in the US

106 points by atlasunshrugged 5y ago

joelbondurant 5y ago
Good, most USA thugs need to be bulldozed into mass graves.
nickthemagicman 5y ago
I wonder if anyone really thought this whole 'defunding the police' idea through.
- vharuck 5y ago
  As the article mentions, murder rates rose across the country. And not many cities actually had official support, let alone took action, for defunding or restructuring police forces. Honestly, blaming it on the "Defund the police" movement is a lazy oversimplification. Even if cops decided to patrol or investigate less because of that movement, I wouldn't expect a massive spike in the murder rate. Sure, people might pick pockets or rob houses if they think nobody's watching, but murder?
  - nickthemagicman 5y ago
    No actually you're wrong. Believe it or not, there's a direct co-orelation between police having resources available to fight crime and reduced crime! Crazy right? https://archive.is/5fIqM https://archive.is/5fIqM But we can't eliminate the possibility that all those thousands of new murders were all done by racist police officers. Has anyone looked into this? Could be a huge story. Wouldn't want anyone to get the crazy idea that police actually do good things for black communities.
    - eurasiantiger 5y ago
      How does that article prove your claim?
      - nickthemagicman 5y ago
        Well I'll let the headline of the Washington post article do the 'splainin' "Cities Reverse Defunding the Police Amid Rising Crime"
        eurasiantiger 5y ago
        Your proposition: 1. Cities increase police funding in response to increased crime 2. Therefore, decreasing police funding increases crime. However, 2. does not follow from 1, since many other factors affect crime rates, from legislation to enforcement and from social issues to societal issues. In fact, even the inverse of 2. does not follow from 1: increasing police funding does not decrease crime rates. If you disagree, please provide an academic source for the direct causal relationship between police funding and crime rate.
        nickthemagicman 5y ago
        There's academia and then there's real life and in real life the leaders are realizing Defunding the Police is a stupid idea. Can you explain why these leaders with highly paid staff of analysts who have way more knowledge and data, are doing this? EDIT: while you're downvoting me, be sure to downvote the leaders and news media who lied to you as well. """In New York City, Mayor Bill de Blasio said he would reinstate $92 million for a new precinct after scrapping the project last summer. The mayor of Baltimore, who led efforts as a city councilman to cut the police budget by $22 million last year, recently proposed a $27 million increase. After attacks on Asian-Americans and a rise in homicides in Oakland, Calif., city lawmakers in April restored $3.3 million of the $29 million in police cuts, and the mayor is now proposing to increase the department’s budget by $24 million. Los Angeles’s mayor has proposed an increase of about $50 million after the city cut $150 million from its police department last year."""
        jbboehr 5y ago
        "I told you so" never felt so good.
  - angelzen 5y ago
    Do you seriously propose that 'defund the police' has no effect whatsoever on the murder rate? Here is a list of largest 100 American cities by party affiliation. Feel free to research whether political affiliation of the city leadership, thus propensity to embrace 'defund the police' policies, has anything to do with the spike in murders. Unfortunately I am not aware of professional studies of the matter. Perhaps there will never be. Given an academic system that is 99% affiliated with one political party, difficult to find people willing to scuttle their careers by researching topics that might place policies associated with that political party in anything but the most positive light. https://ballotpedia.org/Party_affiliation_of_the_mayors_of_the_100_largest_cities https://ballotpedia.org/Party_affiliation_of_the_mayors_of_t... Edit: Here is a chart showing sharp decline in 'officers in service' numbers in a progressive West Coast city that embraced 'defund the police': https://www.capitolhillseattle.com/2020/10/after-september-spike-in-seattle-police-separations-durkan-warns-against-deeper-department-cutbacks https://www.capitolhillseattle.com/2020/10/after-september-s... And the spike in murders in the same city: https://www.seattlepi.com/local/seattlenews/article/2020-crime-Seattle-highest-homicide-rate-15864266.php https://www.seattlepi.com/local/seattlenews/article/2020-cri... > Crime dashboard data shows that 52 homicides occurred in 2020 compared to 35 in 2019 — an increase of 48.57%.
    - nickthemagicman 5y ago
      Thanks for those references. Being from New Orleans, a majority black city, its absolutely crazy to me that this is even a debate. I think these BLM people seriously believe that police do more harm than good in black communities. And they think that there's no co-orelation between funding and performance for the police.
      - angelzen 5y ago
        There is a tragedy of the commons at play, of which 'defund the police' is but the last installment. The local Seattle prosecutor was notorious for years for not prosecuting crime. He recently lost his primary and will likely be replaced from the left by a true 'defund the police' candidate. Seattle hasn't even experienced 'defund the police' to its fullest extent, the worst is yet to come. > A repeat offender who was released from the King County Jail last weekend after attacking a security guard in Seattle was re-arrested a few hours later for a brutal attack that ended with that victim being hospitalized in intensive care, according to court documents and police. https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/crime/assault-suspect-leaves-king-county-jail-but-re-arrested-hours-later-for-brutal-attack/ar-BB1ckVVm https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/crime/assault-suspect-leaves-... https://www.teenvogue.com/story/abolitionist-candidates-running-for-office https://www.teenvogue.com/story/abolitionist-candidates-runn...
  - darthnebula 5y ago
    >>Honestly, blaming it on the "Defund the police" movement is a lazy oversimplification No, I think ignoring the facts is clinging to your ideology at all costs. Not many cities had official support? You can't be serious.
  - iammisc 5y ago
    This is the most disingenuous form of misinformation imaginable. While certainly true that murder is up everywhere, it is not true that it is up the same amount. As the article says, murder is up more in cities with pop >100k. Under 25k, the murder rate rose 25%. In larger cities, up to 40%. That is a substantial difference. No one is claiming that some places had fewer murders than before. People are claiming that policies make differences (in this case, population size is a good correlate with party).
    - xmprt 5y ago
      Why are you correlating population size with party when you can literally look up the voting records of cities? What's more likely? 1. High population size implies Democratic party policies implies less police funding implies higher murder rate OR 2. High population size implies higher murder rate (potentially because of higher poor populations or more population density or many other reasons that aren't because of party).
      - iammisc 5y ago
        > High population size implies Democratic party policies implies less police funding implies higher murder rate Democratic party politics are correlated with higher population size. This is not controversial. A high population size ought to correlate with more overall murders, but a similar murder rate. Moreover, in many countries, urban areas are less violent.
        xmprt 5y ago
        I agree with your first statement. However, this is one case where we don't have to make any guesses. City voting records are public. If you actually checked, then you'll see that Democratic and Republican controlled cities have seen an uptick in murder rate. In some cases, Republicans have a higher increase. So this isn't an issue with any particular party. > in many countries, urban areas are less violent This might be because of better mental healthcare, less drug/gang related violence, better gun control, or a variety of factors. If America had the same laws as other countries then this discrepancy would be strange however the US has been very slow at getting up to the current standards that most developed countries have adopted.
  - floor2 5y ago
