5 ms·

> Why use 2023, rather than say 1991 as your baseline? Because numerous people in this thread have been parroting the line that homicides dropped since 2023. I

> Why use 2023, rather than say 1991 as your baseline? Because numerous people in this thread have been parroting the line that homicides dropped since 2023. I'm pointing out that this is cherry picking, since homicides spiked to record highs in 2023. 1991 isn't a good baseline because policing trends started reversing in the 2000s. We did mass incarceration from 1980 until the early 2000s, and homicides dropped dramatically. El Salvador recently proved that you can more or less solve homicides by just putting a small fraction of the population in prison. > Especially in countries where there are lots of weapons afloat. That's just untrue. Puerto Rico has very few guns, and is an island so it's hard to get guns, but has a very high homicide rate. Meanwhile, half the people in Idaho have a gun, and Boise is has a homicide rate comparable to Toronto.

jacquesm 1y ago
So, your answer to cherry picking - by your claim - is more cherry picking? > El Salvador recently proved that you can more or less solve homicides by just putting a small fraction of the population in prison. Right, and Washington DC is just like El Salvador? You've got to be joking. > That's just untrue. Puerto Rico has very few guns, and is an island so it's hard to get guns, but has a very high homicide rate. Meanwhile, half the people in Idaho have a gun, and Boise is has a homicide rate comparable to Toronto. Puerto Rico, in spite of the name, is poor and has a huge divide between poor and rich. It's not quite Johannesburg but - and I've been there - the divide is massive and in places like that you get a lot of crime, and some of those crimes will involve homicide. The way to address this is to reduce that gap. Incidentally, the United States also has a massive wealth gap and this is set to further increase. Of course, as an affluent person you'd end up being scared of the unwashed homeless masses so the solution is to put the blame on them, forcibly incarcerate them (and never mind due process) or to simply get rid of them. 'Putting a small fraction of the population in prison' -> that, historically speaking never ended the way it was intended, unless it was done with all of the rules of due process in place. If you propose to abolish those think about how bizarre it is what you are suggesting here. We can solve all homicides (except the ones in prison, I guess) by putting everybody in lockup. So all we have to do is find the line between 'good' and 'bad' people so that there never will be any more first offenders. Problem solved!
- gottorf 1y ago
  Poverty does not cause crime. Instead, poverty and criminality are linked by common behavioral causes (high time preference, low impulse control, etc.). You cannot reduce crime by reducing the gap between the rich and the poor, because the poor are not committing crime to escape poverty. Intelligent people are very bad at modeling the minds of people like this. It's a blind spot I see fairly often.
  - Citizen8396 1y ago
    Both can be true. Ostensibly, reducing poverty-related crime would allow resources to be effectively deployed against the remainder.
    - rayiner 1y ago
      There’s no such thing as “poverty related crime.” My dad’s village in Bangladesh is dirt poor, but has very little crime.
      - jacquesm 1y ago
        You keep making the weirdest comparisons. What does your dad's village in Bangladesh have to do with crime rates in DC or any other city in the United States? This is just absurd, you're pulling in utterly unrelated factoids - which are anecdata at best and which we are going to have to believe at face value - to supposedly support your point, which if we generously assume that they are true still would not do so.
        rayiner 1y ago
        I assumed the person asserting that poverty causes crime was generally familiar with the crime statistics for poor countries in asia and africa (Bangladesh being an archetypal poor country in Asia). Specifically, the homicide statistics, which are the most reliable proxy for crime because homicides are well reported even in developing countries. And if you aren’t familiar with the homicide statistics in asia and africa, how can you have an opinion on poverty and crime?
rdl 1y ago
Puerto Rico (I've lived here since 2018...) is basically awash in guns for criminals. Since 2020, it's gotten a lot easier to buy/carry guns as a normal person (previously you had to appear before a judge for a ccw, now it's a 1h class and $100 for 5 years). It's the only non-warzone I've lived in where the default criminal gun is fully automatic (usually glocks with switches, but a few other things too). Absolute guns per capita isn't really what matters, it's gun accessibility to criminals. (And the bigger crime issues in PR are due to dysfunctional/bankrupt government, specific kinds of poverty/culture, drugs (both local and transshipment), gangs, etc. Also really high domestic violence rate. The crime is largely contained to housing projects, inter-gang fighting, etc., and it feels like less petty property crime (at least in the areas where I go) than I remember of SF 2016+, but I'd rather have someone break my car's window than have to shoot people breaking into my home at night.)
- rayiner 1y ago
  The criminals all have guns in Bangladesh and India too, and all over Africa.
- nobody9999 1y ago
  For more info on the historical context of this, check out this Cogito Episode[0]. [0] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6sPRFvWOBwo https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6sPRFvWOBwo

