7 ms·

Killings in the U.S. are dropping at a historic rate

134 points by lxm 3y ago

ggm 3y ago
Isn't this Steven Pinker's core thesis? He got howled down for the soft-pop-sci take on the stats, but although I find him a reprehensible egotist, I had some sympathy for the underlying factoids: It felt like although NEWS of crimes of violence continues to be high, actual RATES of crimes of violence set against population overall, aren't rising.
- jldugger 3y ago
  Yes, but 2021 was an outlier on many dimensions and now the public needs an update.
- treis 3y ago
  No, this is a (relatively) small decline after a massive increase: 2018 - 17k 2022 - 21k
- seandoe 3y ago
  Reprehensible egotist? I haven't read/watched that much about him, but man, that's cynical.
  - deleted 3y ago
    [deleted]
  - ggm 3y ago
    Cynical? It wasn't kind, I grant you that. I wish I hadn't said it, but editing it now seems to me to be unhelpful to following the threads.
- britzkopf 3y ago
  If Steven Pinker is reprehensible, what kind of adjectives do you bust out for actual villains?
  - jjtheblunt 3y ago
    Villainous?
  - deleted 3y ago
    [deleted]
  - deleted 3y ago
    [deleted]
  - ggm 3y ago
    Adjectives are bad. I wish I'd stuck to egotist and left reprehensability in the scrabble drawer.
    - tim333 3y ago
      The basic thesis of the book seems pretty convincing, criticism seemed to be as you mention "howled down for the soft-pop-sci" and "reprehensible egotist" rather than the thesis being actually like wrong.
  - Fricken 3y ago
    Pinker was pals with Jeffrey Epstein, which is getting into legit villain territory "Pinker was included in the flight log for Epstein’s plane, which was dubbed the “Lolita Express,” for example, in 2002. He was photographed with him at a gathering in 2014. And he shared an affidavit from the case via Twitter in 2015." https://www.insidehighered.com/news/2019/07/17/steven-pinkers-aid-jeffrey-epsteins-legal-defense-renews-criticism-increasingly https://www.insidehighered.com/news/2019/07/17/steven-pinker...
    - deleted 3y ago
      [deleted]
ghaff 3y ago
So it's returned to a fairly stable pre-COVID level? To some degree, that's a somewhat noteworthy things only got somewhat worse in a very abnormal situation. On the other hand, it mostly means that things are just back to the status quo and aren't really getting better either.
- mattmaroon 3y ago
  Yeah, it’s like if you had a commercial plane crash in 2024, and then none in 2025, writing an article about the precipitous decline in plane crashes. It’s like no, it was just that in 2024 there was a huge increase and we reverted to the norm.
  - ncallaway 3y ago
    The fact that you reverted to the norm *is* important and newsworthy. It's how you know that, in fact, 2024 was an *anomalous* increase, and not an important change in the base rate.
    - mattmaroon 3y ago
      Sure, but it makes the headline here very misleading.
- oofbey 3y ago
  Nope. It's on its way down towards pre-covid levels, but still (by the article's estimate for 2023) 10% higher than pre-covid. Such a bad headline. Look at the raw data at https://cde.ucr.cjis.gov/LATEST/webapp/#/pages/explorer/crime/crime-trend https://cde.ucr.cjis.gov/LATEST/webapp/#/pages/explorer/crim... Pre-covid, around 4.5 - 5.5 per 100k ppl per year. 2020 jumped up to 6.5 2021 up to 6.8 2022 down to 6.3 - AMAZING DROP! 2023 ~5.5 (based on estimated 12% drop)- AMAZING DROP!!! WHY AREN'T PEOPLE TALKING ABOUT HOW MUCH CRIME IS GOING DOWN!?!?! Hard to tell how much of this is simply inept journalism, and how much is fed by a broken incentive system.
  - Mistletoe 3y ago
metadat 3y ago
Recent previous discussions: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37970943 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37970943 - 1 day ago (4 comments) https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37958979 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37958979 - 2 days ago (15 comments)
- proxiful-wash 3y ago
  [flagged]
  - fiddlerwoaroof 3y ago
    Posting recent discussions of an article is pretty standard practice here.
giantg2 3y ago
