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> Another reason drawing this connection can be fallacious is because in areas of persistently high crime people don't report it because law enforcement will no

> Another reason drawing this connection can be fallacious is because in areas of persistently high crime people don't report it because law enforcement will not do anything about it (or won't even take a report). Exceptional events are worth reporting but when a kind of crime is common it's not an exception, reporting is just a waste of time for everyone involved. Again, reported crime can go down while crime is going up. This theory can't explain the plunge in violent crime rates, as the plunge exists even in the National Crime Victimization Survey, which directly asks survey respondents if they have been the victim of a crime. The annual rate of violent victimization has dropped from 80 per 1000 in the early 1990s to about 20 per 1000 now. https://bjs.ojp.gov/document/cv22.pdf https://bjs.ojp.gov/document/cv22.pdf Your point about "compensating behaviors" is plausible, but doesn't explain the similar drop in property crime (burglary, motor vehicle theft, etc.), for which there are fewer compensating behaviors that could work. The decline in crime since the early 1990s is actually a major area of study for criminologists, because there is no easy explanation for it. All categories have decline, however they are measured, and in 30 years the field has not come up with an explanation that can account for all the observed facts.

DFHippie 2y ago
> The decline in crime since the early 1990s is actually a major area of study for criminologists, because there is no easy explanation for it. All categories have decline, however they are measured, and in 30 years the field has not come up with an explanation that can account for all the observed facts. Counterpoint: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lead%E2%80%93crime_hypothesis https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lead%E2%80%93crime_hypothesis https://www.motherjones.com/environment/2016/02/lead-exposure-gasoline-crime-increase-children-health/ https://www.motherjones.com/environment/2016/02/lead-exposur... The lead-crime hypothesis has the advantage over many other theories that it explains the global drop in crime, not just that in a particular nation or municipality.
- deleted 2y ago
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some_random 2y ago
This might be a "read the paper dipshit" moment, but I'm not certain that the "have you been a victim of a crime" is a sufficient question. Would someone who lives in an area where there's an expectation that your car will be broken into consider themselves a victim of crime? I was just reading about domestic violence within same sex couples and in many cases victims don't consider themselves as such because of a belief that DV can only affect hetero women. I wonder if something similar could be going on here for some proportion of the respondents.
- capnrefsmmat 2y ago
  As you might expect from something called the National Crime Victimization Survey, it's quite detailed. Initial interviews are conducted in-person. There's a screening questionnaire that asks extensively about a bunch of specific kinds of crime: https://bjs.ojp.gov/content/pub/pdf/ncvs22_bsq.pdf https://bjs.ojp.gov/content/pub/pdf/ncvs22_bsq.pdf For instance, for theft, respondents are asked separately about 8 different categories of things that might have been stolen. Then, if any crimes are mentioned, they're asked an entire follow-up about each incident, including 35 pages of questions: https://bjs.ojp.gov/content/pub/pdf/ncvs22_cir.pdf https://bjs.ojp.gov/content/pub/pdf/ncvs22_cir.pdf To account for memory problems with dates (people are bad at remembering how long ago something happened), respondents have follow-up interviews every six months to ask about events that happened in between interviews, so the results can be compared to their previous survey six months ago. You can find more details and reports on their site here: https://bjs.ojp.gov/data-collection/ncvs https://bjs.ojp.gov/data-collection/ncvs

DFHippie 2y ago

> The decline in crime since the early 1990s is actually a major area of study for criminologists, because there is no easy explanation for it. All categories have decline, however they are measured, and in 30 years the field has not come up with an explanation that can account for all the observed facts. Counterpoint: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lead%E2%80%93crime_hypothesis https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lead%E2%80%93crime_hypothesis https://www.motherjones.com/environment/2016/02/lead-exposure-gasoline-crime-increase-children-health/ https://www.motherjones.com/environment/2016/02/lead-exposur... The lead-crime hypothesis has the advantage over many other theories that it explains the global drop in crime, not just that in a particular nation or municipality.

deleted 2y ago
[deleted]

some_random 2y ago

This might be a "read the paper dipshit" moment, but I'm not certain that the "have you been a victim of a crime" is a sufficient question. Would someone who lives in an area where there's an expectation that your car will be broken into consider themselves a victim of crime? I was just reading about domestic violence within same sex couples and in many cases victims don't consider themselves as such because of a belief that DV can only affect hetero women. I wonder if something similar could be going on here for some proportion of the respondents.

capnrefsmmat 2y ago
As you might expect from something called the National Crime Victimization Survey, it's quite detailed. Initial interviews are conducted in-person. There's a screening questionnaire that asks extensively about a bunch of specific kinds of crime: https://bjs.ojp.gov/content/pub/pdf/ncvs22_bsq.pdf https://bjs.ojp.gov/content/pub/pdf/ncvs22_bsq.pdf For instance, for theft, respondents are asked separately about 8 different categories of things that might have been stolen. Then, if any crimes are mentioned, they're asked an entire follow-up about each incident, including 35 pages of questions: https://bjs.ojp.gov/content/pub/pdf/ncvs22_cir.pdf https://bjs.ojp.gov/content/pub/pdf/ncvs22_cir.pdf To account for memory problems with dates (people are bad at remembering how long ago something happened), respondents have follow-up interviews every six months to ask about events that happened in between interviews, so the results can be compared to their previous survey six months ago. You can find more details and reports on their site here: https://bjs.ojp.gov/data-collection/ncvs https://bjs.ojp.gov/data-collection/ncvs