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Comment by alpsgolden | Hacker News Reader

Homicide rates are the key number to track. Other crime statistics have big reporting problems. Police can easily not report a crime (especially when there is pressure to make the stats look good), people stop calling police if they think the police won't do anything, etc. But it is very hard to hide a body.

And homicide rates have risen substantially in the last two years (up 10.4% in 2015, and projected for 13.1% this year). These are the biggest increases in a generation.

http://www.copinthehood.com/2016/09/spin-this-biggest-murder...

http://www.copinthehood.com/2016/11/homicide-is-up-and-its-n...

I'm not sure if the de-incarceration is responsible for the rise in crime. From my following, it seems like the police backing off in response to protests, riots, and consent decrees has a bigger impact. And I'm not a fan of prison -- there are better ways to deter crime and to keep violent criminals away from normal people. But I do notice that most times when I see a murder in the news, and the suspect has been apprehended, the suspect has a disturbingly long wrap sheet and I've wondered to myself, "how was this person allowed back out into civilized society."

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According to 2014 FBI stats related in June, 2014 was a 50 year low for the us homicide rate. Two takeaways: first, FBI data hasn't been released for 2015 yet. Second, as the denominator is getting smaller, small variance leads to bigger year on year percentage shifts.

Ah, correction. FBI data is out for 2015. Murder nationwide has gone from about 13k to about 15k. The point about small denominators stands, especially in light of a 50 year low in 2014. Is this a new murderous America or a reversion toward the mean?

Only you can prevent the grievous misuse of statistics.

[edit] sorry guys didn't realize this comment was horrible flamebait, deleted

You could also easily make the argument that the murder rate is up due to increased weapons sales.

It's all about the policy you want to sell. You're seeking to silence legitimate criticism. I'm seeking to reduce the likelihood someone will do something irrational with a loaded weapon.

If you're interested in facts, there's only one side supported by evidence [0] but hey, don't let that deter your campaign. Keep championing the destruction of black bodies.

0. https://www.hsph.harvard.edu/news/magazine/guns-and-suicide/

The link is about guns and suicide, how is that meaningful as a response to my comment? Suicide is not crime, and I didn't mention guns at all... or anything about black people.

I'm not trying to silence anybody, in fact I'm saying something that mainstream media is unwilling to say. I just pointed out that recent criticism of police is by far the most likely reason crime rates are increasing in big, poor cities.

Why is that the most likely reason?

I'm pointing out that irrational acts of violence - whether homicide or suicide - are made more prevalent and lethal in the presence of cheap, abundant weaponry. As a result of the 37 mass shootings that have occurred during the last administration, gun sales have hit record levels[0], and following from that, homicide rates have increased. I'm connecting the dots in this way, you are connecting the dots in another.

You are making an assertion that there is a negative impact of "recent criticism of police" and that it has directly led to this outbreak of homicide. What criticism, specifically? By which groups, specifically? And what should be done about it, specifically?

0. https://theintercept.com/2016/06/13/election-gun-sales/

Both ways of connecting the dots leads to the same conclusion. Crime has been increasing in large, poor cities.

These people by vast margin are not legal gun owners, so I think it's a bit premature to connect gun sales to rising crime rates.

The biggest thing on the news radar before the increased crime statistics is recent critisicm of police. Even police chiefs and mayors of many of these cities have gone on record saying that the public backlash against police was going to cause officers to be more cautious and patrol problem areas less. And a year later this is exactly what happened.

Nobody can even prove correlation=cause for anything but the evidence in this case is pretty overwhelming.

Chicago specifically, which is pointed out as one of the largest increases, had it's police chief resign and was under state and federal investigation.