    Crime doesn't really work the way you're suggesting. Someone robbing houses is directly going to cause a massive uptick in violent crime. What if the resident is home and tries to defend themselves? The victim (of the home invasion) might shoot the invader in self-defense but be charged with murder anyway. Or the robber might kill the homeowner during a struggle even if they only intended to steal property initially. Plus, people aren't inherently "good" and "bad" or "criminals and non-criminals". There's complexity to how being a victim of crime can lead a person to commit other crimes, how "non-violent" crimes can quickly become violent, etc. Blaming "Defund the police" is kinda short-sighted, but certainly there have been massive shifts in how police see themselves, their jobs and their communities and how people see and interact with the police, and that those changes are part of the cascade of changes that lead to increases in murder rates.
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  - dumpsterdiver 5y ago
    You don't have to blame the defunding movement for the rise in homicide rates to wonder if the people in charge thought it through. The scariest part about having my city's police force defunded (aside from cops not wanting to work here anymore) is the realization that my city council members are strongly influenced by the news cycles. News cycles can be tampered with. Truly, what is the news, but a way to tamper with our opinions? Opinions can be changed through repetition, and rage can be incited seemingly with little effort. The modern warfront in the United States is our news feed. You can't exactly waltz an army into a country that's packing nukes. What you can do is hire an army to sway public opinion in a country in order to weaken them. Who knows, maybe next time we'll defund our military.
- throwaway0a5e 5y ago
  Plenty of people have thought it through in great detail over the last 30yr. Those people are mostly not being listened to because small government is a dirty word to most of the people currently pushing to defund the police and because viewing crime through an economic lens is out of vogue in favor of a racial one and people who are seriously studying minimum viable policing historically tend to be from one of those two camps.
- dpweb 5y ago
  I don’t see more policing or better militarization as the answer. These crimes are symptoms of core problems, that run like currents through society. We’re not served well by the constant prideful “we’re the greatest country in the world”. There are some wonderful things to be proud of. However, the fact is, we’re a rather violent society. We’re a society that loves alcohol. We’re a very insecure people. We don’t get to the root of the problems. They are in the psyche.
  - mc32 5y ago
    It surely doesn't help that politicians sow division to weaken and conquer their constituencies and vilify each other creating animosity and discord. Instead of trying to unite our people they want to foment differences. People take cues. Moreover, we prefer to fix other people's problems (Iraq, Afghanistan) to fixing our internal problems. We see this with charities too. Charities eagerly want to help out people who get whacked by natural disasters overseas. That's great and I'm sure those people appreciate it. Where are they they in the US taking care of our homeless, our veterans, our unemployed? They give more shits about people losing their jobs in Timbuktu than they do about our own citizens losing jobs due to outsourcing and poor government policies.
    - edmundsauto 5y ago
      Wow, this is all over the place. A few thoughts: 1. We didn’t fix any problems in Iraq or Afghanistan. We made things worse. The reason was not really a preference, it was revenge, bad info, and protecting strategic reserves. 2. Charities do work locally. They also work internationally. If I am passionate about a specific issue, or about helping as many humans as possible, it’s not clear that it’s preferable to only help others after you’ve fixed all your internal problems. I definitely agree that people take cues from their leaders. That’s why the investigation into January 6 is such a big deal.
      - mc32 5y ago
        Do you remember when everyone claimed Hunter Biden’s laptop with compromising information was Russian disinformation and now the WaPo relented and says that yeah, it’s legit? Where is the pushback against those lies and collusion between the media and a candidate. It’s okay if 10 or 30% just ignore something because it’s not their bag, but 90% of the media refusing to cover it and denying it and all the fact checkers in cahoots? I think that’s a big deal.
- leet_thow 5y ago
  Read the comments at r/Portland to witness people realizing the law of unintended consequences in realtime.
  - commandlinefan 5y ago
    Are you sure these consequences were entirely unintended?
  - felistoria 5y ago
    People said that instagram page Portlandlookslikeshit was an exaggeration. Just drive through Portland for a few hours. The city is completely trashed. Even just driving through on I-5 you see trash all over the sides of the road.
    - xrd 5y ago
      You don't see any improvement at all over the past few months specifically? I live in the suburbs and still visit family in Portland. Over the past few months, I've seen great improvements. There are no longer massive camps along 205, now it seems like a few sprinkled camps with four or five people, every half mile or so. I walked in Oak's Bottom (my kids attend Trackers school) and I saw three park rangers (not police) patrolling the park, querying people who camp there. I did not see any garbage inside the park at all, and this is a very dense forested park. I only saw one tent (I know there are more) but I do think the city has really made a concerted effort to break up large camps, remove garbage aggressively, and move people into temporary housing. My point is that progress is being made. But, I often wonder if I'm not seeing all neighborhoods and if this is just happening in the wealthier neighborhoods. I do feel like the places in SE and NE that I go to, there are visible differences from even a few months back. Maybe you feel like this is not the real story; if so, I'm interested in hearing that. I've been worried about my city for years, but I do feel like we are finally grappling with it as a society and making progress.
      - felistoria 5y ago
        I don't typically drive on 205 to be honest, but I-5 is still covered in garbage and downtown is unbelievably bad. Really sad to see and I avoid downtown as much as possible because of it. It's been a couple weeks since I've drove through but I am going through tomorrow so I guess I'll see if there has been any improvement.
- lm28469 5y ago
  Defunding the police is about taking away their military grade equipment, nothing to do with your everyday murder. I find it way more likely, and interesting, that covid had a major role in the rise of homicides. The lockdowns/restrictions and their social / mental health impacts: people losing their loved ones, jobs, financial/mental struggles, domestic violence, &c. You can live in the most policed country in the world, if you're locked down with your abusive/violent partner for X months violence will happen
  - nickthemagicman 5y ago
    > Defunding the police is about taking away their military grade equipment, nothing to do with your everyday murder. You're mixing up defunding the police with demilitarizing the police. Two different topics.
  - spookthesunset 5y ago
    We are gonna see the effects of these lockdowns and restrictions play out for years. We’ve got an entire generation of kids growing up that have missed more than a year of school and still aren’t back to “normal school. Wait until they become adults! The sad part is plenty of people warned about this sort of thing but they were (and still are) censored, bullied, harassed, gaslit, you name it. This myopic fixation on exactly one single disease to the exclusion of literally everything else in life is gonna go down as one of the worst public policy fuckups of all time.
- ransom1538 5y ago
  IMHO. This wasn't about cities defunding police as it was about DEMORALIZING the police. People will cite: "Look the crime rate was country wide so it couldn't be the result of specific cities defunding." But no. It is that the policing forces are demoralized nation wide. They do less patrolling, less aggressive tactics, less pull overs, less arrests etc. Police are more timid now. This is the result. I expect it to become much worse - with SF city the goal nation wide.
- aaron-santos 5y ago
  You might be surprised to learn that there are even whole books about the topic complete with reading groups, speaking events, and discourse.
- drbojingle 5y ago
