12 ms·

The Red State Murder Problem

legalcorrection 5y ago
- x86_64Ubuntu 5y ago
  If that were the case, we would then expect liberal DAs in liberal states to have an even higher murder rate. And I assure you, none of the policies you mentioned are being implemented in the Deep South states of SC, AL or MS.
  - lolinder 5y ago
    > none of the policies you mentioned are being implemented in the Deep South states of SC, AL or MS. These states may have started with extremely high murder rates. It's the growth in rates that would show whether OP is right or not, and those states with rapidly growing murders are not in the deep south. (That said, none of the red states with high growth strike me as particularly likely to have liberal local DAs either, so I also question their argument.)
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- JaimeThompson 5y ago
  I would love to see the supporting data you used to reach that conclusion.
  - olsonjeffery 5y ago
    They are likely quoting DOJ arrest statistics [0]. Lots of interesting stuff there, and the overall conclusion one can draw from them is quite different than what the GP asserts. 0 - https://www.ojjdp.gov/ojstatbb/crime/ucr.asp?table_in=2 https://www.ojjdp.gov/ojstatbb/crime/ucr.asp?table_in=2
- turndown 5y ago
  Could you please share some examples of a very liberal DA in a very conservative state outside of major metropolitan areas? No offense but your response sounds very brainwashed, where the problems in a conservative area are obviously caused by the dirty local liberals mucking everything up.
  - lp0_on_fire 5y ago
    > No offense but then proceeds to tell OP that they're brainwashed. You were deliberately trying to offend, let's not mince words ok?
    - fuzzer37 5y ago
      Because they are.
- long_time_gone 5y ago
  Sounds like you are trying to justify the results to fit your existing narrative. You immediately assume there is a fault in the data instead of analyzing your own baseline assumptions. The idea that Alabama, Mississippi, Louisiana, etc. have higher murder rates because they are "very liberal" doesn't pass the smell test. Your comment also seems to assume that the states which vote blue somehow don't have locally elected DA's? That doesn't explain why Missouri (with much less urbanization) has a higher murder than Illinois or Michigan (with "out--of-control" cities like Chicago and Detroit.
- gameswithgo 5y ago
  We have decades of evidence that prison sentences being long or short has no effect (or nearly so) on deterring crime. Likely the murder rate differences in these red vs blue areas has more to do with the economic well being of these areas that police sentiment or how tough on crime the police and DA are. Someone here should be able to whip up a script to correlate that in like an hour.
- prions 5y ago
  Mask off time. I wonder how @dang will handle egregious racism disguised as "data".
  - benmmurphy 5y ago
    The article is just lazy journalism. There are a lot of possible alternatives variables to run a regression on that could have stronger explanatory power and they just chose the first that fit the narrative they wanted to present. Southern states and the legacy of racism looks like a viable explanation for the higher murder rates in 'Red' states that should have been explored as part of the article.
  - Grieving 5y ago
    What's the difference between egregious racism disguised as "data" and data relating to race that contradicts liberal priors?
    - happytoexplain 5y ago
      The difference is contextual, as with anything. The parent obviously disagrees that the data provided rebuts the article's content (I too disagree, and think it mostly only serves to spur hatred in this particular context, the same way the title of the article does).
    - benmmurphy 5y ago
      13/52 is a known hate symbol: https://www.adl.org/education/references/hate-symbols/1352-1390 https://www.adl.org/education/references/hate-symbols/1352-1...
      - legalcorrection 5y ago
        It’s literally a crime statistic that’s true.
        happytoexplain 5y ago
        Lots of propaganda and hate-bait is true. Context is what matters in those cases. I agree that the parent is making an incorrect implication though, but not for the reason you give.
- happytoexplain 5y ago
  >Red states tend to have a much higher population of black residents It sounds like you're taking the article to mean "voting Republican is causal to murder", and are rebutting with "being black is causal to murder" (but are using a corollary fact to imply it). However, the first statement isn't being made by the article, and your implied rebuttal is neither verifiable nor does it even rebut the first statement, were the article making it. It's also unnecessarily provocative (unnecessary due to its irrelevance as described above). Of course this is all assumption you've forced me to make. By itself, the sentence you wrote doesn't say anything directly - you haven't connected it to the article explicitly. Your second paragraph has the same problem, but the implication is more obvious: You believe the properties you've listed cause high murder rates. That doesn't seem to be true, though - can you either elaborate subjectively, or provide some other writeup that points to that conclusion?
- wolverine876 5y ago