What do you think this does for the public perception of the police dept? The police are fearful of causing the next Freddie Gray and the political machine doesn't want their hands anywhere near anything involving the police dept, which would surely affect the ability for them to operate effectively at least at some level

>These people by vast margin are not legal gun owners

Anti-gun control people keep making this argument, and fail to take into account the larger economic impact of more inaccessible guns. If they are restricted it makes them more expensive to obtain on both the legal and illegal markets. Like you said

> large, poor cities

If in fact these cities are as poor as you say - which, speaking as a resident of Chicago, is a grave distortion of our reality - then this only bolsters my argument. Guns shouldn't be affordable or accessible to the average everyday criminal. Controlling the supply allows us to control the price.

> a bit premature to connect gun sales to rising crime rates

This is directly addressed by the evidence I provided. Gun deaths are inexorably connected to gun sales.

>What do you think this does for the public perception of the police dept?

CPD is taking steps to address its image, getting rid of the poor leadership that led to this crisis is exactly what they should be doing. They're hiring people from disempowered communities, organizing outreach, building trust. CPD is busy busting its ass demonstrating its ability to operate effectively in this environment. You need to be aware that police departments originated[0] not as public defense organizations, but as union-busting, organizer-murdering hired security. Things have changed, but as recent events[1] have shown, there is still work to do. As someone with family members in the CPD AND as someone with family members of color, I am keenly aware of the tightrope both sides must walk. There is no perfect solution, but burying your head in the right-wing propaganda machine does none of us any good.

At least I'm proposing a solution. Again, you make an assertion that there is a negative impact of "recent critisicm[sic] of police" and that it has directly led to this outbreak of homicide. What criticism, specifically? By which groups, specifically? And what should be done about it, specifically?

0. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pinkerton_(detective_agency)

1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shooting_of_Laquan_McDonald

Criticism is causing increasing crime? What kind of Blue Lives Matters bs logic is that. And have there not been repeated case she of glaring misconduct where justice was not served. And the police wanna play victim now? I'm all for increasing police training and even better pay to attract better candidates, but there are many more factors at play than criticism.

It's a direct result of police backing off due to protests.

I'm not going to post the obvious glib response, but it's threadbait to say something like this without support. "Probably" doesn't cut it, so consider this a challenge.

I read somewhere that one way to measure crime is surveys that ask people about crimes that they have been a victim of in the previous year. These surveys indicate that the reduction of crime isn't due to reduction in reporting or policing.

That's how England and Wales does it. The police record crimes, but these are not seen as statistically sound, and so the Office For National Statistics also does a crime survey.

http://webarchive.nationalarchives.gov.uk/20160105160709/htt...

> The CSEW, formerly known as the British Crime Survey (BCS), is a face-to-face survey asking people who are resident in households in England and Wales about their experiences of a range of crimes in the past year. The survey interviews both adults and children. The survey started in 1982 (covering crime experienced in 1981) and is conducted on a continuous basis with around 35,000 adults and 3,000 children aged 10 to 15 years old interviewed each year.

"In the past year, were you a victim of murder?"

>> And homicide rates have risen substantially in the last two years

Homicides are down in the majority of cities, like NYC, Flint and Detroit. However, they are up in cities like Chicago, Baltimore, and St. Louis which are bucking the national trend of lower homicide rates.

Homicide rates - and some other crimes - are massively distorted by small, high-crime urban areas.

If you pluck out the data a very small number of residents from specific hoods in Detroit, Chicago, DC etc. - the 'rest of America's' homicide rates start to look more sane.

If you pluck Aboriginal crime out of Canadian crime stats, the numbers start to look like those of Northern Europe.

I think this is important because random crimes that happen in 'normal circumstances' may not be a function of the crazy social dysfunction in certain neighbourhoods.

I'm not saying anything political here, I do believe anyone murdering anyone else is 'responsible' for it and can't just blame the fact that their dad was in jail, mom absent, schools sucked etc. - however - those are obviously massively correlating factors in some areas, much more than others.

If I were pres, I would basically have a 'national crime / social reconstruction strategy' focused on those 'bad areas' that comprised of a bunch of things.

Most of America is within the range of 'normal' for homicide - but still considerably more violent than other advanced nations.

>If you pluck Aboriginal crime out of Canadian crime stats, the numbers start to look like those of Northern Europe.

