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http://www.nytimes.com/2014/09/17/upshot/perceptions-havent-caught-up-to-decline-in-crime.html http://www.nytimes.com/2014/09/17/upshot/perceptions-havent-...

by __z 11y ago

http://www.nytimes.com/2014/09/17/upshot/perceptions-havent-caught-up-to-decline-in-crime.html http://www.nytimes.com/2014/09/17/upshot/perceptions-havent-... "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. 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. This survey has nothing to say about the decline in homicide, for obvious reasons."

ZeroGravitas 11y ago
David Simon says that homicide is the hardest crime stat to fudge, since there's a body and the different rate changes between homicide and other crimes is actually used to try to measure how much the stats are being fudged.
- Kesty 11y ago
  You can always report an homicide as a suicide. You will have an increase suicide rate, but it won't effect the criminal rate.
  - cmdkeen 11y ago
    Except that's a really serious felony far and above other statistics fiddling, Baltimore at its worst didn't go that far - you're making yourself an accessory to murder after the fact. Not only would you have Federal authorities getting interested quickly but you have pesky family members raising queries about how their loved one shot themselves to death 34 times on a street corner. Even in the darkest days of Baltimore I don't think there were allegations of homicides being declared as suicides.
    - anthony_d 11y ago
      Just to be pedantic: in it's darkest days the police in Baltimore commit murder. It's naive to think the police would never do something purely because it's really bad. I will agree that from a practical standpoint it seems far fetched to think they could get away with mislabeling homicides on any significant scale.
  - CPLX 11y ago
    You can sometimes report a homicide as a suicide. Not very often, given things like the relative unpopularity of multiple gunshot wounds from a moving car as a suicide method, and so on.
  - __z 11y ago
    I have no data for this (other than watching TV) but reporting homicide as suicide is probably more likely due to incompetence rather than malice.
  - kabouseng 11y ago
    And if the victim has life insurance, reporting a homicide as a suicide has insurance consequences, the family would provide resistance to.
- dredmorbius 11y ago
  Also: the coroner's office is independent of the police and makes the determination of homicide.
  - dragonwriter 11y ago
    That's not true in all jurisdictions; I've seen several, e.g., with a sheriff-coroner's office, so that, where the sheriff's office is the applicable law enforcement officer, the coroner is not a separate office.
    - dredmorbius 11y ago
      It is true in Baltimore, and Simon specifically references the fact.
    - dredmorbius 11y ago
      There's a long treatment of this in Simon's 2008 talk, "The Audacity of Despair". I'd written at length on that earlier: http://davidsimon.com/portfolio-item/the-audacity-of-despair http://davidsimon.com/portfolio-item/the-audacity-of-despair https://plus.google.com/u/0/104092656004159577193/posts/CexRd31Mpxn https://plus.google.com/u/0/104092656004159577193/posts/CexR... Simon says: In this culture, if you want to find out where the dirt is done, parse some statistics. I learned as a reporter to start despising statistics, and to regard anything that was ever cited to me in advance of an argument as dubious just because somebody was pulling it out and using it. As I got better as a reporter, I realized that as soon as any of our institutions create a means of measuring themselves in terms of quality, someone is running behind them in that institution to figure out a way of destroying that statistic as a meaningful measure of anything. In education it's No Child Left Behind and standardized test scores. In the police department, it's crime statistics and clearance rates. In the journalism it's Pulizer Prizes. These stats don't have to do with anything once the people looking to advance themselves and their agenda, and to protect their institution, get done with them. ... It's not corruption in the sense of somebody thinking "I am here to make Baltimore worse", or "make the retaining walls in New Orleans collapse yet again". It's somebody thinking "I don't want it landing on me, I want my day to be easier than yours, and I want you to think well of me until I get out of this job". ... You know how you unfound a robbery report? A guy comes in to report a robbery in a place like south-west Baltimore, you say, "are you sure the guy had bullets in the gun? Are you sure? Are you sure it wasn't just a larceny, are you sure he didn't just take your wallet from you? Oh, you're really insisting, he did have a gun, you saw the bullets, it was a real gun? Hold on, we've got to run a warrant check on you. We gotta see if there's any paper on you. You don't have any paper on you? Oh, by the way, door's over there." Robberies in the south-west district of Baltimore went down 70% in just one year. When time came to reduce the murder rate, the same trick didn't work -- you can't hide the bodies, and it's the state Health Department which defines murders. It's a really powerful piece.

by __z 11y ago

ZeroGravitas 11y ago

David Simon says that homicide is the hardest crime stat to fudge, since there's a body and the different rate changes between homicide and other crimes is actually used to try to measure how much the stats are being fudged.

