Steady Decline in Major Crime Baffles Experts | Hacker News Reader

Steady Decline in Major Crime Baffles Experts

nytimes.com

46 pointsgarbowza52 comments

I guess Netflix On-Demand, Facebook stalking, and FarmVille do their job in cheaply entertaining us!

Seriously though, murders are a distant leap from idle teenage mischief, but I have to believe people commit fewer crimes when they have more to lose. If someone is reasonably happy with his day-to-day life, why risk disrupting it?

Now for a really big leap-of-faith: maybe social media opens our eyes to how other people perceive their lives. As stated in Paul B's "open as in water" blog post, Facebook and Twitter have shown more people that they aren't alone in their miseries; and that there are lots of little joys in life!

Last wild theory: cyber bullying is on the rise, but at least that's less deadly than physical confrontation.

I know that's an off the cuff one-liner, but this idea has gotten some serious consideration. Particularly vis a vis the availability of online porn and the decline in rape. For example, the paper "Porn Up, Rape Down":

http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=913013

(Note, this idea is not uncontroversial.)

Interesting idea, but some studies have shown that social media can lead to depression as well: http://www.mb.com.ph/articles/311899/can-too-much-social-net...

Basically people present and exaggerate the best of themselves online (highlight their achievements, show how much fun they're having with life). People compare themselves to what their friends seem like online, and get depressed because they're friends seem to be doing so much better than they are.

Well, it does sound like a good point for Facebook and other social media if that's true, however the pessimist inside of me was immediately reminded of this exchange in Aldous Huxley's Brave New World:

"V.P.S.?"

"Violent Passion Surrogate. Regularly once a month. We flood the whole system with adrenalin. It's the complete physiological equivalent of fear and rage. All the tonic effects of murdering Desdemona and being murdered by Othello, without any of the inconveniences."

"But I like the inconveniences."

"We don't," said the Controller. "We prefer to do things comfortably."

"But I don't want comfort. I want God, I want poetry, I want real danger, I want freedom, I want goodness. I want sin."

"In fact," said Mustapha Mond, "you're claiming the right to be unhappy."

"All right then," said the Savage defiantly, "I'm claiming the right to be unhappy."

From http://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Brave_New_World

Fortunately, we're not there (yet).

Blogging and forums might have the effect you describe. Certainly every violent criminal takes a look at the peaceful life open to him and decides that it isn't tolerable. Whether it's a twenty year old with half a high school education working shifts at Chik-fil-A thinking, "It's shameful for a grown man to be doing this work. I can't afford a car; my apartment is a piece of shit. If I stick with this, I'm a loser and a failure. I've gotta do something" or Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold deciding that accepting their role as loser outcasts was just too painful, the decision is to reject your lot in society and go outside the rules, with little hope of actually improving your life, just the prospect of enjoying some dignity and satisfaction. Finding some anonymous fellowship online would, I think, take the edge off the shame and indignity of being at the bottom of the pack.

Facebook and Twitter, on the other hand, are the opposite because they're all about cultivating public identities. The people who post regularly on Facebook and Twitter are the ones who are happiest with themselves and most secure broadcasting themselves to intimate friends and non-acquaintances alike. Unhappy and insecure people are invisible, because if they're downers, they'll be defriended. That increases the impression of inequality -- everyone else is happier than me; I just don't measure up -- and should lead to more violence, if anything.

So the Freakonomics guys famously (and controversially) attributed the decline in crime in the 90's to four factors, abortion being the most controversial [1]:

– Increased reliance on prisons

– Increased number of police

– The bursting of the crack bubble

– The legalization of abortion

The NYT article says that incarceration rates have dropped, which would eliminate the first factor. I wonder how the other 3 correlate with the recent drop in crime. It's unlikely the number of police have increased, given the recession. Instead of, or in addition to, crack, I am assuming you may have to consider other drugs like Meth (?).

Levitt et al. also presented evidence that a strong economy does not cause a drop in crime, so the challenge to that thesis, mentioned in the NYT article, is not new.

[1] http://www.freakonomics.com/2006/03/16/lets-do-the-crime-dro...

The abortion correlation has been thoroughly dismantled. There were even straight-up mathematical errors in the initial claimed correlation.

http://www.isteve.com/abortion.htm

That this claim is still so often credulously repeated tells you something about how tied to reality the chattering classes are.

The above referenced Steve Sailer also offers a decent unempirical hypothesis about the decline of crime: Technology has made it way harder to do much bad stuff without getting caught. Cell phones and surveillance cameras and better police tech make crime much riskier than it was.