It's all about perspective. There was a decrease after an increase. I'd venture a guess that most people never experienced the initial increase and so they won't notice any decrease. Either rate is rather low and there are a variety of factors that are more influential in making your likelihood higher or lower.
b800h 3y ago
There seems to be a fairly huge non-sequitur in the middle of the article: Homicides have fallen, but people say they believe crime has risen in their area, therefore perception is wrong. It's entirely possible that homicide has fallen back to the pre-Covid level, but pettier crimes are on the increase, and not being recorded due to lighter-touch policing as cited earlier in the article.
- onionisafruit 3y ago
  Indeed almost all crimes aren’t homicide.
  - etempleton 3y ago
    No, but homicides are an important benchmark because there is consistency in what constitutes a homicide and murder is hard to brush under the rug or categorize as a lesser crime. If homicides decrease it is a good indicator of overall safety of a city. With that said, theft seems to be getting worse in many places and that is probably a direct result of lighter sentencing for petty theft.
    - uoaei 3y ago
      The vast majority of homicides happen between people who already know each other, so actually homicide rates say nothing about crime within geographic boundaries so much as crime within existing social groups. Then it stands to reason that reporting on crimes in this or that city is mostly nonsense reporting, it doesn't convey any information that's useful to anyone.
- ern 3y ago
  In addition to politicians and media who always tend to benefit from a perception of increased crime, social media feeds perceptions of increasing crime rates.
- sixothree 3y ago
  It’s amazing how many people legitimately believe crime is worse than 20 years ago.
10g1k 3y ago
More guns than ever. Historic decrease in homicides. Awesome.
jsdalton 3y ago
For people who live in Seattle, the perception that homicides are increasing is actually the reality: https://www.seattletimes.com/seattle-news/law-justice/seattle-has-surpassed-2022-homicide-toll-with-3-months-left-in-2023/ https://www.seattletimes.com/seattle-news/law-justice/seattl...
- shepherdjerred 3y ago
  That's 114 homicides this year. Seattle has a population of 750,000. I don't have any knowledge of what a "reasonable" homicide rate is, but that seems extraordinarily low for anywhere in any point in history.
  - MattGaiser 3y ago
    My city of Calgary has about a quarter of that at one million people. We have about 25 a year.
  - knubie 3y ago
    A "reasonable" homicide rate might be something similar to the rate in other developed countries, so about 1/10 of what it is in Seattle.
  - mrosett 3y ago
    Western European countries are around 1 per 100,000 population per year. Seattle is 15x that rate based on those statistics. Seems bad.
    - shepherdjerred 3y ago
      Maybe my statement was a bit too broad. What I was trying to communicate was that statistically, the chance you get murdered in Seattle is still extremely low despite the headline that seems to be spreading fear.
  - jandrewrogers 3y ago
    According to the article, that is 114 homicides in King County, not Seattle. King County has well over 2 million people.
TriangleEdge 3y ago
I suggest y'all look at the data chart if you fell for this clickbait headline.
jjtheblunt 3y ago
Is this PR misdirection coincidental with an upcoming election considering the headline is very misleading ?
alekseiprokopev 3y ago
Thank you all for killing less people this year.
Mountain_Skies 3y ago
In addition to what others have mentioned, advances in trauma care could be responsible for the longer term decline that's been going on before the pandemic.
forrestthewoods 3y ago