  I wonder if police ever actually stopped murders from happening. Do you have any evidence that they did and have now stopped doing so? Police usually show up to crime scenes, not murders in progress. It's a murder after all, not a siege.
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mywittyname 5y ago
> Murder rose over 35 percent in cities with populations over 250,000 that reported full data. It also rose over 40 percent in cities 100,000 to 250,000, and around 25 percent in cities under 25,000. The difference has been noticeable in my city. Murders within the city used to be kind of common, maybe two or so a month, but such crimes were non-existent in the suburbs. Lots of overdoses, but never murders. Now though, there are multiple murders per week within the city, and a few a month in some of the suburbs. Scrolling through the local news is just painful. City or suburbs, kids or adults, the news is full of people killed. Stats back up that this is already the second deadliest year in the region, after last year. And since this will come up. It's a mildly blue city in a very, very red state. We definitely did not defund the police, if anything, we upfunded them in response.
- nickthemagicman 5y ago
  > if anything Sounds real scientific like.
  - mywittyname 5y ago
    So, local governments publish their budgets, so I can see that the increases happened. But they don't publish their reasoning for the increases, thus, I can only guess on the intent.
    - jdavis703 5y ago
      If you read the meeting minutes for the local government meeting you will find their thoughts. If the meeting minutes seem duplicitous, you can always make a FOIA request. You can also look at which candidates receive funding from various local government unions and fraternal orders. I don’t read meeting minutes for most cities, but I do follow my own. Essentially with crime increasing the city council members in my extremely blue city were scared to cut police funding (fearing being blamed for a crime increase). It’s nothing nefarious. It just means activists need to do better challenging status quo opinions.
MathMonkeyMan 5y ago
A lot of people in this thread seem to have made up their minds about why more people are killing each other in America. I read the article and still haven't made up my mind. Thought I'd post a comment for anybody thinking the same.
- s1artibartfast 5y ago
  Yeah, but it can be fun to speculate and share information. One interesting theory that I have is that it relates to stimulus checks and Drug crime. A huge amount of money flowed into the economy and it's plausible that The Fallout of drug organizations fighting to capture that influx of cash
  - MathMonkeyMan 5y ago
    That is an interesting theory. Along similar lines, with people debating whether policing has anything to do with it, I thought "mafia thinks it can get its hits in now." Seems outlandish, though. My best guess is that people cooped up and afraid are more likely to kill. I wonder how it went in other countries. I also wonder whether the distribution of methods of murder (gun, etc.) was much different from 2019 (probably not).
    - s1artibartfast 5y ago
      Yeah, I think a lot of these theories can be easily tested by looking at the demographics and details of the crimes. For example how many of the murderer than victims cohabitated or how many were drug related
    - AnimalMuppet 5y ago
      > My best guess is that people cooped up and afraid are more likely to kill. People who are cooped up and angry. (I mean, they are afraid, too, but I think the anger is more the cause of murders than the fear.) What are they angry about? Being cooped up. Still being cooped up. Having their job put on hold, their self-worth threatened, their financial well-being threatened. And they have more time to spend of social media in a filter bubble (from either side), getting more angry about everything else.
felistoria 5y ago
I don't think it has to do with defunding the police at all. I do think is has to do with removing the ability of the police to make arrests or when they do the person is just released. In Portland, when they arrest someone, the DA just releases them. About a month ago the female owner of a coffee shop was blasted out of no where with an uppercut by a homeless guy. The dude was arrested and let out in less than 24 hours. How do you let someone violent like that just roam the streets? The only way the actually put someone away anymore is for murder. Stuff like this is definitely one factor as to why murder rates are up.
- bjourne 5y ago
  Isn't it a little presumptuous of you to think that you know what caused the spike when criminologists who study all kinds of crime rates for a living does not know?
  - felistoria 5y ago
    It doesn't take a rocket scientist to come to the logical conclusion that catch and release of criminals will lead to more crime.
    - bjourne 5y ago
      Then perhaps you can cite some research that provides evidence for the claim that changed catch and release policies caused the uptick in murders?
      - AnimalMuppet 5y ago
        The observant will note that you also cite no evidence, not even for your claim that criminologists don't know what causes the spike. felistoria at least makes a plausible cause-and-effect argument, which is more than you have done.
        bjourne 5y ago
enono 5y ago
I'm just eyeballing it here, but it looks like there was a similar increase in homicides (i know there is a difference between homicide and murder) during the spanish flu pandemic from 1918-1920 https://sites.nationalacademies.org/cs/groups/dbassesite/documents/webpage/dbasse_083892.pdf https://sites.nationalacademies.org/cs/groups/dbassesite/doc... Also y'all should not be so confident in your diagnosis of why the murder rate spiked so much this year. Hindsight is 20/20 and this is a highly complex / multivariate problem. Simple answers are probably wrong here
- rufus_foreman 5y ago
  >> Simple answers are probably wrong here I would argue the opposite in this case. The increase started at the same time in almost every large city in the US, but not in other countries in the world. If the same thing happens in 30 cities at the same time, I'm not looking for 30 root causes, I'm looking at what was the commonality in those 30 US cities around that time that was different from what was going on in the rest of the world.
  - enono 5y ago
    That is a really good point. What then do you identify as the single commonality between these 30 cities. I guess my point is just a general hesitation to accept simple answers for things. I also was unaware that covid didn't precipitate similar increases in murder rate globally
    - rufus_foreman 5y ago
      >> What then do you identify as the single commonality between these 30 cities I don't know. I mean we can start by ruling things out but I don't know. It wasn't covid, every country had covid, you look at some of the other reasons people put forth, did that suddenly happen? The increase in homicide rates suddenly happened. The police weren't suddenly defunded in 30 cities across America in June of 2020. They didn't suddenly change bail requirements in 30 cities across America in June of 2020. The typical murder we are talking about here is a young black man with a handgun killing another young black man. That's where the increase comes from. Young black men didn't all of the sudden go acquire handguns in the middle of 2020. These aren't for the most part legally acquired or legally carried handguns. Maybe starting in June of 2020 they felt the need to carry a gun was greater, and the risk of carrying a gun was lower? In every large city in the US? I don't know, that's the best I've got. What've you got?
bradlys 5y ago
lol - so people do people think BLM and defund the police actually had a real effect? I’m confused because black people still get murdered by cops all the time and I haven’t seen any metros defund their police to levels below what they were in the last five years. Biggest “defund” I’ve seen is not increasing their budget again for the 30th year in a row. Weird political commentators coming into HN. Article has no details on the reasons either. It has no clue. Just quotes stats. Btw - overall crime was down for the year. Violent crime went up 4-5%. Murder was just way higher and of course is a headline and click getter. I wouldn’t be surprised if the majority of the murder was gang related and literally no one except those in gang ridden neighborhoods gives a shit. (So no one because no one cares about the poors)
- Zababa 5y ago
  > I’m confused because black people still get murdered by cops all the time Black people mostly get murdred by other black people: https://ucr.fbi.gov/crime-in-the-u.s/2016/crime-in-the-u.s.-2016/tables/expanded-homicide-data-table-3.xls https://ucr.fbi.gov/crime-in-the-u.s/2016/crime-in-the-u.s.-...