  > Red states tend to have a much higher population of black residents, a group that is well established to have much higher crime rates. Black people are 13% of the national population but commit 52% of the murders. Expanding this to causation - that black people cause more crime - is not only a complete misuse of statistics - nothing there shows correlation, much less causation - it is an old racist saw. For example, a society which relegates people based on their skin color to poverty, lack of access to jobs, education, and healthcare, and continual discrimination, might be the causal agent. It could be that people in poverty, with poor educations, and difficult employment, are correlated with crime (but we'd need to look that up). > Many of those red states have very liberal DAs who are refusing to prosecute certain crimes, asking for extremely low bail, and pursuing very short prison sentences, while also aggressively prosecuting alleged police misconduct. Those DA's seem less prevelant in red states - is there some correlation there? And do you have evidence that these things increase crime rates? Most of the research says otherwise, the opposite practices had little impact for many years, and the people most affected by crime vote for these DAs.
  - legalcorrection 5y ago
    The correlation with race holds even when you control for poverty and other socioeconomic factors (such as urban/rural). But of course, you can't control for the unique historical experience of black Americans. So this remains an open question.
    - wolverine876 5y ago
      So what are you saying the causal relationship is, beyond the racist assertion that skin color causes crime?
dmurray 5y ago
Does everything need to be politicised like this? There's a rural/urban divide in the US, and it's well known that this divide coincides with the political divide. It's an interesting data point that rural states have seen higher murder rates than urban ones, but it doesn't necessitate garbage rhetoric like > A more accurate conclusion from the data is that Republicans do a far better job blaming others for high murder rates than actually reducing high murder rates. no matter how much you prepare it by straw-manning that the other side blames Democratic leadership for the same thing. If you want to link crime rates to political leadership in some kind of causal fashion, you need to at least try controlling for basic things like rural vs urban areas, or domestic violence vs street crime.
- alexk307 5y ago
  I think this is more of a counter-example of why politicizing murder and lawlessness is a stupid idea. The conservatives in the US constantly bash Democratic ran cities as murderous hell-holes and places no person in their right mind would want to go. But in reality, it's just more falsehoods; the issue is far more complex than just correlating your governor or mayor's political affiliation.
  - giantg2 5y ago
    If this was actually a counter example, wouldn't they be looking at the cities within the state as well as distribution throughout the state? For example, rural PA is much different than Philly, Pittsburgh, and other cities in leadership and policy. Not sure about murder rate, but would guess it's mostly similar. That said, it would be much better if they actually got into the causes or contributors, like the various socioeconomic factors that correlate with murder/crime.
  - sudden_dystopia 5y ago
    No person in their right mind would want to go wandering around the south side of Chicago. That is not a falsehood. It is more complex than politics, but the murderous hell hole part is at least partially true.
iamricks 5y ago
correlation != causation, people do not choose to murder more because the majority of their community votes red. There are many variables to this problem.
- kyeb 5y ago
  I don't think anyone was implying that causal link...
- long_time_gone 5y ago
  > people do not choose to murder more because the majority votes red. I'm glad nobody claimed this, because it wouldn't make any sense. Back in reality, do you have any ideas on the variables or just want to throw cold water on the entire discussion because it challenges your assumptions?
- alexk307 5y ago
  That's the whole point of the article...to tell you that it's not a Blue v. Red state issue, it's both. Did you even read it?
vehemenz 5y ago
The framing of this issue by party, political candidate, or support for recent political movements—as media narratives are wont to do—obscures the fact that red states are poorer, less educated, and score lower on most quality of life measures than blue states. Given that murders occur where there are more people (cities), I don't find these findings that surprising.
- alexk307 5y ago
  This argument falls apart when you compare most major city areas to their surroundings. St. Louis, Baltimore, Detroit, etc. likely have the same socioeconomic levels and population as entire red states (e.g. Baltimore has a higher population than Wyoming).
  - giantg2 5y ago
    "(e.g. Baltimore has a higher population than Wyoming)." Maybe not a great example (not sure the exact argument you're going for) given the murder rate in Baltimore is about 55 and the rate in Wyoming is about 1. I also question if socioeconomic factors are really that similar between the two. A better comparison might be city rates vs the state rate for the stare they are in, like Baltimore at 55 vs MD at 9 (even better if you could exclude Baltimore from the MD stats).
- long_time_gone 5y ago
  > obscures the fact that red states are poorer, less educated, and score lower on most quality of life measures than blue states. Does it obscure that fact? Maybe those facts are the underlying reason for some of the other ills. > Given that murders occur where there are more people (cities), I don't find these findings that surprising. This makes little sense as the places with more density are more likely to vote Democratic. Yet, this data shows us that (some) more rural states have higher murder rates.
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simonsarris 5y ago
