Murder rate rose by almost 30% in 2020 in the US | Hacker News Reader

Murder rate rose by almost 30% in 2020 in the US

nytimes.com

I don't think it has to do with defunding the police at all. I do think is has to do with removing the ability of the police to make arrests or when they do the person is just released. In Portland, when they arrest someone, the DA just releases them. About a month ago the female owner of a coffee shop was blasted out of no where with an uppercut by a homeless guy. The dude was arrested and let out in less than 24 hours. How do you let someone violent like that just roam the streets? The only way the actually put someone away anymore is for murder. Stuff like this is definitely one factor as to why murder rates are up.

Same story in Chicago. Not sure if it's because holding them would cause overcrowding or what but it's a huge problem

Illinois had, at one point, the most crowded prisons in the nation. They're still technically over capacity, but it's no longer that extreme.

In my opinion, if you want to throw more people in prison, you need to invest in the infrastructure to house them. Voters quickly lose their appetite for "Law and Order"/"Throw away the key" when the tax man comes by asking to build a new prison and hire more prison guards. I don't see many people advocating for more IDOC funding although I'm sure they exist.

Should we be locking more people up? Maybe, but how are we going to pay for it? And is that really the correct answer when the United States incarceration rate is already several times higher than the OECD average? I would say the smarter course of action is to address root causes of these problems - building more prisons and trying to incarcerate our way out of the problem is just creating our own gulag archipelago.

Maybe our for-profit private prisons are far too expensive to operate. Maybe we're also too skittish about exercising the death penalty for obviously hopeless cases.

The taxman has cried wolf multiple times, that's why people don't like it.

I agree. It's not as if police actively go searching for murderers to catch. They respond to issues that have already happened.

The dominant mindset these days is that prison should be about rehabilitation, not punishment. It sounds wonderful and unobjectionable on its surface. But it is wrong. Not entirely wrong, but wrong nonetheless.

Because prison also serves as a risk reduction measure for the general public. While I do want our justice system to try its hardest to rehabilitate people, I hold the abhorrently unpopular opinion that some portion of the population just needs to be kept away from the rest. I hear plenty of local news stories about a suspect who has 20+ prior offenses being let go from custody awaiting trial. Why in the world do we let people with such a track record out of jail, much less with no cash bail?

The United States has the largest prison population in the world and the highest incarceration rate. Every time there is a crime thread on HN it is full of anecdotal stories about how we can be tougher on crime. It boggles my mind that this is the accepted framing.

You're not going to "see" the lives that wasted in prisons that would have been reasonably rehabilitated in other countries.

You would have to think the criminal justice system in the united states is extremely fair and that we have a dramatically different population to place such a high priority on the people that are possibly victims of crimes over people that are inappropriately incarcerated.

It's almost as though the framing of "tougher" vs "softer" is a ridiculous over-simplification of the matter.

We should be tougher on violent crime and softer on non-violent crime.

EDIT: I want to amend this to say that even the increase in nuance that I just suggested is probably not nuanced enough. Some kinds of violent crime we are probably too harsh on, and some kinds of non-violent crime (e.g. serious white collar financial crime, or certain types of safety/environmental violations at scale) we could probably stand to be a bit harsher on.

I disagree. Straight from the wikipedia intro:

> According to a 2014 Human Rights Watch report, "tough-on-crime" laws adopted since the 1980s have filled U.S. prisons with mostly nonviolent offenders.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Incarceration_in_the_United_St...

It doesn't seem like you read what I said. I'm not defending "tough on crime laws". And I specifically said we should be softer on non-violent crime. So i'm not sure what it is you're responding to.

I'd also like to point out that enforcement also has a disproportionate effect on skilled crime vs. unskilled crime. Pickpocketing is one example; in areas that enforcement against pickpocketing goes up, the crime nearly disappears, because it becomes not worth it to learn the skill (and it's more likely that those who could teach you the skill are in prison).

Severity of punishment isn't the best way to disincentivize crime. If you have two justice regimes, one where 50% is caught and punished and the other where 25% is but punishment is twice as harsh, the former will be far more effective at decreasing crime.

(Mostly) abolish prisons, and put tons of police officers into the community.

You're absolutely right. But deterrence isn't the only issue of importance. We do want to select punishments that deter. But we also simply want to separate incorrigible offenders from society. Every year a murderer is locked up is a year they aren't killing anyone (except maybe other prisoners).

I agree that increasing the probability of getting caught is good too, though.

Over half of all individuals in prison in the US are serving for violent offenses. Even if we released every non-violent offender currently incarcerated, the US would still be in the top 15 countries in the world for prisoners per capita.

Everyone railing against the prison system in America seems to have bought into a myth that our prison system is out of control because of harsh sentences for “minor” infractions like drug offenses and theft. The reality is that American society, for whatever reason, is more violent than most other societies in the world. You can try and make the argument that the prison system is at fault, but I think it’s more likely that other more fundamental aspects of America are larger factors contributing to it, and attempting to abolish the police or overhaul the prison system are unlikely to do much, as that’s simply treating symptoms and not the disease.

Guns.

It boggles the mind, but it does at least explain why we got the prison state we have.

> The United States has the largest prison population in the world and the highest incarceration rate. Every time there is a crime thread on HN it is full of anecdotal stories about how we can be tougher on crime. It boggles my mind that this is the accepted framing.

One possible explication is that the people put into prison are the wrong people. That would explain how many people on Hacker News say we can be tougher on crimes, while also recognizing that many people are in prison for no good reasons. How much people we put into prisons is a variable, but who we put in is another one, and I would argue that it's more important. Focusing simply on the number is partially missing the point.

> You would have to think the criminal justice system in the united states is extremely fair and that we have a dramatically different population to place such a high priority on the people that are possibly victims of crimes over people that are inappropriately incarcerated.

I think what most people mean by that is "Instead of putting into prison someone for smoking weed once, put into prison the guy that stabbed one of my neighbors, because I don't mind people smoking weed but I do mind getting stabbed and people around me getting stabbed". This is of course an oversimplification and in some cases people stab people for good reasons and they shouldn't end up in prison for that, but that's besides the point for this example here.

UK here. We rehabilitate criminals. What ends up happening is reading the following in the media; "Raped again...", "Stabbed again...", "Previously had a suspended sentence for child abuse...". It's not the kind of society I want to live in, none of the extremes are good. Neither sending people to prison for every little thing but also suspending sentences for rapists, child groomers and murderers because you believe not punishing them will somehow magically alter their consciousness and change their behaviour.