Do you believe Northern Europe does not have minorities with higher crime rates?

Of course, but not nearly in the same vein.

Inner city Detroit, and Aboriginal reserves are war zones compared to a 'minority are of Manchester'.

> Homicide rates are the key number to track. Other crime statistics have big reporting problems. Police can easily not report a crime (especially when there is pressure to make the stats look good), people stop calling police if they think the police won't do anything, etc. But it is very hard to hide a body.

I agree with you, it is true that the homicide rate is the most fair statistic to use. But even that can be manipulated. For example, it is often hard to distinguish between arson and accidental fires. Some types of murder can appear to be suicides at first glance and vice versa. Another twist is disappearances where the body hasn't been found yet. This is why you'll never find an exact number of murders for a specific year, just an estimate.

So different reporting routines or an overworked police force could definitely impact the number of murders reported each year. For example suppose a junkie falls from a balcony and dies, if the police department have spare resources maybe they'll investigate and find out it's a murder, if they don't maybe they'll be happy to close the case as an accident.

You make an intresting point about the stats. Can you expand on the backing off part, though?

And the question I would ask is, "what should have been done to prevent this spiraling into a life of crime, and why wasn't it?"

Can you expand on the backing off part, though?

Peter Moskos has written a lot on this. As part of his PhD, he spent two years as an actual cop in Baltimore. Now he is a professor of criminology in New York. IMO, he does a good job writing in a balanced and truthful perspective about crime.

"I don't know what's going on everywhere (or even most-where), but I can tell you a bit about Baltimore. And I suspect it holds true in many cities. I looked calls for service, arrest numbers, and crimes. Most dramatic is the drop of arrests in Western District....Now there are good and not so good reasons for this drop in arrests. But leaving that why: it happened. Police were less involved, by choice and necessity, and violence skyrocketed. Just because correlation does prove causing, correlation certainly doesn't mean causation is impossible or even unlikely. I mean, what else changed in the Western except police and crime?...Cops stopped making discretionary arrests and being proactive in clearing corners and frisking subjects. Look, it's no surprise where shootings happens and who gets shot." http://www.copinthehood.com/2016/01/the-baltimore-6-effect.h...

And then read this one about Chicago: http://www.copinthehood.com/2016/11/the-best-of-times-worst-...

And a few other posts http://www.copinthehood.com/2016/02/defining-ferguson-effect... and http://www.copinthehood.com/2016/03/chicago-violence.html

And the question I would ask is, "what should have been done to prevent this spiraling into a life of crime, and why wasn't it?"

My reading is that there is a total breakdown in discipline in many of these families and communities. The kids that end up being problems are not getting discipline at home, and they're not getting it from the school (see http://www.isegoria.net/2014/12/the-monster-factory/ or http://www.anurbanteacherseducation.com/2011/02/tfa-alumnus-... )

I also think that when you have open-air drug dealing, and gangs openly controlling the streets, then that turns senior gang members into role models, and it incentivizes young teenagers to join gangs for protection. Then as part of joining, they get involved in beefs and violence. That is my take from reading various ethnographies.

The reason nothing is being done is because prevailing opinion does not agree with me. The emphasis over the past fifty years has been less discipline in schools. ( http://www.city-journal.org/html/who-killed-school-disciplin... ). There was a police crackdown in the 1990s, but it was more targeted at keeping violent people out of the nice neighborhoods, rather than completely eliminating gang violence in the ghetto neighborhoods. I think that is because the liberals see the police as suspect and problematic, and don't want to empower them, and because the conservatives don't really care about the ghetto as long as it doesn't effect them.

Without addressing your points, I might suggest expanding your sources of reference.

I read a wide variety of sources. I linked to Moskos because he is one of the best, he himself has numerous citations, and thus there is no reason for me to duplicate the work he has already put in.

If it's a subject you actually care about, beyond simply having your biases confirmed, reading more broadly will do you well.