Slippery how even their takeaway section switches from cities to states, and who the states voted for. In the top 20 highest murder per capita cities in the US, 18 are democratic mayor, 1 is a former democrat turned independent (Las Vegas), and 1 is republican (Tulsa). It is disingenuous to switch between cities and states like this when trying to assign political causes.
- long_time_gone 5y ago
  > Slippery how even their takeaway section switches from cities to states, and who the states voted for. Not really. Most of us understand the difference between states and cities. They were trying to head off the argument that you ended up making anyways. > In the top 20 highest murder per capita cities in the US, 18 are democratic mayor, 1 is a former democrat turned independent (Las Vegas), and 1 is republican (Tulsa). Jacksonville has a Republican mayor and a higher murder rate than Tulsa (according to this report), so it appears someone's data is off.
- HideousKojima 5y ago
  A good example of this is that Utah is highlighted on their map at the top of the article as one of the states with an increasing murder rate. Meanwhile it ignores that the larger cities in the state (like the SLC metro area and Ogden) are far more left-wing than the rest of the state (though probably far less left-wing than a place like San Francisco): https://www.macrotrends.net/cities/us/ut/salt-lake-city/murder-homicide-rate-statistics https://www.macrotrends.net/cities/us/ut/salt-lake-city/murd... Also if you look at the list of cities in the bottom left of my link, a hilarious outlier is the town of Tremonton. Tremonton literally had its only murder in 50 years but since the population of the town is so small it works out to a homicide rate comparable to Costa Rica or Uruguay for the year.
hervature 5y ago
How is this on the front page? There are just so many statistical methodology problems that you cannot draw any conclusions. First of all, they vast majority of the article is n=1 where they sampled one year. Then, they talk about increase over one year and come up with the mind blowing stat of "6 out of 10 Highest Murder Rate Increases are in Trump-Voting States". From a statistical view point, that is to be expected if there are no differences. Furthermore, the entire analysis is stupid because 2020 was the pandemic year. Finally, it doesn't take a genius to correlate these to wealth levels. Go to [1] and sort by median household income. What you will find is basically the same ranking as in this article. What do you believe - poverty or political preference leads to increases of crime? [1] - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_U.S._states_and_territories_by_income https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_U.S._states_and_territ...
- long_time_gone 5y ago
  > First of all, they vast majority of the article is n=1 where they sampled one year. Wouldn't "n" be number of murders? > Furthermore, the entire analysis is stupid because 2020 was the pandemic year. It was a pandemic year in every one of these states. > Go to [1] and sort by median household income. What you will find is basically the same ranking as in this article. What do you believe - poverty or political preference leads to increases of crime? What if the two of them are linked? If a handful of states follow the same political ideology, and also share an outsized poverty and murder rate it is worth analyzing if those same policies have an impact.
  - hervature 5y ago
    > Wouldn't "n" be number of murders? No. I'm not disputing the murder rates. Those are probably very accurate for that year. I'm disputing the claim that red states have a murder problem based on one year of information. > It was a pandemic year in every one of these states. Not equally. Given the information they used, it is entirely plausible that the murder rate did not increase more in blue states because, in general, they weren't allowed to go outside unlike, say, Florida. To be clear, this is not "proof" that an ideology is better. This is a temporary measure that could lead to longer term issues. > What if the two of them are linked? That's what I'm saying. This article is claiming a link without actually analyzing the impact. You need a longitudinal study is my whole point.
anfilt 5y ago
Not sure I would use state borders for this. Murderer is up in most larger cities in the US. Alot of these states have 1 or 2 large cities and then it is going to be more rural. This could easily skew the numbers per capita for a state that does not have population more broadly spread out in its borders. Crime varies a lot based off location. For example burgarly per capita last I checked was more common in rural areas. This make sense since more unattended buildings and such. State level is far to coarse, and also why the political spin.
h2odragon 5y ago
I'd like to look at some county level maps of this data.
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g8orade 5y ago
Same message from 2020 regarding Mississippi. Noting also that despite the claims to the contrary, and coming from then POTUS, it's not red/blue. https://mississippitoday.org/2020/10/04/trump-says-blue-states-have-the-most-crime-mississippi-has-the-nations-highest-murder-rate/ https://mississippitoday.org/2020/10/04/trump-says-blue-stat...
- HideousKojima 5y ago
  Just out of curiosity, what are the racial demographics of Mississippi, and what are the racial demographics of murderers in Mississippi?
netfortius 5y ago
Whenever I see such articles, I immediately switch to my favorite data collection ref Chicago, to see how crime looks like, lately, in that corner of the States: https://heyjackass.com/ https://heyjackass.com/