jacquesm 1y ago

So, your answer to cherry picking - by your claim - is more cherry picking? > El Salvador recently proved that you can more or less solve homicides by just putting a small fraction of the population in prison. Right, and Washington DC is just like El Salvador? You've got to be joking. > That's just untrue. Puerto Rico has very few guns, and is an island so it's hard to get guns, but has a very high homicide rate. Meanwhile, half the people in Idaho have a gun, and Boise is has a homicide rate comparable to Toronto. Puerto Rico, in spite of the name, is poor and has a huge divide between poor and rich. It's not quite Johannesburg but - and I've been there - the divide is massive and in places like that you get a lot of crime, and some of those crimes will involve homicide. The way to address this is to reduce that gap. Incidentally, the United States also has a massive wealth gap and this is set to further increase. Of course, as an affluent person you'd end up being scared of the unwashed homeless masses so the solution is to put the blame on them, forcibly incarcerate them (and never mind due process) or to simply get rid of them. 'Putting a small fraction of the population in prison' -> that, historically speaking never ended the way it was intended, unless it was done with all of the rules of due process in place. If you propose to abolish those think about how bizarre it is what you are suggesting here. We can solve all homicides (except the ones in prison, I guess) by putting everybody in lockup. So all we have to do is find the line between 'good' and 'bad' people so that there never will be any more first offenders. Problem solved!

gottorf 1y ago
Poverty does not cause crime. Instead, poverty and criminality are linked by common behavioral causes (high time preference, low impulse control, etc.). You cannot reduce crime by reducing the gap between the rich and the poor, because the poor are not committing crime to escape poverty. Intelligent people are very bad at modeling the minds of people like this. It's a blind spot I see fairly often.
- Citizen8396 1y ago
  Both can be true. Ostensibly, reducing poverty-related crime would allow resources to be effectively deployed against the remainder.
  - rayiner 1y ago
    There’s no such thing as “poverty related crime.” My dad’s village in Bangladesh is dirt poor, but has very little crime.
    - jacquesm 1y ago
      You keep making the weirdest comparisons. What does your dad's village in Bangladesh have to do with crime rates in DC or any other city in the United States? This is just absurd, you're pulling in utterly unrelated factoids - which are anecdata at best and which we are going to have to believe at face value - to supposedly support your point, which if we generously assume that they are true still would not do so.
      - rayiner 1y ago
        I assumed the person asserting that poverty causes crime was generally familiar with the crime statistics for poor countries in asia and africa (Bangladesh being an archetypal poor country in Asia). Specifically, the homicide statistics, which are the most reliable proxy for crime because homicides are well reported even in developing countries. And if you aren’t familiar with the homicide statistics in asia and africa, how can you have an opinion on poverty and crime?

rdl 1y ago

Puerto Rico (I've lived here since 2018...) is basically awash in guns for criminals. Since 2020, it's gotten a lot easier to buy/carry guns as a normal person (previously you had to appear before a judge for a ccw, now it's a 1h class and $100 for 5 years). It's the only non-warzone I've lived in where the default criminal gun is fully automatic (usually glocks with switches, but a few other things too). Absolute guns per capita isn't really what matters, it's gun accessibility to criminals. (And the bigger crime issues in PR are due to dysfunctional/bankrupt government, specific kinds of poverty/culture, drugs (both local and transshipment), gangs, etc. Also really high domestic violence rate. The crime is largely contained to housing projects, inter-gang fighting, etc., and it feels like less petty property crime (at least in the areas where I go) than I remember of SF 2016+, but I'd rather have someone break my car's window than have to shoot people breaking into my home at night.)

rayiner 1y ago
The criminals all have guns in Bangladesh and India too, and all over Africa.
nobody9999 1y ago
For more info on the historical context of this, check out this Cogito Episode[0]. [0] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6sPRFvWOBwo https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6sPRFvWOBwo