I read have read an enormous amount about this subject, from all angles and viewpoints. And I actually give a sh*t about getting the answer right, not just confirming any biases. And from reading and personal experience, I changed my mind on this subject, I used to be much more liberal in my beliefs about crime.

thus there is no reason for me to duplicate the work he has already put in.

You're vouching for him, but so far there's no reason to take your word for it. I'm sorry, but I don't know you from a social media marketer, so "feed the guy some clicks and figure it out for yourself" is not a compelling argument.

This is a very good comment, and it seems pretty reasonable. I don't think police are the right agents to enforce societal change though. It seems like a lot of criminals, start off rather young charged with crimes like shoplifting etc, and that record haunts them forever, by shutting off a lot of opportunities forever.

I don't know what the solution is, how to prevent so many American youth who would perhaps have been contributing members of society and culture. I found it rather surprising that such kinds of conditions exist in a developed country like the US; its usually something you find in less developed countries.

I don't think police are the right agents to enforce societal change though.

I mostly agree, but I do think the police could do more to crack down on the most brazen instances of gangs being the de facto government of various neighborhoods.

It seems like a lot of criminals, start off rather young charged with crimes like shoplifting etc, and that record haunts them forever, by shutting off a lot of opportunities forever.

That's not my sense from the various ethnographies I have read. Where are you getting that from?

I found it rather surprising that such kinds of conditions exist in a developed country like the US; its usually something you find in less developed countries

There is a racial element to this. When I was traveling in Brazil, the black favellas of Brazil had a lot of similarity to the black ghettos of the U.S., and the white areas of Brazil had a lot of similarity to the white areas of the United States or of Europe.

>There is a racial element to this. When I was traveling in Brazil, the black favellas of Brazil had a lot of similarity to the black ghettos of the U.S., and the white areas of Brazil had a lot of similarity to the white areas of the United States or of Europe.

That sounds extremely implausible and requires a whole hell of a lot of citations.

>"I don't think police are the right agents to enforce societal change though."

Of course, agreed. However, they're most certainly there to prevent crime and stop/catch criminals. There is a whole lot of overlap between those two goals.

>"I found it rather surprising that such kinds of conditions exist in a developed country like the US; its usually something you find in less developed countries."

People aren't allowed to talk about it, frankly. Sweeping generalizations and policies that affect and stop these kinds of conditions from existing are not politically correct, and completely politically unpalatable.

E.g. If you asked me for my politically incorrect answer: It would be to increase policing ten-fold in those areas, maybe even impose martial law and curfews until the criminals have to pretty-much stop their business because it's not viable anymore. High-definition cameras on all street-corners, license-plate scanners to keep decent track of ALL vehicles going through the city and crime hot-spots. Additionally, you have to stop gang-culture from propagating through those neighborhoods. Not just that, but keep it from spreading through the whole society in general via media, especially music that glorifies it.

The unfortunate thing is that it'll probably work, we can probably pay/implement it right now, and we would very quickly start saving lives and helping people out of a crime/poverty cycle. Yet we aren't.

Conservatives don't care about the ghetto? No they just run the stores and own the properties there. C'mon get real. You're also wrong about policing in ghettos in the 90s. Policing ghettos is different than suburbs. Because in ghettos people, potential criminals operate under different levels of deterrence. You have to dish out a lot more intimidation. Certain people need to be reminded that they don't run the show. It's a sort of street politics / dominance thing you develop a 'gut' about. I've seen it numerous times, it can be shocking and occasionally TV and movies get it right too.

Society's tolerance for crime is bizarrely irrational. There will be about 800 murders in Chicago this year -- yawn.

Now imagine if 800 Chicagoans were killed by radiation leaks from a nuclear plant. "Well, you can't have electricity without plutonium. Do you want to turn everyone's lights off?" Or if 800 African-Americans were lynched Emmett Till style by KKK thugs. "Regrettable, but what are you going to do? And don't white people have legitimate complaints?"

Even murder rates can be fudged -- turn the homicide into a "death investigation":

http://www.chicagomag.com/Chicago-Magazine/May-2014/Chicago-...