neonate 5y ago
http://web.archive.org/web/20210924103924/https://www.nytimes.com/2021/09/22/upshot/murder-rise-2020.html http://web.archive.org/web/20210924103924/https://www.nytime... https://archive.is/xuynD https://archive.is/xuynD
GoodJokes 5y ago
Overall crime is down.
furyofantares 5y ago
The first thing that came to my mind wasn't anything to do with defunding the police, nor with releasing more people during the pandemic -- it was that folks in domestic violence situations during lockdowns spent a lot more than 30% additional time with their abuser, and had fewer options if they wished to leave, and fewer opportunities to prepare to leave
- zamalek 5y ago
  Exactly, there are many other explanations. Being stuck at home is also a situation where domestic violence could erupt for the first time. Another one is that a burglar in 2020 would be almost guaranteed to find someone at home.
- rufus_foreman 5y ago
  The pandemic was global, the huge spike in homicide was American. If you look at North and South America, the majority of countries had a decrease in homicide in 2020, most of the ones with an increase had a small increase. This includes countries with some of the highest homicide rates in the world. El Salvador had the highest homicide rate in the world in 2018, during 2020 it decreased almost 45%. El Salvador had a significant response to the pandemic including a 30 day curfew. If lockdowns cause homicide shouldn't it have showed up there, and in the rest of the world? The only country in the Americas with an increase approaching the US was Chile with a 28% increase. What was going on in Chile? "Political unrest in the country continued into 2020. Following a period of relative peace amid mobility restrictions associated with the coronavirus pandemic, violent clashes between security forces and protestors resumed a year after demonstrations over high living costs and extreme inequality had first erupted in the capital Santiago." Chile also has drug trafficking homicides, not sure if that increased in 2020. The fact that two of the countries with massive increases in homicide rates had political unrest at the same time isn't proof, but it's a clue.
  - furyofantares 5y ago
    > El Salvador had a significant response to the pandemic including a 30 day curfew. If lockdowns cause homicide shouldn't it have showed up there, and in the rest of the world? I don't think I'd expect that regarding El Salvador. What are the primary types of homicide in 2019 in the US and El Salvador? I can't actually figure this out using google, if anyone knows I'd appreciate it. My wild guess would be domestic violence in the US and organized crime in El Salvador but I could be wildly off. However, anywhere that organized crime is the dominant type of homicide then a spike in domestic violence isn't likely to have much effect on the overall homicide rate, but anywhere that domestic violence is the at the top, it would. I'm not really proposing this specific explanation btw, just saying it's the first thing that came to my mind. There's a ton of ways that 2020 differs from 2019, not just "defund the police", and I don't know how to detangle it at all.
archsurface 5y ago
I can't read the article, but would think this is a no brainer due to lockdowns - along with increased suicide, divorce, domestic abuse.
- DanBC 5y ago
  > along with increased suicide Most places have not seen in increase in deaths by suicide yet.
bingohbangoh 5y ago
Here in New York City & New Jersey, bail reform was passed circa 2019. This limited when bail could be imposed on people, including the almost complete elimination of mandatory bail. It is completely up to the District Attorney's discretion. The idea was that illegal drug dealing shouldn't come with an unusual burden for bail, given that its non-violent. This was heralded as a victory almost immeadiately: there was little change in crime rate within the first months of it being passed. This seemed really strange to me. Why would you declare victory like this so prematurely? It was just _months_ after it was passed that people said "look no difference, more humane." Such proclamations should be waited at least two years so you could handle any noise. Also noted in this thread has been the new hyper progressive DAs who don't prosecute unless its really bad. Take SF with Chesa Boudin, who doesn't prosecute thefts under the felony limit (roughly $1000) _at all_. There's a lot to be said about whether these all form moral hazards but I leave that to one's own interpretation. I will say that people under ~35 never knew a New York City so dangerous you couldn't walk around at night.
- BoorishBears 5y ago
  Why two years? Why do the people interacting with the system on a daily basis not get to make observations on a major change in the system in "just" months?
  - bingohbangoh 5y ago
    You can't say "there was no difference in crime" with only a few months of data. It's too noisy. There isn't enough data.
    - lesuorac 5y ago
      > It's too noisy. [Citation Needed]
      - bingohbangoh 5y ago
        I'm surprised two people are debating this. Statistics over small timescales, e.g. months, will not be as accurate as statistics over large timescales. This isn't disputed (unless it is? I'd be curious if you know people who think statistics with fewer numbers are more accurate than statistics with more numbers. As for if a few months of data was enough to proclaim victory, NYC's current surge in crime seems evident to me that a few months was not enough data. As for if this is directly relevant to the surge in crime, I leave that to your own conclusions. As for why I picked two years, it was an arbitrary guess. My point is that we need more data before announcing "bail reform solved problems."
ameminator 5y ago
Uh, I disagree with a lot of the commenters here. I do think it had something to do with the "defund the police" movement, the BLM riots and the absolute unwillingness of police agencies around the country to address crime. However, I can also acknowledge that keeping people shut out of their jobs and participation in public life is an easy way to forment social unrest.
- vb6sp6 5y ago
  Do you have and data or more thoughts on this? I ask because we tend to associate the police with "fighting crime" where the reality seems to be that they are mostly "responding to crime that has already happened". There will certainly be a few examples of police stopping crime in the moment but you would literally needs cops everywhere to even try to catch a decent percentage of violent crime that is committed.
  - drekipus 5y ago
    > mostly "responding to crime that has already happened". Yes the police, and justice, are to act as a deterrent to crime, moreso than "respond before a crime happened" I highly suspect that the respect for the law has dropped, and with ideas of defunding the police, there's probably less resources as well. This is what was asked for.
    - vb6sp6 5y ago
      Is there data to suggest any of this?
      - drekipus 5y ago
        Data to suggest that the law is meant as a deterrent or data to suggest my suspicions? (Edit: because I don't think "data" can help you in either of these situations)
        AnimalMuppet 5y ago
steve76 5y ago
After a shooting, notice that you start getting tourists. Most people love murder. It gives them rep. Nice things, being a parent, are only met with cynicism, even hostile disgust. Build something nice. It will be torn apart today. That's what's honest right? Turning back into an animal. All those things like civility, mutual respect, abstract thought, jurisprudence, that's just phony superstitions, made up by the powerful for oppression. They're too dumb, too white, even though their origins are from Mesopotamia and a Mediterranean antiquity. George Soros, you are a modern day Don Quixote. You tilt at the windmills of lawless amorality and self-righteous license. Liberty means the powerful acknowledge they really can't force anyone to do anything. Whether to advance or to retreat is always a personal individual decision. How can you transcend conventions when you can't even master the basics of what it means to be human? Here's an idea, if you are going to spend a lot of money and effort only to make things worse, don't do it. Go away. Don't even try to fool yourself. The world is better without you. Life becomes so much nicer and easier once you get far away from all these violent stubborn fools.
giardini 5y ago
I've always heard that the murder rate and other assault stats was most strongly correlated with the number of males between the ages of ~16 and 26.
kaminar 5y ago
The left's fault, 100%. You yearned for this anarchy and mess, you are to blame.