x86_64Ubuntu 5y ago
If that were the case, we would then expect liberal DAs in liberal states to have an even higher murder rate. And I assure you, none of the policies you mentioned are being implemented in the Deep South states of SC, AL or MS.
- lolinder 5y ago
  > none of the policies you mentioned are being implemented in the Deep South states of SC, AL or MS. These states may have started with extremely high murder rates. It's the growth in rates that would show whether OP is right or not, and those states with rapidly growing murders are not in the deep south. (That said, none of the red states with high growth strike me as particularly likely to have liberal local DAs either, so I also question their argument.)
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JaimeThompson 5y ago
I would love to see the supporting data you used to reach that conclusion.
- olsonjeffery 5y ago
  They are likely quoting DOJ arrest statistics [0]. Lots of interesting stuff there, and the overall conclusion one can draw from them is quite different than what the GP asserts. 0 - https://www.ojjdp.gov/ojstatbb/crime/ucr.asp?table_in=2 https://www.ojjdp.gov/ojstatbb/crime/ucr.asp?table_in=2
turndown 5y ago
Could you please share some examples of a very liberal DA in a very conservative state outside of major metropolitan areas? No offense but your response sounds very brainwashed, where the problems in a conservative area are obviously caused by the dirty local liberals mucking everything up.
- lp0_on_fire 5y ago
  > No offense but then proceeds to tell OP that they're brainwashed. You were deliberately trying to offend, let's not mince words ok?
  - fuzzer37 5y ago
    Because they are.
long_time_gone 5y ago
Sounds like you are trying to justify the results to fit your existing narrative. You immediately assume there is a fault in the data instead of analyzing your own baseline assumptions. The idea that Alabama, Mississippi, Louisiana, etc. have higher murder rates because they are "very liberal" doesn't pass the smell test. Your comment also seems to assume that the states which vote blue somehow don't have locally elected DA's? That doesn't explain why Missouri (with much less urbanization) has a higher murder than Illinois or Michigan (with "out--of-control" cities like Chicago and Detroit.
gameswithgo 5y ago
We have decades of evidence that prison sentences being long or short has no effect (or nearly so) on deterring crime. Likely the murder rate differences in these red vs blue areas has more to do with the economic well being of these areas that police sentiment or how tough on crime the police and DA are. Someone here should be able to whip up a script to correlate that in like an hour.
prions 5y ago
Mask off time. I wonder how @dang will handle egregious racism disguised as "data".
- benmmurphy 5y ago
  The article is just lazy journalism. There are a lot of possible alternatives variables to run a regression on that could have stronger explanatory power and they just chose the first that fit the narrative they wanted to present. Southern states and the legacy of racism looks like a viable explanation for the higher murder rates in 'Red' states that should have been explored as part of the article.
- Grieving 5y ago
  What's the difference between egregious racism disguised as "data" and data relating to race that contradicts liberal priors?
  - happytoexplain 5y ago
    The difference is contextual, as with anything. The parent obviously disagrees that the data provided rebuts the article's content (I too disagree, and think it mostly only serves to spur hatred in this particular context, the same way the title of the article does).
  - benmmurphy 5y ago
    13/52 is a known hate symbol: https://www.adl.org/education/references/hate-symbols/1352-1390 https://www.adl.org/education/references/hate-symbols/1352-1...
    - legalcorrection 5y ago
      It’s literally a crime statistic that’s true.
      - happytoexplain 5y ago
        Lots of propaganda and hate-bait is true. Context is what matters in those cases. I agree that the parent is making an incorrect implication though, but not for the reason you give.
happytoexplain 5y ago
>Red states tend to have a much higher population of black residents It sounds like you're taking the article to mean "voting Republican is causal to murder", and are rebutting with "being black is causal to murder" (but are using a corollary fact to imply it). However, the first statement isn't being made by the article, and your implied rebuttal is neither verifiable nor does it even rebut the first statement, were the article making it. It's also unnecessarily provocative (unnecessary due to its irrelevance as described above). Of course this is all assumption you've forced me to make. By itself, the sentence you wrote doesn't say anything directly - you haven't connected it to the article explicitly. Your second paragraph has the same problem, but the implication is more obvious: You believe the properties you've listed cause high murder rates. That doesn't seem to be true, though - can you either elaborate subjectively, or provide some other writeup that points to that conclusion?
wolverine876 5y ago
> Red states tend to have a much higher population of black residents, a group that is well established to have much higher crime rates. Black people are 13% of the national population but commit 52% of the murders. Expanding this to causation - that black people cause more crime - is not only a complete misuse of statistics - nothing there shows correlation, much less causation - it is an old racist saw. For example, a society which relegates people based on their skin color to poverty, lack of access to jobs, education, and healthcare, and continual discrimination, might be the causal agent. It could be that people in poverty, with poor educations, and difficult employment, are correlated with crime (but we'd need to look that up). > Many of those red states have very liberal DAs who are refusing to prosecute certain crimes, asking for extremely low bail, and pursuing very short prison sentences, while also aggressively prosecuting alleged police misconduct. Those DA's seem less prevelant in red states - is there some correlation there? And do you have evidence that these things increase crime rates? Most of the research says otherwise, the opposite practices had little impact for many years, and the people most affected by crime vote for these DAs.
- legalcorrection 5y ago
  The correlation with race holds even when you control for poverty and other socioeconomic factors (such as urban/rural). But of course, you can't control for the unique historical experience of black Americans. So this remains an open question.
  - wolverine876 5y ago
    So what are you saying the causal relationship is, beyond the racist assertion that skin color causes crime?