Another point to keep in mind when you see these too-good-to-be-true stories is that criminal subcultures are actually quite conservative. When laws and policies change, it takes time for people to collectively figure out what they can get away with. This makes crime rates a lagging indicator -- we're still experiencing the positive effects of the crime crackdown of the '90s, not just in incarceration rates but in cultural behavior.

The mid-'60s were another period when social scientists realized that punishment was a medieval anachronism. It took 10-20 years to see the full effects of these policies, and another 10 for the political backlash to get started. It seems like we're due for another round of this pendulum.

What's with the downvotes to this? If there's something to be debated I would have liked to read it because this comment, I don't disagree with.

There's a wide variety of explanations for the crime drop, including from increased educational attainment, overall better economic situation, and lead poisoning caused by leaded gasoline subsiding.

Attributing it solely to crackdowns in the 90's is pretty disingenuous; crime had been falling before Giuliani, and in a broad array of cities which hasn't instituted tough on crime policies.

It seems like we're due for another round of this pendulum.

I fear this too. As someone who now lives in a city that suffered enormously from the 70s crime rise, and benefited greatly from the 2000s decline in crime, the prospect of another crime wave makes me wonder if I should hold off on buying a house.

ask your local trustworthy agents and your local police whether you should buy.

> Society's tolerance for crime is bizarrely irrational.

   In 1940, a survey was taken of teachers asking them
   to list the five most important problems in school.
   They were: (1) talking out of turn; (2) chewing gum;
   (3) making noise; (4) running in halls; and (5) cutting
   in line.

   Fifty years later, the survey was repeated. The 1990
   list was substantially revised: (1) drug abuse;
   (2) alcohol abuse; (3) pregnancy; (4) suicide;
   (5) rape.

From http://www.aei.org/publication/defining-deviancy-up/, Charles Krauthammers corollary to Pat Moynihan's Defining Deviancy Down. http://www2.sunysuffolk.edu/formans/DefiningDeviancy.htm

Still good reading and still controversial after all these years.

While facts like that may seem rather startling at first, I don't think they necessarily reflect a degradation of society and values (the obvious implication); rather, it is a simple indication that society and culture have changed a lot, and our existing system of incentives and laws have not been able to deal with it. e.g. the natural reaction to this is to increase police presence, be stricter and harsher in punishments etc. But the root causes remain unchanged: rise of single parent homes, the failure of the war on drugs, economic inequality, changing views w.r.t marriage, children getting mature faster etc.

I guess my point is that we need to have a more holistic approach to resolving this issue than to simply be harsher with punishments and policing.

There is much more to that article than the introduction, but in case anyone is wondering why Krauthammer doesn't cite a source for those surveys, it's because they're not real: http://www.snopes.com/language/document/school.asp, or search "Discipline List" here http://ece.dallasnews.com/archive/

A bit later in the article, Krauthammer really succinctly sums up a major flaw in his own argument:

> As part of this project of moral leveling, whole new areas of deviancy–such as date rape and politically incorrect speech–have been discovered. And old areas–such as child abuse–have been amplified by endless reiteration in the public presses and validated by learned reports of their astonishing frequency.

Yes, perhaps the reason rape seems so much more common is that people in the 1940s didn't understand what rape is. Apparently some people still don't.

Yes, perhaps the reason rape seems so much more common is that people in the 1940s didn't understand what rape is.

I want to order a time machine and send you back to have a conversation with your great-grandparents, for whom you seem to have so little respect.

Sure, the "list" isn't real. People wouldn't have been passing it around in the '70s if it hadn't reflected the actual experience of living in the '40s, which many, many people at that time remembered well.

A time machine is not actually available. Your great-grandparents are probably dead. But you can still go read a bunch of books from the amazing, wonderful, astoundingly different, and yes -- not at all perfect -- world that they lived in. Chronological chauvinism is not a healthy emotion.

> Your great-grandparents are probably dead. But you can still go read a bunch of books from the amazing, wonderful, astoundingly different, and yes -- not at all perfect -- world that they lived in.