EDIT: Typo

>prison should be about rehabilitation, not punishment

It should. But simply letting people out is neither.

1. The US has the most incarcerated people per capita in OECD

2. US prisons seem to be awful. They should be about rehabilitation, but they are focused on punishment.

3. Because of point 2, we are reluctant to imprison some offenders, in fear of destroying their lives and chances of rehabilitation.

4. The cash bail system is not the norm across the world. It is weird to only jail people who can't afford to pay.

Are there any attempts to copy Norway's Halden prison in the US?

> 2. US prisons seem to be awful. They should be about rehabilitation, but they are focused on punishment.

Just the other day I watched a video of an interview of an American person who spent time in a prison here in Mexico. He described American prison as "a hotel" when compared to Mexican prisons. There is a really good documentary about a prison in Tijuana [1] showing an example of that.

My point being that prisons in the USA are actually quite good, compared to most prisons in the world. That doesn't make them acceptable. The problem is that the general idea of the prison system in the world just doesn't seem to be working.

[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jqi4ZpR2OWI

> 1. The US has the most incarcerated people per capita in OECD

But Russia (a suspended OECD member) beats it for a total number of people who been through the prison system.

10%+ of men to be exact.

Prisons serve 4 roles; rehabilitation, punishment, deterrent and public safety. How you balance these is done differently in many countries.

The US seems to historically have focused on the punishment aspect most of all.

I'd say deterrent and then rehabilitation are the main ones in the UK.

In Scandinavia it's mostly about rehabilitation and public safety, with punishment being almost non-existent.

Do they have any kind of therapeutic role for the victims of violent crime? I know revenge is petty but if someone hurt me badly or killed a member of my family it would be a bit of a kick in the teeth for our societies main concern to be how best to rehabilitate them.

It's wrong when you focus ONLY on prisons.

That's the thing people miss from the conversations. Those who want to abolish police and prisons aren't just saying shut them down and we're all good. They're saying shut them down and spend money in directly increasing the quality of life for people.

Crimes increase as poverty and class divide increases. Decrease those and you've actually managed to solve the source of the problem, rather than trying to find a solution for the consequence (increase in violent crimes).

Alternatively, people that aren’t intelligent and/or have impulsivity issues have a hard time holding down jobs - and those people very well might still commit crimes even after throwing money at them.

A classmate of mine had a successful tile laying business. He got on meth. He put cameras in people’s homes. He stole things. He then tied up a girl and raped her all night.

"people that aren’t intelligent and/or have impulsivity issues have a hard time holding down jobs"

So why does the US have more of this? All of these descriptions ignore that America is seemingly the worst place out of everywhere for this? Why?

Poor broken families & communities with low education and few options generate large numbers of such people.

A simple look at the background of violent offenders shows this.

This is partially an economic problem, but also has social roots with multigenerational feedback loops. >50% of violent offenders were physically abused, raped, or neglected by parents. Many were unwanted or abandoned by one or more parents.

I would guess it's the long-term consequences of the slave trade/labor and the inequalities that stems from it. America isn't the worst place, but it's the worst "first world country", and first world countries usually don't have that history.

I’ll back up your unpopular opinion and say we should have a new Australia. Some people are never going to rehabilitate, keeping them in prison costs a ton of money, and they’d probably enjoy being on an island somewhere better anyways…even if it would be a ridiculously lawless place.

The only problem is I think we’re all out of inhabitable places.

Problem is the same with the death penalty, sentencing some innocent people, because that's essentially what you'd be sentencing them to. Some innocent people (tried guilty) will be sent there and immediately become slaves or killed.

Have a minimal force to enforce basic rights? Well to actually configure that safely, you're back at a prison.

You're simplifying the opposing position in a way that isn't fully honest. There are at least four purposes incarceration can serve: rehabilitation, retribution, dissuasion, and separation.

Rehabilitation meaning, giving people the tools and resources to avoid recidivism. Retribution being, punishment or justice for the benefit of the victim. Separation being physical removal of people incompatible or dangerous to society. Dissuasion being what you describe, punishment that rational actors will take into account when deciding to take an action.

Pro-rehabilitation people argue that rehabilitation should be the first priority, and retribution the last, with separation there when necessary (think: life sentences for people who murder without remorse) and dissuasion somewhere in the middle. Compare prison to something like an inpatient addiction recovery center, which aims to rehabilitate and separate (although sort of in the reverse way) and how much more constructive that is.

I don't think there's very many people at all (even among like hardcore prison abolitionists) who believe that it's possible to entirely do away with some form of separation of people who are dangerously incompatible with the norms of society. If nothing else, mentally ill people who can exhibit violent behaviors will continue to exist.

All that said, your comment also has very little to do with murder rates. Those don't really correlate a lot with petty crime or even petty violent crime. Someone who makes a living breaking into cars doesn't suddenly jump to murder.

What you replied to was describing a failure of the jail system, not prison system.

> I don't think it has to do with defunding the police at all. I do think is has to do with removing the ability of the police to make arrests

Or a mixture of the two.

True

Isn't it a little presumptuous of you to think that you know what caused the spike when criminologists who study all kinds of crime rates for a living does not know?

It doesn't take a rocket scientist to come to the logical conclusion that catch and release of criminals will lead to more crime.

Then perhaps you can cite some research that provides evidence for the claim that changed catch and release policies caused the uptick in murders?

The observant will note that you also cite no evidence, not even for your claim that criminologists don't know what causes the spike. felistoria at least makes a plausible cause-and-effect argument, which is more than you have done.

I don't claim to know what caused the spike. You'll find it implied in the NYT article that the cause for the spike is unknown. You'll find it more explicitly stated in this NYT article: https://www.nytimes.com/2020/07/06/upshot/murders-rising-cri...

> I don't think it has to do with defunding the police at all.

That seems like a reasonable on conclusion given that the totals for May 1 & Jun 1 were already record setting...

But what else could have happened in 2020 that could have caused such a dramatic spike?

Maybe a worldwide global pandemic that caused many business to shutdown or go remote and a spike in domestic violence because a good chunk of the population is stuck in abusive/dysfunctional families?