Behold, Simpsons Paradox in action! https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Simpson's_paradox https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Simpson's_paradox Perhaps homicides are rapidly decreasing overall. Meanwhile in Seattle surpassed 2022’s record setting homicide count with 3 months to spare. Seattle has roughly 2x the pre-pandemic homicide count. And roughly triple the count from 10 years ago. Is the rate declining nationally? Maybe! Is that going to impact news coverages in areas where it is not decreasing? Absolutely not. Should it? Obviously no. https://www.kuow.org/stories/seattle-homicides-set-record-but-king-county-has-big-plans-and-lots-of-funding-to-prevent-gun-violence https://www.kuow.org/stories/seattle-homicides-set-record-bu... https://www.elmundous.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/01/ErvchObVkAID8tG.jpeg https://www.elmundous.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/01/ErvchOb...
- _delirium 3y ago
  Also increasing at an alarming pace in DC: https://mpdc.dc.gov/page/district-crime-data-glance https://mpdc.dc.gov/page/district-crime-data-glance Is there a strong association between local crime rates (and/or direction of change) and local perceptions though? As far as I can tell, it’s quite common among New Yorkers to think crime is rising too, even though it really is falling in NYC, unlike Seattle and DC. But I have not seen a quantitative study correlating these. Are people who live in areas where crime actually is rising more likely to think it is?
  - forrestthewoods 3y ago
    Honestly? It’s impossible to say due to lack of data. Homicides are well tracked. They’re either up or down. It varies by locale. Petty theft and similar isn’t tracked. Everyone in a city knows the police can not and will not do anything about it. Small crimes simply are not reported. It’s a waste of time. The only data we have is anecdata. If someone uses stats to claim non-violent crime is down they’re full of shit. They don’t know. If someone says it’s up they’re relying on anecdotes. So maybe true, maybe false. Lies, damned lies, and statistics. :(
deleted 3y ago
[deleted]
godelski 3y ago
The data shows something that is powerful but hard to internalize: a large portion of crime rates does not strongly correlate with policing but rather external environmental factors. We often compare the difference in crime between US and Europe, or US and Canada as a direct result of the gun policy (even this article mentions this). But there are many differences between these regions. Canada and European countries all have much stronger social safety nets and typically a more close society in general (not trying to make a race homogeneity argument but one of walkability). I wish more conversation would revolve around this, but I'm afraid of the complexity in this (because you have to solve a lot of problems) makes this unattractive. But if the problems were simple to solve they probably would have been solved. Everything is highly multifactored these days. There has actually been a large trend of decreasing crime since the 90's, when politicians talked about "super predators." A lot of research has been done on this and there's been been discussions if it is things like the decrease of lead in the air, abortions, or other things, but generally it doesn't seem that "tough on crime" was the dominating factor. Another interesting statistic is that most Americans believe crime is increasing year over year despite the reverse happening. It's a good example of perception bias and probably is one of those factors mentioned above. https://www.pewresearch.org/short-reads/2020/11/20/facts-about-crime-in-the-u-s/ https://www.pewresearch.org/short-reads/2020/11/20/facts-abo...
- vxNsr 3y ago
  but policing is returning to precovid levels compared to 2020-2021, and it appears murder is falling at a similar rate.. where do you get your information from?
- n8cpdx 3y ago
  > A lot of research has been done on this and there's been been discussions if it is things like the decrease of lead in the air, abortions, or other things, but generally it doesn't seem that "tough on crime" was the dominating factor. On the contrary, COVID-19 didn’t suddenly reintroduce lead, ban abortion (that came a few years later, in only a few places, setting up a natural experiment we haven’t yet seen the results of), or do anything more than shut down schools and shatter the police-public relationship. Post-Ferguson we knew what happens after anti-police protests (more murders). https://www.vox.com/22360290/black-lives-matter-protest-crime-ferguson-effects-murder https://www.vox.com/22360290/black-lives-matter-protest-crim... (To be precise, -300 police killings +1000 to +6000 community-based killings) The current trend looks like Ferguson effect followed by cities suddenly deciding to take murder seriously again. Portland is having success with focused deterrence and cure violence/credible messengers. Hard to say if that’s diverging from nationwide trends because loads of other cities are taking the same approach. None of that challenges the idea that post-90s crime declines were fueled by more intensive policing.