I also suspect everybody's fatter, older, and more couch-potato than they used to be. Obese slobs with 200 channels are too lazy to go gang-banging.

That dude is a hardcore racist. Unless you want his rep rubbing off on you might want to find another reference.

I don't know anything about this guy. However when you say "[t]hat dude is a hardcore racist" you're making a very strong claim about his character.

Could you point us to some evidence of your claim?

I don't want to debate about whether some random Internet person I first heard about today is racist, but I was curious enough to Google it and found this wikipedia article describing the author of iSteve.com. It may help provide some context to claims made by the parent.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Steve_Sailer

He has his very own wikipedia page: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Steve_Sailer

Which has fuck all to do with the subject at hand, which was the relationship between abortion and crime.

Let's try to keep this civil.

Randomly screaming "racist" is the height of incivility.

Agreed that the ad hominem implication to the commenter was unnecessary.

I am. Vaguely threatening to label another commenter a racist for citing an argument by Steve Sailer that had nothing to do with race was far less civil than anything I said.

Yes I agree, his point that there are better sources could have been made without the ad hominem implication. I also think profanity doesn't help civility.

"Fuck all" is just a slightly course way of saying "nothing." It's not an insult directed at a person. pg himself has used the word "fuck" on this board [1], so I assume it's not necessarily proscribed. We're all adults here - at least I proceed on that assumption.

[1] http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1766387

I myself use profanity from time to time in in-person discussions with people I know, so this may seem a bit hypocritical.

The reason I try not to do it online though (or in person with strangers) is because I have marked that when you use profanity with strangers (especially online) it tends to make the discussion more rancorous because people focus on the profanity instead of the content. It does not seem to matter whether it was meant as an insult, or simply as an "emotional multiplier".

I have certainly realized that I used do it, so may be it's just a bad data point, weighted heavily!

So that's my perspective.

There are better sources for a counter-argument than Steve Sailer I think, although even Sailer attributes the decline to a stronger effect of the Crack crack-down, if Wikipedia is to be believed.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Impact_of_Legalized_Abortio...

They've also mentioned the removal of lead from paint and gasoline:

http://www.freakonomics.com/2007/07/09/lead-and-crime/

Makes you wonder what harmful things we are being unknowingly exposed to now, that in 20 years will be correlated with serious negative effects on individuals or societies.

Farmville type games and reality television.

Demographics: most crime is committed by groups of young men. Fewer groups of young men, less crime.

Also, eventually your civilization collapses.

So it's a tradeoff.

So right before the end of civilization, there will be a brief period of relative peace?

Well, I'm just going by what I see, and that sounds about right for Japan.

You first point is spot on. People spending time previously reserved for leisure and socialization at a computer screen -> fewer young males with enough spare time to organize into gangs. Unless you consider the Anonymous to be a gang.

Not sure about your point on civilization though. Yeah, water is wet, civilizations collapse, etc.

Aren't we imprisoning more people than ever before? I know here in California, the three strikes law put many violent criminals off the streets and into prison for lengthy prison terms. Now that the Supreme court has ruled against the state in a prison lawsuit, California has to release 30k prisoners. Let's see what happens to the violent crime rate here in a few years.

I thought it has to do with police departments setting up bonus incentive programs tied to a reduction in certain crimes.

This then encourages the police department heads to not fully report serious crimes, this way they receive their year end bonus.

Example, rape? No that was just simple assault.

Perhaps because these crimes do not include non-prosecuted white collar finance crimes?

Well, yes. The article is talking about the drop in violent crime, not total crime. On the other hand, I doubt that financial crimes made up for the 5.5% drop in violent crime. There are probably no conclusive figures for non-prosecuted white-collar crimes, though, so all we have is speculation.

In terms of victims or perpetrators?

Unlike finance, rapists only have one victim at a time.

I didn't even think of that - I was considering each crime as being a distinct entity (eg, robbing a group of people counted as only a single crime). By counting victims, which probably makes more sense, financial crimes would more than make up for the decrease in violent crime.

I blame video games.

I see you're getting downvotes, but it would be interesting if distractions do lead to a decrease in crime.

I guess I should have written more if I wanted to be taken seriously. Crime, like everything else, takes time. If you play video games 4 hours a day, that's 4 hours a day that you are neither able to shoot people, nor are you outside to be shot. Given that the demos likely to commit crimes and play video games overlap so strongly, this has to be considered.

Excellent point, but I think you could just say cheap electronic entertainment. The Internet, torrents, Netflix, and video games in particular could be a huge factor in the crime rate. They are (relatively) cheap, ubiquitous, and huge time sinks.