That seems like a stretch, but worth investigating. ;-)

> Murder rose over 35 percent in cities with populations over 250,000 that reported full data. It also rose over 40 percent in cities 100,000 to 250,000, and around 25 percent in cities under 25,000.

The difference has been noticeable in my city. Murders within the city used to be kind of common, maybe two or so a month, but such crimes were non-existent in the suburbs. Lots of overdoses, but never murders. Now though, there are multiple murders per week within the city, and a few a month in some of the suburbs.

Scrolling through the local news is just painful. City or suburbs, kids or adults, the news is full of people killed. Stats back up that this is already the second deadliest year in the region, after last year.

And since this will come up. It's a mildly blue city in a very, very red state. We definitely did not defund the police, if anything, we upfunded them in response.

Here in New York City & New Jersey, bail reform was passed circa 2019. This limited when bail could be imposed on people, including the almost complete elimination of mandatory bail. It is completely up to the District Attorney's discretion.

The idea was that illegal drug dealing shouldn't come with an unusual burden for bail, given that its non-violent. This was heralded as a victory almost immeadiately: there was little change in crime rate within the first months of it being passed.

This seemed really strange to me. Why would you declare victory like this so prematurely? It was just _months_ after it was passed that people said "look no difference, more humane." Such proclamations should be waited at least two years so you could handle any noise.

Also noted in this thread has been the new hyper progressive DAs who don't prosecute unless its really bad. Take SF with Chesa Boudin, who doesn't prosecute thefts under the felony limit (roughly $1000) _at all_.

There's a lot to be said about whether these all form moral hazards but I leave that to one's own interpretation. I will say that people under ~35 never knew a New York City so dangerous you couldn't walk around at night.

Why two years? Why do the people interacting with the system on a daily basis not get to make observations on a major change in the system in "just" months?

You can't say "there was no difference in crime" with only a few months of data.

It's too noisy. There isn't enough data.

> It's too noisy.

[Citation Needed]

I'm surprised two people are debating this.

Statistics over small timescales, e.g. months, will not be as accurate as statistics over large timescales. This isn't disputed (unless it is? I'd be curious if you know people who think statistics with fewer numbers are more accurate than statistics with more numbers.

As for if a few months of data was enough to proclaim victory, NYC's current surge in crime seems evident to me that a few months was not enough data.

As for if this is directly relevant to the surge in crime, I leave that to your own conclusions.

As for why I picked two years, it was an arbitrary guess. My point is that we need more data before announcing "bail reform solved problems."

You're being insultingly disingenuous.

No one argued that statistics over a larger time will not give more signal. We all know what basic stats is. The question is why you get to override the opinion of the people directly involved on what a suitable period of time is.

It's farcical to imply that a period of time defined by the people who are literally on the ground for this is somehow unacceptable, yet the unit of time you literally pulled out of your behind (oh sorry, "arbitrarily guessed") is somehow acceptable.

"Small timescales" is relative to what is being measured in case you didn't know... for some observations 30 seconds is an eternity...

So what about we leave determining what a suitable timescale to make observations on is to the people who aren't making arbitrary guesses from their armchairs and were literally watching this unfold in their day to day lives.

Given the national nature of the increase, it's unlikely that a local measure caused it, it's probably pandemic-times related.

That being said obviously a longer time scale is better for trend detection than a shorter one.... Oooor is it dundundun :D since if you pick too long a timescale then you get additional events muddying the causality, like aforementioned pandemic.

That that that being said public policy changes are chaotic things that can have one effect in the short run a different one in the medium term etc. It's kinda meaningless to declare victory or defeat, as society's interaction with laws evolves over time.

A lot of people in this thread seem to have made up their minds about why more people are killing each other in America.

I read the article and still haven't made up my mind. Thought I'd post a comment for anybody thinking the same.

Yeah, but it can be fun to speculate and share information. One interesting theory that I have is that it relates to stimulus checks and Drug crime. A huge amount of money flowed into the economy and it's plausible that The Fallout of drug organizations fighting to capture that influx of cash

That is an interesting theory. Along similar lines, with people debating whether policing has anything to do with it, I thought "mafia thinks it can get its hits in now." Seems outlandish, though.

My best guess is that people cooped up and afraid are more likely to kill. I wonder how it went in other countries. I also wonder whether the distribution of methods of murder (gun, etc.) was much different from 2019 (probably not).

Yeah, I think a lot of these theories can be easily tested by looking at the demographics and details of the crimes. For example how many of the murderer than victims cohabitated or how many were drug related

> My best guess is that people cooped up and afraid are more likely to kill.

People who are cooped up and angry. (I mean, they are afraid, too, but I think the anger is more the cause of murders than the fear.)

What are they angry about? Being cooped up. Still being cooped up. Having their job put on hold, their self-worth threatened, their financial well-being threatened. And they have more time to spend of social media in a filter bubble (from either side), getting more angry about everything else.

In the simplest terms, there is more murder because there is less trust. Monetary, personal, institutional, future, material: true or not, the perception is enough.

If I may throw my speculation into the ring: I assume it’s because people are hurting for money and thus also for necessities like housing, food, and self-determination. My understanding of murder vs homicide was that murder requires intent, but some searching suggests robbery can count as that intent: https://www.danielsonlawfirm.com/murder-manslaughter-homicid...

“A person is guilty of capital murder if the person attempted to commit or did commit a violent crime such as kidnapping, robbery, or arson, and in doing so, the person causes the death of another human being.”

Obviously murder is always bad, and I can’t just forgive murderers even if I feel sorry for them, but I believe the fear and stress of not being able to survive in this world and economy we’ve built can push people over all kinds of edges they would otherwise never approach. I refuse to believe that anybody would want to be a murderer in a hypothetical “perfect” world, even the extreme cases like serial killers. I believe there’s always an emotional hole trying to be filled.

I would think that people of that sort have had more money than ever with the federal unemployment benefits.

Maybe working keeps people from murdering.

Here is a Vox article citing a book that appears to have looked at LA crime data in some depth. Their thesis is the murder rate has little to do with general criminality rates, but rather with gangs and easy access to loaded guns. I am too tone-deaf to American politics to say how much bias should I read in those sources, but seems an interesting perspective. The book was published in 1999, before the hyper-partisan era, so perhaps that's a good sign.