bufferoverflow 3y ago
Ironically, not in LA https://static.abcotvs.com/kabc/images/cms/rp8MS-homicides-in-city-of-los-angeles.png https://static.abcotvs.com/kabc/images/cms/rp8MS-homicides-i...
Racing0461 3y ago
[flagged]
inemesitaffia 3y ago
What about the attempts? Is this just because of better ambulatory and medical care?
andrewstuart 3y ago
It's because everyone is looking at their phones.
froggertoaster 3y ago
https://archive.ph/PWs88 https://archive.ph/PWs88
rkho 3y ago
"Historic" has been a pretty popular adjective these days used to overstate the significance of a statistic or fact. From the FBI's own data[1], which is used as the main citation of this post, these were the homicide rates per 100k for the past eleven years: 2012: 4.7 2013: 4.5 (-0.2) 2014: 4.4 (-0.1) 2015: 4.9 (+0.5) 2016: 5.4 (+0.5) 2017: 5.3 (-0.1) 2018: 5.0 (-0.3) 2019: 5.1 (+0.1) 2020: 6.5 (+1.4) 2021: 6.8 (+0.3) 2022: 6.3 (-0.5) Using this data, the same headline could have been run in 2018. This number is +1.2 pre-pandemic. [1]: https://cde.ucr.cjis.gov/LATEST/webapp/#/pages/explorer/crime/crime-trend https://cde.ucr.cjis.gov/LATEST/webapp/#/pages/explorer/crim...
- cpncrunch 3y ago
  11-12% drop in 2023 so far this year, according to the article. That would put it around 5.6, which is close to 2016 levels.
ropable 3y ago
I heard a podcast episode recently (the name escapes me) which suggested that US emergency trauma centres are getting so good at preventing people from dying of gunshot wounds that they are skewing the stats relating to homicide. The thesis being that, although the incidence of gun violence was increasing, the absolute number of people dying of gunshot wounds was decreasing.
chmod600 3y ago
"Crime did rise nationwide in 2020 and 2021. The disruption caused by a deadly pandemic, a record increase in the availability of guns, a pullback of policing in some cities and perhaps other factors combined to create a surge in homicides and other crimes." Why not look at those one by one? Guns last basically forever, so I don't see how a spike in purchases followed by a drop in purchases would explain a spike and then a drop in crime. The guns are presumably still around. Next, a pull-back in policing in 2020 may have reversed somewhat by now. A bad DA in SF was recalled. It's plausible that this explains at least a part of the spike followed by the drop. I'd be interested in hearing other explanations. Maybe the criminals are busy with other things (jobs, etc.)? Maybe the free flowing pandemic cash drying up means less money to fight over? Maybe criminal-enablers (drug users, etc.) are busy with other stuff?
Khelavaster 3y ago
Reported crimes are falling while actual crimes are rising. Nobody wants to do the work of measuring ACTUAL crime rates. Only rates of filed crime reports. Sort of disappointing.
tim333 3y ago
It's seems more like a drop to normal after a blip up during the pandemic. Here's a graph of the trend https://img.dpic-cdn.org/images/national-murder-rate-1970-2020.png?w=1024&h=290&q=82&auto=format&fit=crop&dm=1691672970&s=5d62322aa0c8c22d996179b87ebfee9f https://img.dpic-cdn.org/images/national-murder-rate-1970-20...
amai 3y ago
Compared to European countries the US is still Wild West: https://www.statista.com/statistics/1268504/homicide-rate-europe-country/ https://www.statista.com/statistics/1268504/homicide-rate-eu...
paulorlando 3y ago
Putting meaning behind the data can be tough. One thing to consider: are there fewer killings because we save more victims? https://unintendedconsequenc.es/is-the-world-getting-safer/ https://unintendedconsequenc.es/is-the-world-getting-safer/