Does everything need to be politicised like this? There's a rural/urban divide in the US, and it's well known that this divide coincides with the political divide. It's an interesting data point that rural states have seen higher murder rates than urban ones, but it doesn't necessitate garbage rhetoric like > A more accurate conclusion from the data is that Republicans do a far better job blaming others for high murder rates than actually reducing high murder rates. no matter how much you prepare it by straw-manning that the other side blames Democratic leadership for the same thing. If you want to link crime rates to political leadership in some kind of causal fashion, you need to at least try controlling for basic things like rural vs urban areas, or domestic violence vs street crime.

alexk307 5y ago
I think this is more of a counter-example of why politicizing murder and lawlessness is a stupid idea. The conservatives in the US constantly bash Democratic ran cities as murderous hell-holes and places no person in their right mind would want to go. But in reality, it's just more falsehoods; the issue is far more complex than just correlating your governor or mayor's political affiliation.
- giantg2 5y ago
  If this was actually a counter example, wouldn't they be looking at the cities within the state as well as distribution throughout the state? For example, rural PA is much different than Philly, Pittsburgh, and other cities in leadership and policy. Not sure about murder rate, but would guess it's mostly similar. That said, it would be much better if they actually got into the causes or contributors, like the various socioeconomic factors that correlate with murder/crime.
- sudden_dystopia 5y ago
  No person in their right mind would want to go wandering around the south side of Chicago. That is not a falsehood. It is more complex than politics, but the murderous hell hole part is at least partially true.