> "Only a minority of Los Angeles homicides grow out of criminal encounters like robbery and rape," they find (there's no reason to believe the pattern would differ in other cities). So even if it could be shown that American robbery and rape rates are across-the-board higher than those in similar countries (which doesn't appear true today), that still wouldn't explain why America has so many more homicides than other countries. Again, Zimring and Hawkins's LA data was revealing.

> "A far greater proportion of Los Angeles homicides grow out of arguments and other social encounters between acquaintances [than robbery or rape]," they find.

> This is where guns enter the story. The mere presence of firearms, according to Zimring and Hawkins, makes a merely tense situation more likely to turn deadly. When a gang member argues with another gang member, or a robber sticks up a liquor store, there's always a risk that the situation can escalate to some kind of violence. But when people have a handheld tool that is specially engineered for killing efficiently, escalation to murder becomes much, much more likely.

https://www.vox.com/2015/8/27/9217163/america-guns-europe

https://www.amazon.com/Crime-Is-Not-Problem-Violence/dp/0195...

The robbery rate went down in 2020 along with most other types of violent and non-violent crime. Shootings and homicides were the only types of crime that skyrocketed.

In addition, low wage workers who got laid off made more money than they were making working. And there was a moratorium on evictions.

It might just be as simple as people feel more anonymous and thus more emboldened when everyone is wearing masks.

Causality is such a wasteful discussion point. Most of the time you can simply look in a different, non-causality-focused direction and find enough good ideas to design a better outcome. At the very, very least it's a good idea to go multi-model with causality.

The first thing that came to my mind wasn't anything to do with defunding the police, nor with releasing more people during the pandemic -- it was that folks in domestic violence situations during lockdowns spent a lot more than 30% additional time with their abuser, and had fewer options if they wished to leave, and fewer opportunities to prepare to leave

Exactly, there are many other explanations. Being stuck at home is also a situation where domestic violence could erupt for the first time. Another one is that a burglar in 2020 would be almost guaranteed to find someone at home.

The pandemic was global, the huge spike in homicide was American. If you look at North and South America, the majority of countries had a decrease in homicide in 2020, most of the ones with an increase had a small increase. This includes countries with some of the highest homicide rates in the world. El Salvador had the highest homicide rate in the world in 2018, during 2020 it decreased almost 45%. El Salvador had a significant response to the pandemic including a 30 day curfew. If lockdowns cause homicide shouldn't it have showed up there, and in the rest of the world?

The only country in the Americas with an increase approaching the US was Chile with a 28% increase. What was going on in Chile?

"Political unrest in the country continued into 2020. Following a period of relative peace amid mobility restrictions associated with the coronavirus pandemic, violent clashes between security forces and protestors resumed a year after demonstrations over high living costs and extreme inequality had first erupted in the capital Santiago."

Chile also has drug trafficking homicides, not sure if that increased in 2020. The fact that two of the countries with massive increases in homicide rates had political unrest at the same time isn't proof, but it's a clue.

> El Salvador had a significant response to the pandemic including a 30 day curfew. If lockdowns cause homicide shouldn't it have showed up there, and in the rest of the world?

I don't think I'd expect that regarding El Salvador. What are the primary types of homicide in 2019 in the US and El Salvador? I can't actually figure this out using google, if anyone knows I'd appreciate it.

My wild guess would be domestic violence in the US and organized crime in El Salvador but I could be wildly off. However, anywhere that organized crime is the dominant type of homicide then a spike in domestic violence isn't likely to have much effect on the overall homicide rate, but anywhere that domestic violence is the at the top, it would.

I'm not really proposing this specific explanation btw, just saying it's the first thing that came to my mind. There's a ton of ways that 2020 differs from 2019, not just "defund the police", and I don't know how to detangle it at all.

Uh, I disagree with a lot of the commenters here. I do think it had something to do with the "defund the police" movement, the BLM riots and the absolute unwillingness of police agencies around the country to address crime. However, I can also acknowledge that keeping people shut out of their jobs and participation in public life is an easy way to forment social unrest.

Do you have and data or more thoughts on this?

I ask because we tend to associate the police with "fighting crime" where the reality seems to be that they are mostly "responding to crime that has already happened". There will certainly be a few examples of police stopping crime in the moment but you would literally needs cops everywhere to even try to catch a decent percentage of violent crime that is committed.

> mostly "responding to crime that has already happened".

Yes the police, and justice, are to act as a deterrent to crime, moreso than "respond before a crime happened"

I highly suspect that the respect for the law has dropped, and with ideas of defunding the police, there's probably less resources as well.

This is what was asked for.

Is there data to suggest any of this?

Data to suggest that the law is meant as a deterrent or data to suggest my suspicions?

(Edit: because I don't think "data" can help you in either of these situations)

Either way. Data. (It's not data only if it supports one side. Either it's data no matter which side it supports, or it's not data.)

Data suggests that murders aren't affected by deterrents like the death penalty: https://www.amnestyusa.org/a-clear-scientific-consensus-that...

To claim that murders are up because people don't "respect" police seems absurd to me.

Is this commonly accepted that the death penalty is a deterrant? I always saw it mostly as a way to permanently remove some poeple from society. A dead person can hardly kill/hurt anyone.

It's a common talking point, yes.

It wasn't just "defund the police" it was "abolish the police". I guess that's been forgotten already, which in a way would be a good thing since it would be a step back towards sanity, but major influential news organizations were publishing pieces that literally advocated abolishing the police.

I'm just eyeballing it here, but it looks like there was a similar increase in homicides (i know there is a difference between homicide and murder) during the spanish flu pandemic from 1918-1920

https://sites.nationalacademies.org/cs/groups/dbassesite/doc...

Also y'all should not be so confident in your diagnosis of why the murder rate spiked so much this year. Hindsight is 20/20 and this is a highly complex / multivariate problem. Simple answers are probably wrong here

>> Simple answers are probably wrong here

I would argue the opposite in this case. The increase started at the same time in almost every large city in the US, but not in other countries in the world. If the same thing happens in 30 cities at the same time, I'm not looking for 30 root causes, I'm looking at what was the commonality in those 30 US cities around that time that was different from what was going on in the rest of the world.

That is a really good point. What then do you identify as the single commonality between these 30 cities.

I guess my point is just a general hesitation to accept simple answers for things.

I also was unaware that covid didn't precipitate similar increases in murder rate globally

>> What then do you identify as the single commonality between these 30 cities

I don't know. I mean we can start by ruling things out but I don't know.