My great-grandparents were crossing the Atlantic to flee pogroms. My grandfather did similar, but lost the rest of his family who didn't leave Europe in the 1910s and 1920s when the 1930s and 1940s set in. There was this little thing while my grandmother was young called, "the Holocaust".

Fuck the violence, authoritarianism, and chauvinisms of the past. Today is far better.

> Homicide rates are the key number to track.

It's also basically the only thing you can compare between nations as well. About ten years ago I saw a New Zealand-based study that took crimes from NZ, Australia, and the US, and rated them using the other countries' parameters. I've sadly been unable to find this study again, but it was very interesting in its results - the way crime is reported, the same event in Australia and NZ will show up about five times more than in the US. If two blokes have a fight outside a bar and it involves weapons, in the US, usually just one charge will be brought. But in Aus/NZ, the way the law works, about five charges are brought, eg from simple assault to attempted murder, and only the most severe successful charge would be used for sentencing. However, when the stats are aggregated, it's done by charges brought, not convictions (for some odd reason).

> And homicide rates have risen substantially in the last two years (up 10.4% in 2015, and projected for 13.1% this year). These are the biggest increases in a generation.

Pretending a 49% drop over 20 years is sustainable continuously with no outliers is...absurd. There is a reason these sorts of trendlines are generally drawn over 5-10 years of data, not 1 or 2.

Please, just stop pushing your agenda on HN.

https://mises.org/blog/fbi-us-homicide-rate-51-year-low

> Homicide rates were considerably higher in the United States during the 1970s, 80s, and 90s, but over the past 25 years, have fallen nearly continuously:

> As Pew has reported in recent years, in fact, the American public is "unaware" that the homicide rate in the United States has fallen by 49 percent over the past twenty years. And while Pew doesn't report on it, it's also a safe bet that the public is also unaware that homicide rates have collapsed as total gun ownership in the United States has increased significantly.

I am not arguing about the crime changes over the past 20 years. The original article was about crime changes in the past few years, based on changes to policy in the last few years. I think the changes to crime policy implemented twenty years ago were good, and good impacts on crime. But the changes in the past few years are bad, and will result in an increase in crime.

Pretending a 49% drop over 20 years is sustainable continuously with no outliers is...absurd. ... As Pew has reported in recent years, in fact, the American public is "unaware" that the homicide rate in the United States has fallen by 49 percent over the past twenty years.

In my city, the homicide rate is still 5X higher than it was in 1950s. That's hundreds of people dead each year, unnecessarily. And that's after dramatic improvements in medical technology! I have a lot higher standards than a 50% decline since the 1990 peak. Let's get it back down to the 1950s level.

> In my city, the homicide rate is still 5X higher than it was in 1950s. That's hundreds of people dead each year, unnecessarily. And that's after dramatic improvements in medical technology! I have a lot higher standards than a 50% decline since the 1990 peak. Let's get it back down to the 1950s level.

Yet you repeatedly, blatantly cherry pick data that is just more lies of omission like this one where you try to defend yourself. Now you move the goal posts and show complete ignorance of the way population densities have changed since the 1950s and the relationship between such density and crime rates.

> I am not arguing about the crime changes over the past 20 years. The original article was about crime changes in the past few years, based on changes to policy in the last few years. I think the changes to crime policy implemented twenty years ago were good, and good impacts on crime. But the changes in the past few years are bad, and will result in an increase in crime.

Nothing substantial has changed unless you are truly and genuinely ignorant of history. You think BLM is new?

The LA riots and numerous similar events have been caused by killing unarmed civilians by police, regardless of justification. Stop being a sheep and actually read the history of the past 50 years. BLM and other protests are pretty fucking peaceful compared to the LA riots and other events in the past with similar causes. Get back to me when these "riots" and "policy changes" involved 10+ deaths on a regular basis.

The only people claiming it is getting worse are salesman peddling fear and ignorance. Stop being so easily persuaded and actually educate yourself.

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