iamricks 5y ago

correlation != causation, people do not choose to murder more because the majority of their community votes red. There are many variables to this problem.

kyeb 5y ago
I don't think anyone was implying that causal link...
long_time_gone 5y ago
> people do not choose to murder more because the majority votes red. I'm glad nobody claimed this, because it wouldn't make any sense. Back in reality, do you have any ideas on the variables or just want to throw cold water on the entire discussion because it challenges your assumptions?
alexk307 5y ago
That's the whole point of the article...to tell you that it's not a Blue v. Red state issue, it's both. Did you even read it?

vehemenz 5y ago

The framing of this issue by party, political candidate, or support for recent political movements—as media narratives are wont to do—obscures the fact that red states are poorer, less educated, and score lower on most quality of life measures than blue states. Given that murders occur where there are more people (cities), I don't find these findings that surprising.

alexk307 5y ago
This argument falls apart when you compare most major city areas to their surroundings. St. Louis, Baltimore, Detroit, etc. likely have the same socioeconomic levels and population as entire red states (e.g. Baltimore has a higher population than Wyoming).
- giantg2 5y ago
  "(e.g. Baltimore has a higher population than Wyoming)." Maybe not a great example (not sure the exact argument you're going for) given the murder rate in Baltimore is about 55 and the rate in Wyoming is about 1. I also question if socioeconomic factors are really that similar between the two. A better comparison might be city rates vs the state rate for the stare they are in, like Baltimore at 55 vs MD at 9 (even better if you could exclude Baltimore from the MD stats).
long_time_gone 5y ago
> obscures the fact that red states are poorer, less educated, and score lower on most quality of life measures than blue states. Does it obscure that fact? Maybe those facts are the underlying reason for some of the other ills. > Given that murders occur where there are more people (cities), I don't find these findings that surprising. This makes little sense as the places with more density are more likely to vote Democratic. Yet, this data shows us that (some) more rural states have higher murder rates.
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simonsarris 5y ago

Slippery how even their takeaway section switches from cities to states, and who the states voted for. In the top 20 highest murder per capita cities in the US, 18 are democratic mayor, 1 is a former democrat turned independent (Las Vegas), and 1 is republican (Tulsa). It is disingenuous to switch between cities and states like this when trying to assign political causes.