134 points by lxm 3y ago

ggm 3y ago

Isn't this Steven Pinker's core thesis? He got howled down for the soft-pop-sci take on the stats, but although I find him a reprehensible egotist, I had some sympathy for the underlying factoids: It felt like although NEWS of crimes of violence continues to be high, actual RATES of crimes of violence set against population overall, aren't rising.

jldugger 3y ago
Yes, but 2021 was an outlier on many dimensions and now the public needs an update.
treis 3y ago
No, this is a (relatively) small decline after a massive increase: 2018 - 17k 2022 - 21k
seandoe 3y ago
Reprehensible egotist? I haven't read/watched that much about him, but man, that's cynical.
- deleted 3y ago
  [deleted]
- ggm 3y ago
  Cynical? It wasn't kind, I grant you that. I wish I hadn't said it, but editing it now seems to me to be unhelpful to following the threads.
britzkopf 3y ago
If Steven Pinker is reprehensible, what kind of adjectives do you bust out for actual villains?
- jjtheblunt 3y ago
  Villainous?
- deleted 3y ago
  [deleted]
- deleted 3y ago
  [deleted]
- ggm 3y ago
  Adjectives are bad. I wish I'd stuck to egotist and left reprehensability in the scrabble drawer.
  - tim333 3y ago
    The basic thesis of the book seems pretty convincing, criticism seemed to be as you mention "howled down for the soft-pop-sci" and "reprehensible egotist" rather than the thesis being actually like wrong.
- Fricken 3y ago
  Pinker was pals with Jeffrey Epstein, which is getting into legit villain territory "Pinker was included in the flight log for Epstein’s plane, which was dubbed the “Lolita Express,” for example, in 2002. He was photographed with him at a gathering in 2014. And he shared an affidavit from the case via Twitter in 2015." https://www.insidehighered.com/news/2019/07/17/steven-pinkers-aid-jeffrey-epsteins-legal-defense-renews-criticism-increasingly https://www.insidehighered.com/news/2019/07/17/steven-pinker...
  - deleted 3y ago
    [deleted]

ghaff 3y ago

So it's returned to a fairly stable pre-COVID level? To some degree, that's a somewhat noteworthy things only got somewhat worse in a very abnormal situation. On the other hand, it mostly means that things are just back to the status quo and aren't really getting better either.

mattmaroon 3y ago
Yeah, it’s like if you had a commercial plane crash in 2024, and then none in 2025, writing an article about the precipitous decline in plane crashes. It’s like no, it was just that in 2024 there was a huge increase and we reverted to the norm.
- ncallaway 3y ago
  The fact that you reverted to the norm *is* important and newsworthy. It's how you know that, in fact, 2024 was an *anomalous* increase, and not an important change in the base rate.
  - mattmaroon 3y ago
    Sure, but it makes the headline here very misleading.
oofbey 3y ago
Nope. It's on its way down towards pre-covid levels, but still (by the article's estimate for 2023) 10% higher than pre-covid. Such a bad headline. Look at the raw data at https://cde.ucr.cjis.gov/LATEST/webapp/#/pages/explorer/crime/crime-trend https://cde.ucr.cjis.gov/LATEST/webapp/#/pages/explorer/crim... Pre-covid, around 4.5 - 5.5 per 100k ppl per year. 2020 jumped up to 6.5 2021 up to 6.8 2022 down to 6.3 - AMAZING DROP! 2023 ~5.5 (based on estimated 12% drop)- AMAZING DROP!!! WHY AREN'T PEOPLE TALKING ABOUT HOW MUCH CRIME IS GOING DOWN!?!?! Hard to tell how much of this is simply inept journalism, and how much is fed by a broken incentive system.
- Mistletoe 3y ago

metadat 3y ago

Recent previous discussions: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37970943 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37970943 - 1 day ago (4 comments) https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37958979 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37958979 - 2 days ago (15 comments)

proxiful-wash 3y ago
[flagged]
- fiddlerwoaroof 3y ago
  Posting recent discussions of an article is pretty standard practice here.