It wasn't covid, every country had covid, you look at some of the other reasons people put forth, did that suddenly happen?

The increase in homicide rates suddenly happened. The police weren't suddenly defunded in 30 cities across America in June of 2020. They didn't suddenly change bail requirements in 30 cities across America in June of 2020.

The typical murder we are talking about here is a young black man with a handgun killing another young black man. That's where the increase comes from. Young black men didn't all of the sudden go acquire handguns in the middle of 2020.

These aren't for the most part legally acquired or legally carried handguns. Maybe starting in June of 2020 they felt the need to carry a gun was greater, and the risk of carrying a gun was lower?

In every large city in the US? I don't know, that's the best I've got. What've you got?

June was the BLM riots. My theory is that the BLM riots showed people that they can overwhelm the police into inaction as long as there are enough criminals, and that caused the increase in crime.

I can't read the article, but would think this is a no brainer due to lockdowns - along with increased suicide, divorce, domestic abuse.

> along with increased suicide

Most places have not seen in increase in deaths by suicide yet.

I've always heard that the murder rate and other assault stats was most strongly correlated with the number of males between the ages of ~16 and 26.

http://web.archive.org/web/20210924103924/https://www.nytime...

https://archive.is/xuynD

I wonder if anyone really thought this whole 'defunding the police' idea through.

As the article mentions, murder rates rose across the country. And not many cities actually had official support, let alone took action, for defunding or restructuring police forces.

Honestly, blaming it on the "Defund the police" movement is a lazy oversimplification. Even if cops decided to patrol or investigate less because of that movement, I wouldn't expect a massive spike in the murder rate. Sure, people might pick pockets or rob houses if they think nobody's watching, but murder?

No actually you're wrong.

Believe it or not, there's a direct co-orelation between police having resources available to fight crime and reduced crime!

Crazy right?

https://archive.is/5fIqM

But we can't eliminate the possibility that all those thousands of new murders were all done by racist police officers.

Has anyone looked into this?

Could be a huge story.

Wouldn't want anyone to get the crazy idea that police actually do good things for black communities.

How does that article prove your claim?

Well I'll let the headline of the Washington post article do the 'splainin'

"Cities Reverse Defunding the Police Amid Rising Crime"

Your proposition:

1. Cities increase police funding in response to increased crime

2. Therefore, decreasing police funding increases crime.

However, 2. does not follow from 1, since many other factors affect crime rates, from legislation to enforcement and from social issues to societal issues.

In fact, even the inverse of 2. does not follow from 1: increasing police funding does not decrease crime rates.

If you disagree, please provide an academic source for the direct causal relationship between police funding and crime rate.

There's academia and then there's real life and in real life the leaders are realizing Defunding the Police is a stupid idea.

Can you explain why these leaders with highly paid staff of analysts who have way more knowledge and data, are doing this?

EDIT: while you're downvoting me, be sure to downvote the leaders and news media who lied to you as well.

"""In New York City, Mayor Bill de Blasio said he would reinstate $92 million for a new precinct after scrapping the project last summer. The mayor of Baltimore, who led efforts as a city councilman to cut the police budget by $22 million last year, recently proposed a $27 million increase.

After attacks on Asian-Americans and a rise in homicides in Oakland, Calif., city lawmakers in April restored $3.3 million of the $29 million in police cuts, and the mayor is now proposing to increase the department’s budget by $24 million. Los Angeles’s mayor has proposed an increase of about $50 million after the city cut $150 million from its police department last year."""

"I told you so" never felt so good.

What’s this army of dumb doing on HN?

Do you seriously propose that 'defund the police' has no effect whatsoever on the murder rate? Here is a list of largest 100 American cities by party affiliation. Feel free to research whether political affiliation of the city leadership, thus propensity to embrace 'defund the police' policies, has anything to do with the spike in murders.

Unfortunately I am not aware of professional studies of the matter. Perhaps there will never be. Given an academic system that is 99% affiliated with one political party, difficult to find people willing to scuttle their careers by researching topics that might place policies associated with that political party in anything but the most positive light.

https://ballotpedia.org/Party_affiliation_of_the_mayors_of_t...

Edit: Here is a chart showing sharp decline in 'officers in service' numbers in a progressive West Coast city that embraced 'defund the police':

https://www.capitolhillseattle.com/2020/10/after-september-s...

And the spike in murders in the same city:

https://www.seattlepi.com/local/seattlenews/article/2020-cri...

> Crime dashboard data shows that 52 homicides occurred in 2020 compared to 35 in 2019 — an increase of 48.57%.

Thanks for those references.

Being from New Orleans, a majority black city, its absolutely crazy to me that this is even a debate.

I think these BLM people seriously believe that police do more harm than good in black communities.

And they think that there's no co-orelation between funding and performance for the police.

There is a tragedy of the commons at play, of which 'defund the police' is but the last installment. The local Seattle prosecutor was notorious for years for not prosecuting crime. He recently lost his primary and will likely be replaced from the left by a true 'defund the police' candidate. Seattle hasn't even experienced 'defund the police' to its fullest extent, the worst is yet to come.

> A repeat offender who was released from the King County Jail last weekend after attacking a security guard in Seattle was re-arrested a few hours later for a brutal attack that ended with that victim being hospitalized in intensive care, according to court documents and police.

https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/crime/assault-suspect-leaves-...

https://www.teenvogue.com/story/abolitionist-candidates-runn...

'Defund the police' means we reallocate the every-increasing funding for armed agents who want for nothing (not unlike the US military — look at the municipal budget allocations for police vs schools etc) and invest those funds into:

1) Alternative first responder services, such as mental health experts to deescalate incidents that far too often end in tragedy 2) Invest in preventative measures to ensure communities and society at-large is healthy: provide educational, medical, and economic opportunities to materially improve people's lives

And more generally, police in America are long overdue for major reform. 'Qualified immunity' has let officers use violent and lethal force with impunity. They are supposed to be the trained professionals, yet their bar for use of force is _lower_ than an untrained civilian's. The oversight boards are a joke, with no teeth to actually hold police accountable. It's crazy when you think about all the principles espoused by America re: limited gov't and power to the People yet we have this superset class above the law they are meant to enforce. I expect them to be held to a higher standard, and to actually know the laws and people's rights so as not to infringe on them without consequence.