long_time_gone 5y ago
> Slippery how even their takeaway section switches from cities to states, and who the states voted for. Not really. Most of us understand the difference between states and cities. They were trying to head off the argument that you ended up making anyways. > In the top 20 highest murder per capita cities in the US, 18 are democratic mayor, 1 is a former democrat turned independent (Las Vegas), and 1 is republican (Tulsa). Jacksonville has a Republican mayor and a higher murder rate than Tulsa (according to this report), so it appears someone's data is off.
HideousKojima 5y ago
A good example of this is that Utah is highlighted on their map at the top of the article as one of the states with an increasing murder rate. Meanwhile it ignores that the larger cities in the state (like the SLC metro area and Ogden) are far more left-wing than the rest of the state (though probably far less left-wing than a place like San Francisco): https://www.macrotrends.net/cities/us/ut/salt-lake-city/murder-homicide-rate-statistics https://www.macrotrends.net/cities/us/ut/salt-lake-city/murd... Also if you look at the list of cities in the bottom left of my link, a hilarious outlier is the town of Tremonton. Tremonton literally had its only murder in 50 years but since the population of the town is so small it works out to a homicide rate comparable to Costa Rica or Uruguay for the year.

hervature 5y ago

How is this on the front page? There are just so many statistical methodology problems that you cannot draw any conclusions. First of all, they vast majority of the article is n=1 where they sampled one year. Then, they talk about increase over one year and come up with the mind blowing stat of "6 out of 10 Highest Murder Rate Increases are in Trump-Voting States". From a statistical view point, that is to be expected if there are no differences. Furthermore, the entire analysis is stupid because 2020 was the pandemic year. Finally, it doesn't take a genius to correlate these to wealth levels. Go to [1] and sort by median household income. What you will find is basically the same ranking as in this article. What do you believe - poverty or political preference leads to increases of crime? [1] - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_U.S._states_and_territories_by_income https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_U.S._states_and_territ...

long_time_gone 5y ago
> First of all, they vast majority of the article is n=1 where they sampled one year. Wouldn't "n" be number of murders? > Furthermore, the entire analysis is stupid because 2020 was the pandemic year. It was a pandemic year in every one of these states. > Go to [1] and sort by median household income. What you will find is basically the same ranking as in this article. What do you believe - poverty or political preference leads to increases of crime? What if the two of them are linked? If a handful of states follow the same political ideology, and also share an outsized poverty and murder rate it is worth analyzing if those same policies have an impact.
- hervature 5y ago
  > Wouldn't "n" be number of murders? No. I'm not disputing the murder rates. Those are probably very accurate for that year. I'm disputing the claim that red states have a murder problem based on one year of information. > It was a pandemic year in every one of these states. Not equally. Given the information they used, it is entirely plausible that the murder rate did not increase more in blue states because, in general, they weren't allowed to go outside unlike, say, Florida. To be clear, this is not "proof" that an ideology is better. This is a temporary measure that could lead to longer term issues. > What if the two of them are linked? That's what I'm saying. This article is claiming a link without actually analyzing the impact. You need a longitudinal study is my whole point.

anfilt 5y ago

Not sure I would use state borders for this. Murderer is up in most larger cities in the US. Alot of these states have 1 or 2 large cities and then it is going to be more rural. This could easily skew the numbers per capita for a state that does not have population more broadly spread out in its borders. Crime varies a lot based off location. For example burgarly per capita last I checked was more common in rural areas. This make sense since more unattended buildings and such. State level is far to coarse, and also why the political spin.

h2odragon 5y ago

I'd like to look at some county level maps of this data.

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g8orade 5y ago

Same message from 2020 regarding Mississippi. Noting also that despite the claims to the contrary, and coming from then POTUS, it's not red/blue. https://mississippitoday.org/2020/10/04/trump-says-blue-states-have-the-most-crime-mississippi-has-the-nations-highest-murder-rate/ https://mississippitoday.org/2020/10/04/trump-says-blue-stat...

HideousKojima 5y ago
Just out of curiosity, what are the racial demographics of Mississippi, and what are the racial demographics of murderers in Mississippi?

netfortius 5y ago

Whenever I see such articles, I immediately switch to my favorite data collection ref Chicago, to see how crime looks like, lately, in that corner of the States: https://heyjackass.com/ https://heyjackass.com/