joelbondurant 5y ago

Good, most USA thugs need to be bulldozed into mass graves.

nickthemagicman 5y ago

I wonder if anyone really thought this whole 'defunding the police' idea through.

vharuck 5y ago
As the article mentions, murder rates rose across the country. And not many cities actually had official support, let alone took action, for defunding or restructuring police forces. Honestly, blaming it on the "Defund the police" movement is a lazy oversimplification. Even if cops decided to patrol or investigate less because of that movement, I wouldn't expect a massive spike in the murder rate. Sure, people might pick pockets or rob houses if they think nobody's watching, but murder?
- nickthemagicman 5y ago
  No actually you're wrong. Believe it or not, there's a direct co-orelation between police having resources available to fight crime and reduced crime! Crazy right? https://archive.is/5fIqM https://archive.is/5fIqM But we can't eliminate the possibility that all those thousands of new murders were all done by racist police officers. Has anyone looked into this? Could be a huge story. Wouldn't want anyone to get the crazy idea that police actually do good things for black communities.
  - eurasiantiger 5y ago
    How does that article prove your claim?
    - nickthemagicman 5y ago
      Well I'll let the headline of the Washington post article do the 'splainin' "Cities Reverse Defunding the Police Amid Rising Crime"
      - eurasiantiger 5y ago
        Your proposition: 1. Cities increase police funding in response to increased crime 2. Therefore, decreasing police funding increases crime. However, 2. does not follow from 1, since many other factors affect crime rates, from legislation to enforcement and from social issues to societal issues. In fact, even the inverse of 2. does not follow from 1: increasing police funding does not decrease crime rates. If you disagree, please provide an academic source for the direct causal relationship between police funding and crime rate.
        nickthemagicman 5y ago
        There's academia and then there's real life and in real life the leaders are realizing Defunding the Police is a stupid idea. Can you explain why these leaders with highly paid staff of analysts who have way more knowledge and data, are doing this? EDIT: while you're downvoting me, be sure to downvote the leaders and news media who lied to you as well. """In New York City, Mayor Bill de Blasio said he would reinstate $92 million for a new precinct after scrapping the project last summer. The mayor of Baltimore, who led efforts as a city councilman to cut the police budget by $22 million last year, recently proposed a $27 million increase. After attacks on Asian-Americans and a rise in homicides in Oakland, Calif., city lawmakers in April restored $3.3 million of the $29 million in police cuts, and the mayor is now proposing to increase the department’s budget by $24 million. Los Angeles’s mayor has proposed an increase of about $50 million after the city cut $150 million from its police department last year."""
        jbboehr 5y ago
        "I told you so" never felt so good.
- angelzen 5y ago
  Do you seriously propose that 'defund the police' has no effect whatsoever on the murder rate? Here is a list of largest 100 American cities by party affiliation. Feel free to research whether political affiliation of the city leadership, thus propensity to embrace 'defund the police' policies, has anything to do with the spike in murders. Unfortunately I am not aware of professional studies of the matter. Perhaps there will never be. Given an academic system that is 99% affiliated with one political party, difficult to find people willing to scuttle their careers by researching topics that might place policies associated with that political party in anything but the most positive light. https://ballotpedia.org/Party_affiliation_of_the_mayors_of_the_100_largest_cities https://ballotpedia.org/Party_affiliation_of_the_mayors_of_t... Edit: Here is a chart showing sharp decline in 'officers in service' numbers in a progressive West Coast city that embraced 'defund the police': https://www.capitolhillseattle.com/2020/10/after-september-spike-in-seattle-police-separations-durkan-warns-against-deeper-department-cutbacks https://www.capitolhillseattle.com/2020/10/after-september-s... And the spike in murders in the same city: https://www.seattlepi.com/local/seattlenews/article/2020-crime-Seattle-highest-homicide-rate-15864266.php https://www.seattlepi.com/local/seattlenews/article/2020-cri... > Crime dashboard data shows that 52 homicides occurred in 2020 compared to 35 in 2019 — an increase of 48.57%.
  - nickthemagicman 5y ago
    Thanks for those references. Being from New Orleans, a majority black city, its absolutely crazy to me that this is even a debate. I think these BLM people seriously believe that police do more harm than good in black communities. And they think that there's no co-orelation between funding and performance for the police.
    - angelzen 5y ago
      There is a tragedy of the commons at play, of which 'defund the police' is but the last installment. The local Seattle prosecutor was notorious for years for not prosecuting crime. He recently lost his primary and will likely be replaced from the left by a true 'defund the police' candidate. Seattle hasn't even experienced 'defund the police' to its fullest extent, the worst is yet to come. > A repeat offender who was released from the King County Jail last weekend after attacking a security guard in Seattle was re-arrested a few hours later for a brutal attack that ended with that victim being hospitalized in intensive care, according to court documents and police. https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/crime/assault-suspect-leaves-king-county-jail-but-re-arrested-hours-later-for-brutal-attack/ar-BB1ckVVm https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/crime/assault-suspect-leaves-... https://www.teenvogue.com/story/abolitionist-candidates-running-for-office https://www.teenvogue.com/story/abolitionist-candidates-runn...
- darthnebula 5y ago
  >>Honestly, blaming it on the "Defund the police" movement is a lazy oversimplification No, I think ignoring the facts is clinging to your ideology at all costs. Not many cities had official support? You can't be serious.
- iammisc 5y ago
  This is the most disingenuous form of misinformation imaginable. While certainly true that murder is up everywhere, it is not true that it is up the same amount. As the article says, murder is up more in cities with pop >100k. Under 25k, the murder rate rose 25%. In larger cities, up to 40%. That is a substantial difference. No one is claiming that some places had fewer murders than before. People are claiming that policies make differences (in this case, population size is a good correlate with party).
  - xmprt 5y ago
    Why are you correlating population size with party when you can literally look up the voting records of cities? What's more likely? 1. High population size implies Democratic party policies implies less police funding implies higher murder rate OR 2. High population size implies higher murder rate (potentially because of higher poor populations or more population density or many other reasons that aren't because of party).
    - iammisc 5y ago
      > High population size implies Democratic party policies implies less police funding implies higher murder rate Democratic party politics are correlated with higher population size. This is not controversial. A high population size ought to correlate with more overall murders, but a similar murder rate. Moreover, in many countries, urban areas are less violent.
      - xmprt 5y ago
        I agree with your first statement. However, this is one case where we don't have to make any guesses. City voting records are public. If you actually checked, then you'll see that Democratic and Republican controlled cities have seen an uptick in murder rate. In some cases, Republicans have a higher increase. So this isn't an issue with any particular party. > in many countries, urban areas are less violent This might be because of better mental healthcare, less drug/gang related violence, better gun control, or a variety of factors. If America had the same laws as other countries then this discrepancy would be strange however the US has been very slow at getting up to the current standards that most developed countries have adopted.
- floor2 5y ago