And from talking with a (civilian) criminologist inside SPD who studies this up close, the mentality of cops is disturbing — very 'us-vs-them' — they aren't 'peace officers' who 'protect and serve', but are above us and demand 'respect' and unquestioning compliance above all else. They're the high school bullies equipped with guns and a badge. Their training by US/Israeli ex-military is disturbing because they react to all of us a potential mortal threats rather than as a member of a common community. There's a reason we had Posse Comitatus, but now we've militarized police at the local level, and surprise — they act like it.

I enthusiastically am voting for NTK in the general. The fact is heavily-funded and well-armed police for decades _has not_ and cannot improve the situation anymore than the military occupation in Afghanistan did. Crime is a symptom of more systemic issues, particularly poverty and loss of faith in public institutions. In short, hopelessness and despair.

> Do you seriously propose that 'defund the police' has no effect whatsoever on the murder rate?

This is a straw man of the parent’s position. They say “ blaming it on the "Defund the police" movement is a lazy oversimplification”, not that it had “no effect whatsoever”.

It certainly seems plausible to me that having loads of people — particularly those in lower socio-economic strata - without employment for an extended period of time could certainly contribute to crime rate increases.

There’s no need for straw-manning/hysterics here, we can have a measured conversation or debate.

As a counterpoint to your example of Seattle, Republican-led Fort Worth saw it's homicide numbers increase by 59% in 2020 (even more than Seattle) despite increasing their police budget over the same period:

https://www.star-telegram.com/news/local/crime/article248169...

That’s nothing. You should see the graph of pirates vs global warming.

To think Bluebeard was rescuing us from the deleterious effects of too much CO2 in the air!

The graph of illegal immigrants to crime is crazy too!

I would bet that there are more pirates now that at pretty much any point in history.

They must be causing global warming.

Has there been any data that indicates that policing has an impact on murder rates ever? Even the murders in the CHAZ in Seattle at the height of defund the police were much more spur of the moment incidents. Not the type of thing someone is likely to reconsider if the police force were doubled.

And given that the murder rate increase was national and not regional, it seems much more likely that it was nationally impacted. Maybe something like a pandemic which led to social stresses, economic stresses, and increases in gun purchases.

Another city in Washington, Spokane, saw about a tripling in homicides in 2020 and there was no "defund the police" movement in that city, no reduction in police force -- and also has a Republican mayor and a generally much more conservative take than Seattle.

You're simply reaching for a narrative rather than looking at the data.

Seattle cut less than 1% of the 2020 police budget in August.[1] About as much as they increased it from 2019.[2] And your source for the murder spike said other violent crimes decreased.

[1] https://www.reuters.com/article/us-global-race-protests-seat...

[2] https://www.seattle.gov/documents/Departments/FinanceDepartm...

https://apnews.com/article/seattle-police-government-and-pol...

> Over 200 Seattle police officers quit amid nation protests, April 28, 2021

> Police Chief Adrian Diaz said Tuesday that the department is in a “staffing crisis” after more than 180 police officers quit last year and another 66 officers left their jobs so far this year, according to police data. “We are at record lows in the city right now. I have about 1,080 deployable officers. This is the lowest I’ve seen our department,” Diaz told KING-TV.

Why would the city lose 20% of its police force in 2 years? It is a mystery. What we know beyond reasonable doubt:

* The loss in deployable officers is not related to the City Council publicly embracing 'defund the police'.

* The loss in deployable officers has very little to do with the mysterious spike in murders that occurred during the same time period.

Obviously anyone that raises absolutely unfounded concerns around those points is just exhibiting hysteric lazy thinking.

You seem determined to ignore murders spiked in places unlike Seattle last year too. And how does your hypothesis explain less total violent crime?

You haven't shown the city council embraced defunding the police either. They cut a fraction of a percent from the police budget last year. Lots of cities had to make cuts to lots of departments. The $5.4 million the article said they fought about this year is under 2%. And it's just what the police spent over budget last year.[1]

[1] https://www.seattletimes.com/seattle-news/politics/seattle-p...

I am hypothesizing that the answer to the spike in murder is multivariate, with the largest two components being 'defund the police' and lockdowns.

You seem determined to ignore that the City Council did embrace 'defund the police', specifically a veto proof majority did vouch to pass a resolution to slash police funding by 50%. They eventually failed to pass it for whatever political reasons, but the intent is plain and clear. As a result police officers are resigning en-mass to distance themselves from the insanity. Perhaps you have an alternate explanation for the police exodus, please do share.

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2020/aug/22/seattle-poli...

You understand the other articles didn't mention anything like that, right? You can't expect other people to try harder than you to find evidence for your claims.

Fort Worth increased police funding and had a larger murder rate increase than Seattle.[1] And I don't think Texas had stricter restrictions than Washington. That's just 1 example.

The summer protests kicked off the discussions about defunding police. Murder rates were higher already.[2]

The AP article said city council policies were 1 of 3 reasons Seattle police said they quit. A so called anti police climate in the city was another. Disagreements with department leadership was the last. It's worth noting they're under federal oversight for excessive force since 2012. They seem unwilling to admit they have a problem.

[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28643574

[2] https://www.nytimes.com/2020/07/06/upshot/murders-rising-cri...

>>Honestly, blaming it on the "Defund the police" movement is a lazy oversimplification

No, I think ignoring the facts is clinging to your ideology at all costs. Not many cities had official support? You can't be serious.

This is the most disingenuous form of misinformation imaginable. While certainly true that murder is up everywhere, it is not true that it is up the same amount.

As the article says, murder is up more in cities with pop >100k. Under 25k, the murder rate rose 25%. In larger cities, up to 40%.

That is a substantial difference.

No one is claiming that some places had fewer murders than before. People are claiming that policies make differences (in this case, population size is a good correlate with party).

Why are you correlating population size with party when you can literally look up the voting records of cities?

What's more likely?

1. High population size implies Democratic party policies implies less police funding implies higher murder rate

OR 2. High population size implies higher murder rate (potentially because of higher poor populations or more population density or many other reasons that aren't because of party).

> High population size implies Democratic party policies implies less police funding implies higher murder rate

Democratic party politics are correlated with higher population size. This is not controversial.

A high population size ought to correlate with more overall murders, but a similar murder rate. Moreover, in many countries, urban areas are less violent.

I agree with your first statement. However, this is one case where we don't have to make any guesses. City voting records are public.