giantg2 3y ago

It's all about perspective. There was a decrease after an increase. I'd venture a guess that most people never experienced the initial increase and so they won't notice any decrease. Either rate is rather low and there are a variety of factors that are more influential in making your likelihood higher or lower.

b800h 3y ago

There seems to be a fairly huge non-sequitur in the middle of the article: Homicides have fallen, but people say they believe crime has risen in their area, therefore perception is wrong. It's entirely possible that homicide has fallen back to the pre-Covid level, but pettier crimes are on the increase, and not being recorded due to lighter-touch policing as cited earlier in the article.

onionisafruit 3y ago
Indeed almost all crimes aren’t homicide.
- etempleton 3y ago
  No, but homicides are an important benchmark because there is consistency in what constitutes a homicide and murder is hard to brush under the rug or categorize as a lesser crime. If homicides decrease it is a good indicator of overall safety of a city. With that said, theft seems to be getting worse in many places and that is probably a direct result of lighter sentencing for petty theft.
  - uoaei 3y ago
    The vast majority of homicides happen between people who already know each other, so actually homicide rates say nothing about crime within geographic boundaries so much as crime within existing social groups. Then it stands to reason that reporting on crimes in this or that city is mostly nonsense reporting, it doesn't convey any information that's useful to anyone.
ern 3y ago
In addition to politicians and media who always tend to benefit from a perception of increased crime, social media feeds perceptions of increasing crime rates.
sixothree 3y ago
It’s amazing how many people legitimately believe crime is worse than 20 years ago.

10g1k 3y ago

More guns than ever. Historic decrease in homicides. Awesome.

jsdalton 3y ago

For people who live in Seattle, the perception that homicides are increasing is actually the reality: https://www.seattletimes.com/seattle-news/law-justice/seattle-has-surpassed-2022-homicide-toll-with-3-months-left-in-2023/ https://www.seattletimes.com/seattle-news/law-justice/seattl...

shepherdjerred 3y ago
That's 114 homicides this year. Seattle has a population of 750,000. I don't have any knowledge of what a "reasonable" homicide rate is, but that seems extraordinarily low for anywhere in any point in history.
- MattGaiser 3y ago
  My city of Calgary has about a quarter of that at one million people. We have about 25 a year.
- knubie 3y ago
  A "reasonable" homicide rate might be something similar to the rate in other developed countries, so about 1/10 of what it is in Seattle.
- mrosett 3y ago
  Western European countries are around 1 per 100,000 population per year. Seattle is 15x that rate based on those statistics. Seems bad.
  - shepherdjerred 3y ago
    Maybe my statement was a bit too broad. What I was trying to communicate was that statistically, the chance you get murdered in Seattle is still extremely low despite the headline that seems to be spreading fear.
- jandrewrogers 3y ago
  According to the article, that is 114 homicides in King County, not Seattle. King County has well over 2 million people.

TriangleEdge 3y ago

I suggest y'all look at the data chart if you fell for this clickbait headline.

jjtheblunt 3y ago

Is this PR misdirection coincidental with an upcoming election considering the headline is very misleading ?

alekseiprokopev 3y ago

Thank you all for killing less people this year.