  Crime doesn't really work the way you're suggesting. Someone robbing houses is directly going to cause a massive uptick in violent crime. What if the resident is home and tries to defend themselves? The victim (of the home invasion) might shoot the invader in self-defense but be charged with murder anyway. Or the robber might kill the homeowner during a struggle even if they only intended to steal property initially. Plus, people aren't inherently "good" and "bad" or "criminals and non-criminals". There's complexity to how being a victim of crime can lead a person to commit other crimes, how "non-violent" crimes can quickly become violent, etc. Blaming "Defund the police" is kinda short-sighted, but certainly there have been massive shifts in how police see themselves, their jobs and their communities and how people see and interact with the police, and that those changes are part of the cascade of changes that lead to increases in murder rates.
- deleted 5y ago
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- dumpsterdiver 5y ago
  You don't have to blame the defunding movement for the rise in homicide rates to wonder if the people in charge thought it through. The scariest part about having my city's police force defunded (aside from cops not wanting to work here anymore) is the realization that my city council members are strongly influenced by the news cycles. News cycles can be tampered with. Truly, what is the news, but a way to tamper with our opinions? Opinions can be changed through repetition, and rage can be incited seemingly with little effort. The modern warfront in the United States is our news feed. You can't exactly waltz an army into a country that's packing nukes. What you can do is hire an army to sway public opinion in a country in order to weaken them. Who knows, maybe next time we'll defund our military.
throwaway0a5e 5y ago
Plenty of people have thought it through in great detail over the last 30yr. Those people are mostly not being listened to because small government is a dirty word to most of the people currently pushing to defund the police and because viewing crime through an economic lens is out of vogue in favor of a racial one and people who are seriously studying minimum viable policing historically tend to be from one of those two camps.
dpweb 5y ago
I don’t see more policing or better militarization as the answer. These crimes are symptoms of core problems, that run like currents through society. We’re not served well by the constant prideful “we’re the greatest country in the world”. There are some wonderful things to be proud of. However, the fact is, we’re a rather violent society. We’re a society that loves alcohol. We’re a very insecure people. We don’t get to the root of the problems. They are in the psyche.
- mc32 5y ago
  It surely doesn't help that politicians sow division to weaken and conquer their constituencies and vilify each other creating animosity and discord. Instead of trying to unite our people they want to foment differences. People take cues. Moreover, we prefer to fix other people's problems (Iraq, Afghanistan) to fixing our internal problems. We see this with charities too. Charities eagerly want to help out people who get whacked by natural disasters overseas. That's great and I'm sure those people appreciate it. Where are they they in the US taking care of our homeless, our veterans, our unemployed? They give more shits about people losing their jobs in Timbuktu than they do about our own citizens losing jobs due to outsourcing and poor government policies.
  - edmundsauto 5y ago
    Wow, this is all over the place. A few thoughts: 1. We didn’t fix any problems in Iraq or Afghanistan. We made things worse. The reason was not really a preference, it was revenge, bad info, and protecting strategic reserves. 2. Charities do work locally. They also work internationally. If I am passionate about a specific issue, or about helping as many humans as possible, it’s not clear that it’s preferable to only help others after you’ve fixed all your internal problems. I definitely agree that people take cues from their leaders. That’s why the investigation into January 6 is such a big deal.
    - mc32 5y ago
      Do you remember when everyone claimed Hunter Biden’s laptop with compromising information was Russian disinformation and now the WaPo relented and says that yeah, it’s legit? Where is the pushback against those lies and collusion between the media and a candidate. It’s okay if 10 or 30% just ignore something because it’s not their bag, but 90% of the media refusing to cover it and denying it and all the fact checkers in cahoots? I think that’s a big deal.
leet_thow 5y ago
Read the comments at r/Portland to witness people realizing the law of unintended consequences in realtime.
- commandlinefan 5y ago
  Are you sure these consequences were entirely unintended?
- felistoria 5y ago
  People said that instagram page Portlandlookslikeshit was an exaggeration. Just drive through Portland for a few hours. The city is completely trashed. Even just driving through on I-5 you see trash all over the sides of the road.
  - xrd 5y ago
    You don't see any improvement at all over the past few months specifically? I live in the suburbs and still visit family in Portland. Over the past few months, I've seen great improvements. There are no longer massive camps along 205, now it seems like a few sprinkled camps with four or five people, every half mile or so. I walked in Oak's Bottom (my kids attend Trackers school) and I saw three park rangers (not police) patrolling the park, querying people who camp there. I did not see any garbage inside the park at all, and this is a very dense forested park. I only saw one tent (I know there are more) but I do think the city has really made a concerted effort to break up large camps, remove garbage aggressively, and move people into temporary housing. My point is that progress is being made. But, I often wonder if I'm not seeing all neighborhoods and if this is just happening in the wealthier neighborhoods. I do feel like the places in SE and NE that I go to, there are visible differences from even a few months back. Maybe you feel like this is not the real story; if so, I'm interested in hearing that. I've been worried about my city for years, but I do feel like we are finally grappling with it as a society and making progress.
    - felistoria 5y ago
      I don't typically drive on 205 to be honest, but I-5 is still covered in garbage and downtown is unbelievably bad. Really sad to see and I avoid downtown as much as possible because of it. It's been a couple weeks since I've drove through but I am going through tomorrow so I guess I'll see if there has been any improvement.
lm28469 5y ago
Defunding the police is about taking away their military grade equipment, nothing to do with your everyday murder. I find it way more likely, and interesting, that covid had a major role in the rise of homicides. The lockdowns/restrictions and their social / mental health impacts: people losing their loved ones, jobs, financial/mental struggles, domestic violence, &c. You can live in the most policed country in the world, if you're locked down with your abusive/violent partner for X months violence will happen
- nickthemagicman 5y ago
  > Defunding the police is about taking away their military grade equipment, nothing to do with your everyday murder. You're mixing up defunding the police with demilitarizing the police. Two different topics.
- spookthesunset 5y ago
  We are gonna see the effects of these lockdowns and restrictions play out for years. We’ve got an entire generation of kids growing up that have missed more than a year of school and still aren’t back to “normal school. Wait until they become adults! The sad part is plenty of people warned about this sort of thing but they were (and still are) censored, bullied, harassed, gaslit, you name it. This myopic fixation on exactly one single disease to the exclusion of literally everything else in life is gonna go down as one of the worst public policy fuckups of all time.
ransom1538 5y ago
IMHO. This wasn't about cities defunding police as it was about DEMORALIZING the police. People will cite: "Look the crime rate was country wide so it couldn't be the result of specific cities defunding." But no. It is that the policing forces are demoralized nation wide. They do less patrolling, less aggressive tactics, less pull overs, less arrests etc. Police are more timid now. This is the result. I expect it to become much worse - with SF city the goal nation wide.
aaron-santos 5y ago
You might be surprised to learn that there are even whole books about the topic complete with reading groups, speaking events, and discourse.
drbojingle 5y ago
I wonder if police ever actually stopped murders from happening. Do you have any evidence that they did and have now stopped doing so? Police usually show up to crime scenes, not murders in progress. It's a murder after all, not a siege.