If you actually checked, then you'll see that Democratic and Republican controlled cities have seen an uptick in murder rate. In some cases, Republicans have a higher increase. So this isn't an issue with any particular party.

> in many countries, urban areas are less violent

This might be because of better mental healthcare, less drug/gang related violence, better gun control, or a variety of factors. If America had the same laws as other countries then this discrepancy would be strange however the US has been very slow at getting up to the current standards that most developed countries have adopted.

Crime doesn't really work the way you're suggesting.

Someone robbing houses is directly going to cause a massive uptick in violent crime. What if the resident is home and tries to defend themselves? The victim (of the home invasion) might shoot the invader in self-defense but be charged with murder anyway. Or the robber might kill the homeowner during a struggle even if they only intended to steal property initially.

Plus, people aren't inherently "good" and "bad" or "criminals and non-criminals". There's complexity to how being a victim of crime can lead a person to commit other crimes, how "non-violent" crimes can quickly become violent, etc.

Blaming "Defund the police" is kinda short-sighted, but certainly there have been massive shifts in how police see themselves, their jobs and their communities and how people see and interact with the police, and that those changes are part of the cascade of changes that lead to increases in murder rates.

You don't have to blame the defunding movement for the rise in homicide rates to wonder if the people in charge thought it through.

The scariest part about having my city's police force defunded (aside from cops not wanting to work here anymore) is the realization that my city council members are strongly influenced by the news cycles. News cycles can be tampered with. Truly, what is the news, but a way to tamper with our opinions? Opinions can be changed through repetition, and rage can be incited seemingly with little effort.

The modern warfront in the United States is our news feed. You can't exactly waltz an army into a country that's packing nukes. What you can do is hire an army to sway public opinion in a country in order to weaken them. Who knows, maybe next time we'll defund our military.

Plenty of people have thought it through in great detail over the last 30yr.

Those people are mostly not being listened to because small government is a dirty word to most of the people currently pushing to defund the police and because viewing crime through an economic lens is out of vogue in favor of a racial one and people who are seriously studying minimum viable policing historically tend to be from one of those two camps.

I don’t see more policing or better militarization as the answer. These crimes are symptoms of core problems, that run like currents through society.

We’re not served well by the constant prideful “we’re the greatest country in the world”. There are some wonderful things to be proud of.

However, the fact is, we’re a rather violent society. We’re a society that loves alcohol. We’re a very insecure people. We don’t get to the root of the problems. They are in the psyche.

It surely doesn't help that politicians sow division to weaken and conquer their constituencies and vilify each other creating animosity and discord. Instead of trying to unite our people they want to foment differences.

People take cues.

Moreover, we prefer to fix other people's problems (Iraq, Afghanistan) to fixing our internal problems.

We see this with charities too. Charities eagerly want to help out people who get whacked by natural disasters overseas. That's great and I'm sure those people appreciate it. Where are they they in the US taking care of our homeless, our veterans, our unemployed?

They give more shits about people losing their jobs in Timbuktu than they do about our own citizens losing jobs due to outsourcing and poor government policies.

Wow, this is all over the place. A few thoughts:

1. We didn’t fix any problems in Iraq or Afghanistan. We made things worse. The reason was not really a preference, it was revenge, bad info, and protecting strategic reserves.

2. Charities do work locally. They also work internationally. If I am passionate about a specific issue, or about helping as many humans as possible, it’s not clear that it’s preferable to only help others after you’ve fixed all your internal problems.

I definitely agree that people take cues from their leaders. That’s why the investigation into January 6 is such a big deal.

Do you remember when everyone claimed Hunter Biden’s laptop with compromising information was Russian disinformation and now the WaPo relented and says that yeah, it’s legit?

Where is the pushback against those lies and collusion between the media and a candidate. It’s okay if 10 or 30% just ignore something because it’s not their bag, but 90% of the media refusing to cover it and denying it and all the fact checkers in cahoots?

I think that’s a big deal.

If it fits people's ideology they don't hold it accountable.

The desire for truth is over.

Its a war of ideology now, which has never ended well historically.

From my perspective, I think it's a big deal to get the details right, without needing to obviously exaggerate ("everyone claimed ... disinformation", WaPo says "it's legit" [some is, some remains unproven], 90% of the media [by what measure? Certainly not reach, as Fox has a significant minority of the market], "all the fact checkers in cahoots" [there does not appear to be any evidence of cahooting]).

You may have some good points, but it's unlikely anyone will dig through your screed to be influenced by your ideas. (But thank you for at least making it short!)

It may matter to you. But I don't think I'd be wrong to believe that if Hunter had been Ted Cruz's son, or Trump's son, no such politeness would have been granted and it would have run till it ran out of steam due to over-exposure.

And granted, I took some license but I wasn't intent on saying there was a literal agreement by the media and fact checkers, but that's like saying there is no pricing collusion between airlines -yeah, I'm sure they are not calling each other, but they are following each other's lead so to speak and that's what media and fact checkers do.

By 90% I mean exposure -Impressions and eyeballs. How many articles, tweets, reddits, etc.

Anecdote. I have observed the works of a West Coast church for a few years. The walls are plastered with photos of charity work in Africa, Asia or Caribbeans. Every other week stories from far away lands makes into the sermon. Was an interesting recent moment when the pastor had the public realization that perhaps spending some of that effort in the local community is long past due.

It’s surprising to me how this is when the whole point of a church is to serve the local community and those that want to help overseas have “missions” which some people malign as semi imperialistic.

My personal view is help your local people first (no matter where you are) and others next. If you want to do good somewhere else the best way to do it is not via feelgood “remittances” but by going there and putting in the hard work, hiring locals, teaching locals, etc., so they may become self sufficient and not need ‘charity’.

Having lived in both poor and rich countries, I never saw a fervor for helping far away lands in a poor country. The are simply not enough resources to mount effective overseas charity campaigns.

And they should not. They should help themselves before anyone else. Now, there are wealthy congregation is some places and surely they have enough funds to help locals in need as well as others -that’s fine, but do it in a helpful way, don’t just send money and call it a day, and also help your people in another state of province if the locals they’re in has all their needs met. Don’t just go for “exoticism”.

Sometimes I wonder if this is selective pressure. The impact of charity work overseas, if at all affordable, is much higher than the often thankless charity work at home. People gradually steer into the more impactful work, which happens to be overseas by simple economic reasons.