Mountain_Skies 3y ago

In addition to what others have mentioned, advances in trauma care could be responsible for the longer term decline that's been going on before the pandemic.

forrestthewoods 3y ago

Behold, Simpsons Paradox in action! https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Simpson's_paradox https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Simpson's_paradox Perhaps homicides are rapidly decreasing overall. Meanwhile in Seattle surpassed 2022’s record setting homicide count with 3 months to spare. Seattle has roughly 2x the pre-pandemic homicide count. And roughly triple the count from 10 years ago. Is the rate declining nationally? Maybe! Is that going to impact news coverages in areas where it is not decreasing? Absolutely not. Should it? Obviously no. https://www.kuow.org/stories/seattle-homicides-set-record-but-king-county-has-big-plans-and-lots-of-funding-to-prevent-gun-violence https://www.kuow.org/stories/seattle-homicides-set-record-bu... https://www.elmundous.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/01/ErvchObVkAID8tG.jpeg https://www.elmundous.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/01/ErvchOb...

_delirium 3y ago
Also increasing at an alarming pace in DC: https://mpdc.dc.gov/page/district-crime-data-glance https://mpdc.dc.gov/page/district-crime-data-glance Is there a strong association between local crime rates (and/or direction of change) and local perceptions though? As far as I can tell, it’s quite common among New Yorkers to think crime is rising too, even though it really is falling in NYC, unlike Seattle and DC. But I have not seen a quantitative study correlating these. Are people who live in areas where crime actually is rising more likely to think it is?
- forrestthewoods 3y ago
  Honestly? It’s impossible to say due to lack of data. Homicides are well tracked. They’re either up or down. It varies by locale. Petty theft and similar isn’t tracked. Everyone in a city knows the police can not and will not do anything about it. Small crimes simply are not reported. It’s a waste of time. The only data we have is anecdata. If someone uses stats to claim non-violent crime is down they’re full of shit. They don’t know. If someone says it’s up they’re relying on anecdotes. So maybe true, maybe false. Lies, damned lies, and statistics. :(

deleted 3y ago

[deleted]

godelski 3y ago

The data shows something that is powerful but hard to internalize: a large portion of crime rates does not strongly correlate with policing but rather external environmental factors. We often compare the difference in crime between US and Europe, or US and Canada as a direct result of the gun policy (even this article mentions this). But there are many differences between these regions. Canada and European countries all have much stronger social safety nets and typically a more close society in general (not trying to make a race homogeneity argument but one of walkability). I wish more conversation would revolve around this, but I'm afraid of the complexity in this (because you have to solve a lot of problems) makes this unattractive. But if the problems were simple to solve they probably would have been solved. Everything is highly multifactored these days. There has actually been a large trend of decreasing crime since the 90's, when politicians talked about "super predators." A lot of research has been done on this and there's been been discussions if it is things like the decrease of lead in the air, abortions, or other things, but generally it doesn't seem that "tough on crime" was the dominating factor. Another interesting statistic is that most Americans believe crime is increasing year over year despite the reverse happening. It's a good example of perception bias and probably is one of those factors mentioned above. https://www.pewresearch.org/short-reads/2020/11/20/facts-about-crime-in-the-u-s/ https://www.pewresearch.org/short-reads/2020/11/20/facts-abo...

vxNsr 3y ago
but policing is returning to precovid levels compared to 2020-2021, and it appears murder is falling at a similar rate.. where do you get your information from?
n8cpdx 3y ago
> A lot of research has been done on this and there's been been discussions if it is things like the decrease of lead in the air, abortions, or other things, but generally it doesn't seem that "tough on crime" was the dominating factor. On the contrary, COVID-19 didn’t suddenly reintroduce lead, ban abortion (that came a few years later, in only a few places, setting up a natural experiment we haven’t yet seen the results of), or do anything more than shut down schools and shatter the police-public relationship. Post-Ferguson we knew what happens after anti-police protests (more murders). https://www.vox.com/22360290/black-lives-matter-protest-crime-ferguson-effects-murder https://www.vox.com/22360290/black-lives-matter-protest-crim... (To be precise, -300 police killings +1000 to +6000 community-based killings) The current trend looks like Ferguson effect followed by cities suddenly deciding to take murder seriously again. Portland is having success with focused deterrence and cure violence/credible messengers. Hard to say if that’s diverging from nationwide trends because loads of other cities are taking the same approach. None of that challenges the idea that post-90s crime declines were fueled by more intensive policing.

bufferoverflow 3y ago

Ironically, not in LA https://static.abcotvs.com/kabc/images/cms/rp8MS-homicides-in-city-of-los-angeles.png https://static.abcotvs.com/kabc/images/cms/rp8MS-homicides-i...