Good point. The sad thing is of course that if you were able to show a clear correlation between (violent) video games and criminals, the most probable reaction would be to ban these games.

The modern interpretation of "bread and circuses": Subsidized food and broadband ubiquity with 24/7 access to whatever stimulates and titillates (sex, violence, a captive audience) can lead to a more sedate populace. Of course, that was one factor that led to the decline of the Roman Empire, too. When you've got a pretty sweet deal going, why risk going to jail and messing it all up?

I'd also like to see if the rise in the access, use and broad social acceptance of pharmaceutical opiates, anti-psychotics, and anti-depressants is also contributing to the decline. You can't really go out and rape and murder if you're hopped up on goofballs.

I wonder if anyone attributes this to the continued domestication of the human race. Maybe it's just natural for humans living in modern society to become less violent.

"When crime rates go up, the police say it is because they are encouraging more victims to come forward, Mr. Silverman said, 'but when crime goes down, it’s the work of the police.'"

I find that sentence really confusing. Does Silverman believe that a decrease in crime is the work of the police, or is he still quoting the police?

Also, I'm curious: did I quote the quote correctly?

He is saying:

'When the crime rates go up, police say "we are encouraging more victims to come forward', and when crime rates go down, police say "this is due to the work of the police" '

Right, in other words, no matter what, they tell a story that is favorable to themselves.

It's like asking a real estate agent about the right time to buy. If prices are rising, it is a great time to buy and make a profit. If prices are falling, it is a great time to buy at a discount and make a profit.

With real estate agents it's even worse -- not only do they have to convince buyers that it's always a good time to buy, they have to convince sellers that it's always a good time to sell!

I think the quote is basically saying that the police claim an increase in crime rates is largely because more victims are coming forward instead of holding back, but when crime rates go down the police say it's because they are reducing crime. It seems to imply that when crime rates go down you could also question whether that's just because fewer victims are coming forward (or whether police are misrepresenting crimes to make the numbers look better).

The main lesson I took from watching The Wire is not to trust any statistics that come from police departments. When performance is evaluated on crime statistics and case closure rates, there are an awful lot of tricks one can pull to make one's performance look better no matter what the underlying trends are.

The second lesson I took from The Wire is that while robbing drug dealers for a living can be lucrative, the risk/reward calculus is slightly problematic.

That's why many studies only track the murder rate (it's hard to fudge). Just making people wait an extra hour before they can report a crime has a miraculous effect on the reported crime rate.

I wonder what the Freakonomics guys will say about this - curious to see if they can draw an unexpected correlation (like twenty year ago birth rate or the like).

How is this not politics?

Well, you could say it's statistics.

I dunno, I started a thread asking about what happened to the no-politics rule yesterday, but it got [dead]-ed after collecting a few dozen comments. (In fairness, by phrasing my complaint as an "Ask HN" I might have been abusing the Ask HN system.)

The other trouble with politics threads, though, is that the barriers to entry are so low. If the subject is thermodynamics or erlang then there's a certain amount of knowledge required to take part in the discussion, or even to find it interesting. But if the subject is "why is crime down" or "hey, what's up with people in the US not getting enough holidays" then anyone can chime in with their own opinion on the matter... or at least to throw their favourite political hobby horse into the mix (It's all about race! No wait, it's all about police corruption! No wait, it's all about white collar crimes going unprosecuted!)

A major point of the no-politics rule was to keep the site looking as boring as possible to anyone not really interested in discussing the sort of stuff that the site is really supposed to be about.

I don't see how this is any more political than all of the articles about how the newest anti-piracy bill is the worst thing ever or how patent trolling is horrible. I don't disagree with either class of posts, but they are, strictly speaking, quite political.

I think making "no politics ever" a rule can hamper discussions quite a lot. I can understand why it's not productive to talk about, say, the merits of Obama's health care bill, which evokes really partisan gut reactions and makes people more likely to start posting pithy political slogans that sound good and make for horrible discussion. But talking about a reduced crime rate without crediting/blaming any particular politician or party can be pretty interesting to talk about.

On the other hand, I don't think any of the anti-DRM or anti-anti-piracy posts are very productive. But everyone here seems to agree on them, so even though the discussions are often quite vapid, they tend to be less nasty than, say, discussions about the merits of single-payer healthcare.

It's the Dollar store. You can everything for a dollar now and we've accumulated such an enormous amount of cheap stuff that nobody needs to resort to crime anymore.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com