It's an interesting moral question, something I would hope the church leaders very strongly consider. What difference does it make where a person lives, if they are suffering? Put another (utilitarian) way - if you can spend $100 to help 10 people across the globe not die of starvation, versus $100 to help a non-starving but down on their luck local, which gives more heaven credit?

The nature of our evolved brain prioritizes those proximate; I'm unclear of an argument why helping these people is superior, especially when you can make a bigger difference, more cheaply, by helping people in poorer countries.

CS Lewis touched on this point in his Screwtape Letters. Perhaps modern economic theory that studies spherical cows in a vacuum, err, self-interested rational agents, is not the ultimate morally relevant lens.

> Do what you will there is going to be some benevolence, as well as some malice, in your patient‘s soul. The great thing is to direct the malice to his immediate neighbours whom he meets every day and to thrust his benevolence out to the remote circumference, to people he does not know. The malice thus becomes wholly real and the benevolence largely imaginary.

I am not an American, so I do not have a dog in this fight.

But the bridge between alcohol and insecurity on one side and murder on the other that you seem to erect seems rather uncertain to me. Scandinavians drink like fish, suffer from a lot of seasonal depression, but their rates of murder aren't that high. Nor are rates of murder in rural USA regions originally settled by Scandinavians.

Murder seems to be strongly correlated with gang activity in the U.S.

I think it has to do with gangs and and high rate of drug addiction in this area. I live in the Pacific NW where heroin/meth is running rampant and homelessness is everywhere. The city just looks trashed now.

Having one party in control of most major cities, where most crime is, for 50+ years now is working wonders.

One thing that puzzles me a bit about the U.S. is nonexistence of viable local parties. Something similar to the Scottish National Party in the UK or Freie Wähler in Bavaria.

How come that the entire political scene on all levels collapses into just two poles, with the predictable result that many places are de facto one party places?

Why doesn't America have local Ross Perots in various corners of the country, starting their own political parties specific for one place only?

We do. The Socialist Alternative are a viable party in places like Seattle, local politicians often run as independents aligned with organizations like DSA, etc.

And yet that party is still preferable to the alternative, according to the voters. Funny how that goes.

One of the really bad things about two party systems is that people start to consider their voting record a part of their personal identity. That leads to massive ossification of voting patterns in individuals.

In a multiparty system, it is much more normal to be a swing voter.

Read the comments at r/Portland to witness people realizing the law of unintended consequences in realtime.

Are you sure these consequences were entirely unintended?

People said that instagram page Portlandlookslikeshit was an exaggeration. Just drive through Portland for a few hours. The city is completely trashed. Even just driving through on I-5 you see trash all over the sides of the road.

You don't see any improvement at all over the past few months specifically?

I live in the suburbs and still visit family in Portland. Over the past few months, I've seen great improvements. There are no longer massive camps along 205, now it seems like a few sprinkled camps with four or five people, every half mile or so. I walked in Oak's Bottom (my kids attend Trackers school) and I saw three park rangers (not police) patrolling the park, querying people who camp there. I did not see any garbage inside the park at all, and this is a very dense forested park. I only saw one tent (I know there are more) but I do think the city has really made a concerted effort to break up large camps, remove garbage aggressively, and move people into temporary housing.

My point is that progress is being made. But, I often wonder if I'm not seeing all neighborhoods and if this is just happening in the wealthier neighborhoods. I do feel like the places in SE and NE that I go to, there are visible differences from even a few months back.

Maybe you feel like this is not the real story; if so, I'm interested in hearing that. I've been worried about my city for years, but I do feel like we are finally grappling with it as a society and making progress.

I don't typically drive on 205 to be honest, but I-5 is still covered in garbage and downtown is unbelievably bad. Really sad to see and I avoid downtown as much as possible because of it. It's been a couple weeks since I've drove through but I am going through tomorrow so I guess I'll see if there has been any improvement.

Defunding the police is about taking away their military grade equipment, nothing to do with your everyday murder.

I find it way more likely, and interesting, that covid had a major role in the rise of homicides. The lockdowns/restrictions and their social / mental health impacts: people losing their loved ones, jobs, financial/mental struggles, domestic violence, &c. You can live in the most policed country in the world, if you're locked down with your abusive/violent partner for X months violence will happen

> Defunding the police is about taking away their military grade equipment, nothing to do with your everyday murder.

You're mixing up defunding the police with demilitarizing the police.

Two different topics.

We are gonna see the effects of these lockdowns and restrictions play out for years. We’ve got an entire generation of kids growing up that have missed more than a year of school and still aren’t back to “normal school. Wait until they become adults!

The sad part is plenty of people warned about this sort of thing but they were (and still are) censored, bullied, harassed, gaslit, you name it.

This myopic fixation on exactly one single disease to the exclusion of literally everything else in life is gonna go down as one of the worst public policy fuckups of all time.

IMHO. This wasn't about cities defunding police as it was about DEMORALIZING the police. People will cite: "Look the crime rate was country wide so it couldn't be the result of specific cities defunding." But no. It is that the policing forces are demoralized nation wide. They do less patrolling, less aggressive tactics, less pull overs, less arrests etc. Police are more timid now. This is the result. I expect it to become much worse - with SF city the goal nation wide.

You might be surprised to learn that there are even whole books about the topic complete with reading groups, speaking events, and discourse.

I wonder if police ever actually stopped murders from happening. Do you have any evidence that they did and have now stopped doing so? Police usually show up to crime scenes, not murders in progress. It's a murder after all, not a siege.

lol - so people do people think BLM and defund the police actually had a real effect? I’m confused because black people still get murdered by cops all the time and I haven’t seen any metros defund their police to levels below what they were in the last five years. Biggest “defund” I’ve seen is not increasing their budget again for the 30th year in a row.

Weird political commentators coming into HN.

Article has no details on the reasons either. It has no clue. Just quotes stats. Btw - overall crime was down for the year. Violent crime went up 4-5%. Murder was just way higher and of course is a headline and click getter. I wouldn’t be surprised if the majority of the murder was gang related and literally no one except those in gang ridden neighborhoods gives a shit. (So no one because no one cares about the poors)

> I’m confused because black people still get murdered by cops all the time

Black people mostly get murdred by other black people: https://ucr.fbi.gov/crime-in-the-u.s/2016/crime-in-the-u.s.-...

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