Racing0461 3y ago

[flagged]

inemesitaffia 3y ago

What about the attempts? Is this just because of better ambulatory and medical care?

andrewstuart 3y ago

It's because everyone is looking at their phones.

froggertoaster 3y ago

https://archive.ph/PWs88 https://archive.ph/PWs88

rkho 3y ago

"Historic" has been a pretty popular adjective these days used to overstate the significance of a statistic or fact. From the FBI's own data[1], which is used as the main citation of this post, these were the homicide rates per 100k for the past eleven years: 2012: 4.7 2013: 4.5 (-0.2) 2014: 4.4 (-0.1) 2015: 4.9 (+0.5) 2016: 5.4 (+0.5) 2017: 5.3 (-0.1) 2018: 5.0 (-0.3) 2019: 5.1 (+0.1) 2020: 6.5 (+1.4) 2021: 6.8 (+0.3) 2022: 6.3 (-0.5) Using this data, the same headline could have been run in 2018. This number is +1.2 pre-pandemic. [1]: https://cde.ucr.cjis.gov/LATEST/webapp/#/pages/explorer/crime/crime-trend https://cde.ucr.cjis.gov/LATEST/webapp/#/pages/explorer/crim...

cpncrunch 3y ago
11-12% drop in 2023 so far this year, according to the article. That would put it around 5.6, which is close to 2016 levels.

ropable 3y ago

I heard a podcast episode recently (the name escapes me) which suggested that US emergency trauma centres are getting so good at preventing people from dying of gunshot wounds that they are skewing the stats relating to homicide. The thesis being that, although the incidence of gun violence was increasing, the absolute number of people dying of gunshot wounds was decreasing.

chmod600 3y ago

"Crime did rise nationwide in 2020 and 2021. The disruption caused by a deadly pandemic, a record increase in the availability of guns, a pullback of policing in some cities and perhaps other factors combined to create a surge in homicides and other crimes." Why not look at those one by one? Guns last basically forever, so I don't see how a spike in purchases followed by a drop in purchases would explain a spike and then a drop in crime. The guns are presumably still around. Next, a pull-back in policing in 2020 may have reversed somewhat by now. A bad DA in SF was recalled. It's plausible that this explains at least a part of the spike followed by the drop. I'd be interested in hearing other explanations. Maybe the criminals are busy with other things (jobs, etc.)? Maybe the free flowing pandemic cash drying up means less money to fight over? Maybe criminal-enablers (drug users, etc.) are busy with other stuff?

Khelavaster 3y ago

Reported crimes are falling while actual crimes are rising. Nobody wants to do the work of measuring ACTUAL crime rates. Only rates of filed crime reports. Sort of disappointing.

tim333 3y ago

It's seems more like a drop to normal after a blip up during the pandemic. Here's a graph of the trend https://img.dpic-cdn.org/images/national-murder-rate-1970-2020.png?w=1024&h=290&q=82&auto=format&fit=crop&dm=1691672970&s=5d62322aa0c8c22d996179b87ebfee9f https://img.dpic-cdn.org/images/national-murder-rate-1970-20...

amai 3y ago

Compared to European countries the US is still Wild West: https://www.statista.com/statistics/1268504/homicide-rate-europe-country/ https://www.statista.com/statistics/1268504/homicide-rate-eu...

paulorlando 3y ago

Putting meaning behind the data can be tough. One thing to consider: are there fewer killings because we save more victims? https://unintendedconsequenc.es/is-the-world-getting-safer/ https://unintendedconsequenc.es/is-the-world-getting-safer/