5 ms·

How much is due to changes in or the unreliability of the statistics? The article (and many others) say perceptions haven't caught up with reality, but really t

How much is due to changes in or the unreliability of the statistics? The article (and many others) say perceptions haven't caught up with reality, but really they mean that perception hasn't caught up with statistics -- perhaps the statistics don't reflect reality. I don't know one way or the other, but I haven't seen these questions addressed: 1) I don't know much about how the data is produced, but certainly if law enforcement practitioners, down to the sergeants, are under pressure to produce better and better statistics (which many reports say is true), they are incentivized to reduce those stats and not crime. I've read news stories of police not reporting or fudging crime stats (e.g., reporting a serious crime as a moderate one, not reporting lower-level crimes, etc.). And under that pressure, they may use strategies that produce more numerical improvement than public safety. 2) How could the FBI accurately measure nation-wide crime, every mugging in every small town? Do others measure it? 3) Some of the numbers are extraordinary; doesn't that raise red flags for you?: (both quotes are from the article) * "the F.B.I.'s count of violent crimes reported to law enforcement has declined from a rate of 747 violent incidents per 100,000 people in 1993 to 387 ... over this period, the homicide rate has fallen by 51 percent; forcible rapes have declined by 35 percent; robberies have decreased by 56 percent; and the rate of aggravated assault has been cut by 45 percent. Property crime rates are also sharply down." * "The National Crime Victimization Survey reports that the rate of violent victimizations has declined by 67 percent since 1993. This reflects a 70 percent decline in rape and sexual assault; a 66 percent decline in robbery; a 77 percent decline in aggravated assault; and a 64 percent decline in simple assault."

greatzebu 12y ago
This is a very reasonable question. One way to get at the question of whether the reduction is real is to look at crimes where it's hard to game the statistics and see if they follow the same trends as other crimes. One of the best crimes to look at is murder, since it's much harder to reclassify or not report a crime when there's a dead body involved. Looking at the statistics for murder and non-negligent manslaughter from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crime_in_the_United_States http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crime_in_the_United_States seems to support the idea that the reduction is real--the rate has been cut in half since 1990, and the reduction is broadly similar to the reductions in other types of crime over that period as described by that article.
- spindritf 12y ago
  One of the best crimes to look at is murder This is true. But when you really need to do something about those stats, even murders can turn out not to be murders. http://www.chicagomag.com/Chicago-Magazine/May-2014/Chicago-crime-rates/ http://www.chicagomag.com/Chicago-Magazine/May-2014/Chicago-...
cpa 12y ago
It looks like you read the article. Why did you disregard this quote? > These trends aren’t caused by changes in our willingness to report crime to the police. We see an even more significant decline in violent crime in data derived from surveys asking people whether they’ve been the victims of certain crimes over the past year.
superuser2 12y ago
Local police departments and even universities are required to periodically report crime data to the FBI. Not doing so, or doing so incorrectly, is a big deal. There are DOJ investigators on my campus and the Dean of Students was forced out because we've been telling the FBI about 2-3 rapes a year when many female students can point to more like 10 in their social circles alone. The FBI is not so much "measuring" crime but aggregating basically every police report ever written in the country in a huge database and then writing reports about interesting patterns and trends. I don't know any more about stat manipulation than I learned on The Wire, but the gist of it seemed to be that they couldn't actually produce a long-term stable decline, even on paper. Instead, they could only make the stats fall at certain times, like during a mayoral race, and then they'd go back up. If stat manipulation was the true cause of the apparent decline in crime over the last several decades, you'd think the decline would accelerate during election years.
- hackuser 12y ago
  Thanks for your input. A couple of thoughts: 1) I've read about many other schools doing the same as your Dean, so I'm not sure the DOJ enforces those rules effectively. 2) > The FBI is not so much "measuring" crime but aggregating basically every police report ever written in the country in a huge database and then writing reports about interesting patterns and trends. I expect that the data-producing methods and execution vary greatly in our country's large number and variety of police departments. I hope the federal government does more than merely aggregate the data, or its value would be questionable.
  - superuser2 12y ago
    There is currently a massive crackdown on campus sexual assault and underreporting is part of it at dozens of campuses. So, ongoing enforcement may have been lax, but the DOJ is hitting it and hitting it hard at the moment. I don't know how much they would really differ. Every modern police department is going to write down what it does.

greatzebu 12y ago

This is a very reasonable question. One way to get at the question of whether the reduction is real is to look at crimes where it's hard to game the statistics and see if they follow the same trends as other crimes. One of the best crimes to look at is murder, since it's much harder to reclassify or not report a crime when there's a dead body involved. Looking at the statistics for murder and non-negligent manslaughter from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crime_in_the_United_States http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crime_in_the_United_States seems to support the idea that the reduction is real--the rate has been cut in half since 1990, and the reduction is broadly similar to the reductions in other types of crime over that period as described by that article.

spindritf 12y ago
One of the best crimes to look at is murder This is true. But when you really need to do something about those stats, even murders can turn out not to be murders. http://www.chicagomag.com/Chicago-Magazine/May-2014/Chicago-crime-rates/ http://www.chicagomag.com/Chicago-Magazine/May-2014/Chicago-...

cpa 12y ago

It looks like you read the article. Why did you disregard this quote? > These trends aren’t caused by changes in our willingness to report crime to the police. We see an even more significant decline in violent crime in data derived from surveys asking people whether they’ve been the victims of certain crimes over the past year.

superuser2 12y ago

Local police departments and even universities are required to periodically report crime data to the FBI. Not doing so, or doing so incorrectly, is a big deal. There are DOJ investigators on my campus and the Dean of Students was forced out because we've been telling the FBI about 2-3 rapes a year when many female students can point to more like 10 in their social circles alone. The FBI is not so much "measuring" crime but aggregating basically every police report ever written in the country in a huge database and then writing reports about interesting patterns and trends. I don't know any more about stat manipulation than I learned on The Wire, but the gist of it seemed to be that they couldn't actually produce a long-term stable decline, even on paper. Instead, they could only make the stats fall at certain times, like during a mayoral race, and then they'd go back up. If stat manipulation was the true cause of the apparent decline in crime over the last several decades, you'd think the decline would accelerate during election years.

hackuser 12y ago
Thanks for your input. A couple of thoughts: 1) I've read about many other schools doing the same as your Dean, so I'm not sure the DOJ enforces those rules effectively. 2) > The FBI is not so much "measuring" crime but aggregating basically every police report ever written in the country in a huge database and then writing reports about interesting patterns and trends. I expect that the data-producing methods and execution vary greatly in our country's large number and variety of police departments. I hope the federal government does more than merely aggregate the data, or its value would be questionable.
- superuser2 12y ago
  There is currently a massive crackdown on campus sexual assault and underreporting is part of it at dozens of campuses. So, ongoing enforcement may have been lax, but the DOJ is hitting it and hitting it hard at the moment. I don't know how much they would really differ. Every modern police department is going to write down what it does.