deleted 5y ago

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mywittyname 5y ago

> Murder rose over 35 percent in cities with populations over 250,000 that reported full data. It also rose over 40 percent in cities 100,000 to 250,000, and around 25 percent in cities under 25,000. The difference has been noticeable in my city. Murders within the city used to be kind of common, maybe two or so a month, but such crimes were non-existent in the suburbs. Lots of overdoses, but never murders. Now though, there are multiple murders per week within the city, and a few a month in some of the suburbs. Scrolling through the local news is just painful. City or suburbs, kids or adults, the news is full of people killed. Stats back up that this is already the second deadliest year in the region, after last year. And since this will come up. It's a mildly blue city in a very, very red state. We definitely did not defund the police, if anything, we upfunded them in response.

nickthemagicman 5y ago
> if anything Sounds real scientific like.
- mywittyname 5y ago
  So, local governments publish their budgets, so I can see that the increases happened. But they don't publish their reasoning for the increases, thus, I can only guess on the intent.
  - jdavis703 5y ago
    If you read the meeting minutes for the local government meeting you will find their thoughts. If the meeting minutes seem duplicitous, you can always make a FOIA request. You can also look at which candidates receive funding from various local government unions and fraternal orders. I don’t read meeting minutes for most cities, but I do follow my own. Essentially with crime increasing the city council members in my extremely blue city were scared to cut police funding (fearing being blamed for a crime increase). It’s nothing nefarious. It just means activists need to do better challenging status quo opinions.

MathMonkeyMan 5y ago

A lot of people in this thread seem to have made up their minds about why more people are killing each other in America. I read the article and still haven't made up my mind. Thought I'd post a comment for anybody thinking the same.

s1artibartfast 5y ago
Yeah, but it can be fun to speculate and share information. One interesting theory that I have is that it relates to stimulus checks and Drug crime. A huge amount of money flowed into the economy and it's plausible that The Fallout of drug organizations fighting to capture that influx of cash
- MathMonkeyMan 5y ago
  That is an interesting theory. Along similar lines, with people debating whether policing has anything to do with it, I thought "mafia thinks it can get its hits in now." Seems outlandish, though. My best guess is that people cooped up and afraid are more likely to kill. I wonder how it went in other countries. I also wonder whether the distribution of methods of murder (gun, etc.) was much different from 2019 (probably not).
  - s1artibartfast 5y ago
    Yeah, I think a lot of these theories can be easily tested by looking at the demographics and details of the crimes. For example how many of the murderer than victims cohabitated or how many were drug related
  - AnimalMuppet 5y ago
    > My best guess is that people cooped up and afraid are more likely to kill. People who are cooped up and angry. (I mean, they are afraid, too, but I think the anger is more the cause of murders than the fear.) What are they angry about? Being cooped up. Still being cooped up. Having their job put on hold, their self-worth threatened, their financial well-being threatened. And they have more time to spend of social media in a filter bubble (from either side), getting more angry about everything else.

felistoria 5y ago

I don't think it has to do with defunding the police at all. I do think is has to do with removing the ability of the police to make arrests or when they do the person is just released. In Portland, when they arrest someone, the DA just releases them. About a month ago the female owner of a coffee shop was blasted out of no where with an uppercut by a homeless guy. The dude was arrested and let out in less than 24 hours. How do you let someone violent like that just roam the streets? The only way the actually put someone away anymore is for murder. Stuff like this is definitely one factor as to why murder rates are up.

bjourne 5y ago
Isn't it a little presumptuous of you to think that you know what caused the spike when criminologists who study all kinds of crime rates for a living does not know?
- felistoria 5y ago
  It doesn't take a rocket scientist to come to the logical conclusion that catch and release of criminals will lead to more crime.
  - bjourne 5y ago
    Then perhaps you can cite some research that provides evidence for the claim that changed catch and release policies caused the uptick in murders?
    - AnimalMuppet 5y ago
      The observant will note that you also cite no evidence, not even for your claim that criminologists don't know what causes the spike. felistoria at least makes a plausible cause-and-effect argument, which is more than you have done.
      - bjourne 5y ago

enono 5y ago

I'm just eyeballing it here, but it looks like there was a similar increase in homicides (i know there is a difference between homicide and murder) during the spanish flu pandemic from 1918-1920 https://sites.nationalacademies.org/cs/groups/dbassesite/documents/webpage/dbasse_083892.pdf https://sites.nationalacademies.org/cs/groups/dbassesite/doc... Also y'all should not be so confident in your diagnosis of why the murder rate spiked so much this year. Hindsight is 20/20 and this is a highly complex / multivariate problem. Simple answers are probably wrong here

rufus_foreman 5y ago
>> Simple answers are probably wrong here I would argue the opposite in this case. The increase started at the same time in almost every large city in the US, but not in other countries in the world. If the same thing happens in 30 cities at the same time, I'm not looking for 30 root causes, I'm looking at what was the commonality in those 30 US cities around that time that was different from what was going on in the rest of the world.
- enono 5y ago
  That is a really good point. What then do you identify as the single commonality between these 30 cities. I guess my point is just a general hesitation to accept simple answers for things. I also was unaware that covid didn't precipitate similar increases in murder rate globally
  - rufus_foreman 5y ago
    >> What then do you identify as the single commonality between these 30 cities I don't know. I mean we can start by ruling things out but I don't know. It wasn't covid, every country had covid, you look at some of the other reasons people put forth, did that suddenly happen? The increase in homicide rates suddenly happened. The police weren't suddenly defunded in 30 cities across America in June of 2020. They didn't suddenly change bail requirements in 30 cities across America in June of 2020. The typical murder we are talking about here is a young black man with a handgun killing another young black man. That's where the increase comes from. Young black men didn't all of the sudden go acquire handguns in the middle of 2020. These aren't for the most part legally acquired or legally carried handguns. Maybe starting in June of 2020 they felt the need to carry a gun was greater, and the risk of carrying a gun was lower? In every large city in the US? I don't know, that's the best I've got. What've you got?

bradlys 5y ago

lol - so people do people think BLM and defund the police actually had a real effect? I’m confused because black people still get murdered by cops all the time and I haven’t seen any metros defund their police to levels below what they were in the last five years. Biggest “defund” I’ve seen is not increasing their budget again for the 30th year in a row. Weird political commentators coming into HN. Article has no details on the reasons either. It has no clue. Just quotes stats. Btw - overall crime was down for the year. Violent crime went up 4-5%. Murder was just way higher and of course is a headline and click getter. I wouldn’t be surprised if the majority of the murder was gang related and literally no one except those in gang ridden neighborhoods gives a shit. (So no one because no one cares about the poors)

Zababa 5y ago
> I’m confused because black people still get murdered by cops all the time Black people mostly get murdred by other black people: https://ucr.fbi.gov/crime-in-the-u.s/2016/crime-in-the-u.s.-2016/tables/expanded-homicide-data-table-3.xls https://ucr.fbi.gov/crime-in-the-u.s/2016/crime-in-the-u.s.-...

