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"Crime is at an all-time low yet spending on police is near an all-time high." Isn't this cause and effect? Crime is lower because we are hiring more policeme

"Crime is at an all-time low yet spending on police is near an all-time high." Isn't this cause and effect? Crime is lower because we are hiring more policemen. That is certainly one conclusion from Freakonomics. This is just a digression, because I do think the "Cops as Warriors" model is very scary, as "collateral damage" becomes acceptable in a war.

tolmasky 13y ago
But if spending AND crime were at an all time high wed be saying that its cause and affect in the other direction and probably be making the argument that we need even more spending! So no matter what high budgets are always justified.
- superuser2 13y ago
  If you're not adjusting for inflation, spending on nearly everything is at an all-time high. (And when you're arguing that budgets are too high, it's rarely in your interest to adjust for inflation).
nostromo 13y ago
I attempted to address that in my comment. Check out, Steven Pinker's "The Better Angels of Our Nature" which shows that violent crime is down globally, not just in the US. Also, Levitt did say increased policing decreased crime, but only caused around 5% of the decline ( http://pricetheory.uchicago.edu/levitt/Papers/LevittUnderstandingWhyCrime2004.pdf http://pricetheory.uchicago.edu/levitt/Papers/LevittUndersta... p. 184)
- bayesianhorse 13y ago
  I found that talk riveting. I tried to tell that to people in real life, but stopped that after a couple of tries... Noone really believes that...
- bstrand 13y ago
  Pinker's thesis is not without serious detractors. Edward Herman and David Peterson's critique[1] in ZNet is worth considering before taking it as fact. [1] http://www.zcommunications.org/steven-pinker-on-the-alleged-decline-of-violence-by-edward-s-herman-and-david-peterson http://www.zcommunications.org/steven-pinker-on-the-alleged-...
  - Tuna-Fish 13y ago
    That is atrociously bad. Among other things, it argues against the concept of normalizing death tolls of war by population (when the primary variable under consideration is the likelihood of one person to die violently across different times), it tries to cram as much contemporary political rhetoric as it can, and it uses highly pathetic analysis such as "the phenomenon of structural violence, or the kind of violence that is “built into the structure” of social relations" (yes, because past societies based aristocracy that brutally extracts what it can from the majority of the population is so much less structurally violent) and "the increasingly savage global class war of the 1 Percent against the other 99, and the “endemic undernutrition and deprivation”" (conveniently ignoring the fact that endemic undernutrition was the normal state of the world prior to recent times). It staggers me that someone can actually read that and take it at face value. His entire thesis seems to be "ignore statistics, look at these pretty individual cases" and "look at how bad the world is", completely missing the point that Pinker didn't actually say the world is peaceful, only that it is more peaceful than it has ever been before, and completely failing to make any case against this.
bstrand 13y ago
There is substantial evidence that lead poisoning, particularly that from leaded gasoline, is the causative element behind the violent crime spike and subsequent decline: http://www.motherjones.com/environment/2013/01/lead-crime-link-gasoline http://www.motherjones.com/environment/2013/01/lead-crime-li...
lostlogin 13y ago
About now I usually are the below story quoted. It's such a fascinating read that I'll stick it in as someone may not have seen it. Leaded petrol and crime. http://m.motherjones.com/environment/2013/01/lead-crime-link-gasoline http://m.motherjones.com/environment/2013/01/lead-crime-link... http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/uknews/crime/9790009/Was-lead-pollution-behind-the-baby-boomer-crime-wave.html http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/uknews/crime/9790009/Was-lea...

tolmasky 13y ago

But if spending AND crime were at an all time high wed be saying that its cause and affect in the other direction and probably be making the argument that we need even more spending! So no matter what high budgets are always justified.

superuser2 13y ago
If you're not adjusting for inflation, spending on nearly everything is at an all-time high. (And when you're arguing that budgets are too high, it's rarely in your interest to adjust for inflation).

nostromo 13y ago

I attempted to address that in my comment. Check out, Steven Pinker's "The Better Angels of Our Nature" which shows that violent crime is down globally, not just in the US. Also, Levitt did say increased policing decreased crime, but only caused around 5% of the decline ( http://pricetheory.uchicago.edu/levitt/Papers/LevittUnderstandingWhyCrime2004.pdf http://pricetheory.uchicago.edu/levitt/Papers/LevittUndersta... p. 184)

bayesianhorse 13y ago
I found that talk riveting. I tried to tell that to people in real life, but stopped that after a couple of tries... Noone really believes that...
bstrand 13y ago
Pinker's thesis is not without serious detractors. Edward Herman and David Peterson's critique[1] in ZNet is worth considering before taking it as fact. [1] http://www.zcommunications.org/steven-pinker-on-the-alleged-decline-of-violence-by-edward-s-herman-and-david-peterson http://www.zcommunications.org/steven-pinker-on-the-alleged-...
- Tuna-Fish 13y ago
  That is atrociously bad. Among other things, it argues against the concept of normalizing death tolls of war by population (when the primary variable under consideration is the likelihood of one person to die violently across different times), it tries to cram as much contemporary political rhetoric as it can, and it uses highly pathetic analysis such as "the phenomenon of structural violence, or the kind of violence that is “built into the structure” of social relations" (yes, because past societies based aristocracy that brutally extracts what it can from the majority of the population is so much less structurally violent) and "the increasingly savage global class war of the 1 Percent against the other 99, and the “endemic undernutrition and deprivation”" (conveniently ignoring the fact that endemic undernutrition was the normal state of the world prior to recent times). It staggers me that someone can actually read that and take it at face value. His entire thesis seems to be "ignore statistics, look at these pretty individual cases" and "look at how bad the world is", completely missing the point that Pinker didn't actually say the world is peaceful, only that it is more peaceful than it has ever been before, and completely failing to make any case against this.

bstrand 13y ago

There is substantial evidence that lead poisoning, particularly that from leaded gasoline, is the causative element behind the violent crime spike and subsequent decline: http://www.motherjones.com/environment/2013/01/lead-crime-link-gasoline http://www.motherjones.com/environment/2013/01/lead-crime-li...

lostlogin 13y ago

About now I usually are the below story quoted. It's such a fascinating read that I'll stick it in as someone may not have seen it. Leaded petrol and crime. http://m.motherjones.com/environment/2013/01/lead-crime-link-gasoline http://m.motherjones.com/environment/2013/01/lead-crime-link... http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/uknews/crime/9790009/Was-lead-pollution-behind-the-baby-boomer-crime-wave.html http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/uknews/crime/9790009/Was-lea...