Kesty 11y ago
You can always report an homicide as a suicide. You will have an increase suicide rate, but it won't effect the criminal rate.
- cmdkeen 11y ago
  Except that's a really serious felony far and above other statistics fiddling, Baltimore at its worst didn't go that far - you're making yourself an accessory to murder after the fact. Not only would you have Federal authorities getting interested quickly but you have pesky family members raising queries about how their loved one shot themselves to death 34 times on a street corner. Even in the darkest days of Baltimore I don't think there were allegations of homicides being declared as suicides.
  - anthony_d 11y ago
    Just to be pedantic: in it's darkest days the police in Baltimore commit murder. It's naive to think the police would never do something purely because it's really bad. I will agree that from a practical standpoint it seems far fetched to think they could get away with mislabeling homicides on any significant scale.
- CPLX 11y ago
  You can sometimes report a homicide as a suicide. Not very often, given things like the relative unpopularity of multiple gunshot wounds from a moving car as a suicide method, and so on.
- __z 11y ago
  I have no data for this (other than watching TV) but reporting homicide as suicide is probably more likely due to incompetence rather than malice.
- kabouseng 11y ago
  And if the victim has life insurance, reporting a homicide as a suicide has insurance consequences, the family would provide resistance to.
dredmorbius 11y ago
Also: the coroner's office is independent of the police and makes the determination of homicide.
- dragonwriter 11y ago
  That's not true in all jurisdictions; I've seen several, e.g., with a sheriff-coroner's office, so that, where the sheriff's office is the applicable law enforcement officer, the coroner is not a separate office.
  - dredmorbius 11y ago
    It is true in Baltimore, and Simon specifically references the fact.
  - dredmorbius 11y ago
    There's a long treatment of this in Simon's 2008 talk, "The Audacity of Despair". I'd written at length on that earlier: http://davidsimon.com/portfolio-item/the-audacity-of-despair http://davidsimon.com/portfolio-item/the-audacity-of-despair https://plus.google.com/u/0/104092656004159577193/posts/CexRd31Mpxn https://plus.google.com/u/0/104092656004159577193/posts/CexR... Simon says: In this culture, if you want to find out where the dirt is done, parse some statistics. I learned as a reporter to start despising statistics, and to regard anything that was ever cited to me in advance of an argument as dubious just because somebody was pulling it out and using it. As I got better as a reporter, I realized that as soon as any of our institutions create a means of measuring themselves in terms of quality, someone is running behind them in that institution to figure out a way of destroying that statistic as a meaningful measure of anything. In education it's No Child Left Behind and standardized test scores. In the police department, it's crime statistics and clearance rates. In the journalism it's Pulizer Prizes. These stats don't have to do with anything once the people looking to advance themselves and their agenda, and to protect their institution, get done with them. ... It's not corruption in the sense of somebody thinking "I am here to make Baltimore worse", or "make the retaining walls in New Orleans collapse yet again". It's somebody thinking "I don't want it landing on me, I want my day to be easier than yours, and I want you to think well of me until I get out of this job". ... You know how you unfound a robbery report? A guy comes in to report a robbery in a place like south-west Baltimore, you say, "are you sure the guy had bullets in the gun? Are you sure? Are you sure it wasn't just a larceny, are you sure he didn't just take your wallet from you? Oh, you're really insisting, he did have a gun, you saw the bullets, it was a real gun? Hold on, we've got to run a warrant check on you. We gotta see if there's any paper on you. You don't have any paper on you? Oh, by the way, door's over there." Robberies in the south-west district of Baltimore went down 70% in just one year. When time came to reduce the murder rate, the same trick didn't work -- you can't hide the bodies, and it's the state Health Department which defines murders. It's a really powerful piece.