neonate 5y ago

http://web.archive.org/web/20210924103924/https://www.nytimes.com/2021/09/22/upshot/murder-rise-2020.html http://web.archive.org/web/20210924103924/https://www.nytime... https://archive.is/xuynD https://archive.is/xuynD

GoodJokes 5y ago

Overall crime is down.

furyofantares 5y ago

The first thing that came to my mind wasn't anything to do with defunding the police, nor with releasing more people during the pandemic -- it was that folks in domestic violence situations during lockdowns spent a lot more than 30% additional time with their abuser, and had fewer options if they wished to leave, and fewer opportunities to prepare to leave

zamalek 5y ago
Exactly, there are many other explanations. Being stuck at home is also a situation where domestic violence could erupt for the first time. Another one is that a burglar in 2020 would be almost guaranteed to find someone at home.
rufus_foreman 5y ago
The pandemic was global, the huge spike in homicide was American. If you look at North and South America, the majority of countries had a decrease in homicide in 2020, most of the ones with an increase had a small increase. This includes countries with some of the highest homicide rates in the world. El Salvador had the highest homicide rate in the world in 2018, during 2020 it decreased almost 45%. El Salvador had a significant response to the pandemic including a 30 day curfew. If lockdowns cause homicide shouldn't it have showed up there, and in the rest of the world? The only country in the Americas with an increase approaching the US was Chile with a 28% increase. What was going on in Chile? "Political unrest in the country continued into 2020. Following a period of relative peace amid mobility restrictions associated with the coronavirus pandemic, violent clashes between security forces and protestors resumed a year after demonstrations over high living costs and extreme inequality had first erupted in the capital Santiago." Chile also has drug trafficking homicides, not sure if that increased in 2020. The fact that two of the countries with massive increases in homicide rates had political unrest at the same time isn't proof, but it's a clue.
- furyofantares 5y ago
  > El Salvador had a significant response to the pandemic including a 30 day curfew. If lockdowns cause homicide shouldn't it have showed up there, and in the rest of the world? I don't think I'd expect that regarding El Salvador. What are the primary types of homicide in 2019 in the US and El Salvador? I can't actually figure this out using google, if anyone knows I'd appreciate it. My wild guess would be domestic violence in the US and organized crime in El Salvador but I could be wildly off. However, anywhere that organized crime is the dominant type of homicide then a spike in domestic violence isn't likely to have much effect on the overall homicide rate, but anywhere that domestic violence is the at the top, it would. I'm not really proposing this specific explanation btw, just saying it's the first thing that came to my mind. There's a ton of ways that 2020 differs from 2019, not just "defund the police", and I don't know how to detangle it at all.

archsurface 5y ago

I can't read the article, but would think this is a no brainer due to lockdowns - along with increased suicide, divorce, domestic abuse.

DanBC 5y ago
> along with increased suicide Most places have not seen in increase in deaths by suicide yet.

bingohbangoh 5y ago

Here in New York City & New Jersey, bail reform was passed circa 2019. This limited when bail could be imposed on people, including the almost complete elimination of mandatory bail. It is completely up to the District Attorney's discretion. The idea was that illegal drug dealing shouldn't come with an unusual burden for bail, given that its non-violent. This was heralded as a victory almost immeadiately: there was little change in crime rate within the first months of it being passed. This seemed really strange to me. Why would you declare victory like this so prematurely? It was just _months_ after it was passed that people said "look no difference, more humane." Such proclamations should be waited at least two years so you could handle any noise. Also noted in this thread has been the new hyper progressive DAs who don't prosecute unless its really bad. Take SF with Chesa Boudin, who doesn't prosecute thefts under the felony limit (roughly $1000) _at all_. There's a lot to be said about whether these all form moral hazards but I leave that to one's own interpretation. I will say that people under ~35 never knew a New York City so dangerous you couldn't walk around at night.

BoorishBears 5y ago
Why two years? Why do the people interacting with the system on a daily basis not get to make observations on a major change in the system in "just" months?
- bingohbangoh 5y ago
  You can't say "there was no difference in crime" with only a few months of data. It's too noisy. There isn't enough data.
  - lesuorac 5y ago
    > It's too noisy. [Citation Needed]
    - bingohbangoh 5y ago
      I'm surprised two people are debating this. Statistics over small timescales, e.g. months, will not be as accurate as statistics over large timescales. This isn't disputed (unless it is? I'd be curious if you know people who think statistics with fewer numbers are more accurate than statistics with more numbers. As for if a few months of data was enough to proclaim victory, NYC's current surge in crime seems evident to me that a few months was not enough data. As for if this is directly relevant to the surge in crime, I leave that to your own conclusions. As for why I picked two years, it was an arbitrary guess. My point is that we need more data before announcing "bail reform solved problems."

ameminator 5y ago

Uh, I disagree with a lot of the commenters here. I do think it had something to do with the "defund the police" movement, the BLM riots and the absolute unwillingness of police agencies around the country to address crime. However, I can also acknowledge that keeping people shut out of their jobs and participation in public life is an easy way to forment social unrest.

vb6sp6 5y ago
Do you have and data or more thoughts on this? I ask because we tend to associate the police with "fighting crime" where the reality seems to be that they are mostly "responding to crime that has already happened". There will certainly be a few examples of police stopping crime in the moment but you would literally needs cops everywhere to even try to catch a decent percentage of violent crime that is committed.
- drekipus 5y ago
  > mostly "responding to crime that has already happened". Yes the police, and justice, are to act as a deterrent to crime, moreso than "respond before a crime happened" I highly suspect that the respect for the law has dropped, and with ideas of defunding the police, there's probably less resources as well. This is what was asked for.
  - vb6sp6 5y ago
    Is there data to suggest any of this?
    - drekipus 5y ago
      Data to suggest that the law is meant as a deterrent or data to suggest my suspicions? (Edit: because I don't think "data" can help you in either of these situations)
      - AnimalMuppet 5y ago

steve76 5y ago

After a shooting, notice that you start getting tourists. Most people love murder. It gives them rep. Nice things, being a parent, are only met with cynicism, even hostile disgust. Build something nice. It will be torn apart today. That's what's honest right? Turning back into an animal. All those things like civility, mutual respect, abstract thought, jurisprudence, that's just phony superstitions, made up by the powerful for oppression. They're too dumb, too white, even though their origins are from Mesopotamia and a Mediterranean antiquity. George Soros, you are a modern day Don Quixote. You tilt at the windmills of lawless amorality and self-righteous license. Liberty means the powerful acknowledge they really can't force anyone to do anything. Whether to advance or to retreat is always a personal individual decision. How can you transcend conventions when you can't even master the basics of what it means to be human? Here's an idea, if you are going to spend a lot of money and effort only to make things worse, don't do it. Go away. Don't even try to fool yourself. The world is better without you. Life becomes so much nicer and easier once you get far away from all these violent stubborn fools.

giardini 5y ago

I've always heard that the murder rate and other assault stats was most strongly correlated with the number of males between the ages of ~16 and 26.

kaminar 5y ago

The left's fault, 100%. You yearned for this anarchy and mess, you are to blame.