Comment by monero-xmr | Hacker News Reader

Comment by monero-xmr | Hacker News Reader

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The problem is it’s hard to get anything other than anecdata when discussing things that don’t come into macro statistics. I live in a large Democrat-dominated city, I have very deep connections and roots all around, and casual mentions of petty crime are common. I have observed a lot of shoplifting and I’m only in retail stores so often. There is certainly an attitude that some types of crime just occur and no one will stop it.

> In its annual survey, BJS asks crime victims whether they reported their crime to police. It found that in 2022, only 41.5% of violent crimes and 31.8% of household property crimes were reported to authorities. BJS notes that there are many reasons why crime might not be reported, including fear of reprisal or of “getting the offender in trouble,” a feeling that police “would not or could not do anything to help,” or a belief that the crime is “a personal issue or too trivial to report.”

> Most of the crimes that are reported to police, meanwhile, are not solved, at least based on an FBI measure known as the clearance rate. That’s the share of cases each year that are closed, or “cleared,” through the arrest, charging and referral of a suspect for prosecution, or due to “exceptional” circumstances such as the death of a suspect or a victim’s refusal to cooperate with a prosecution. In 2022, police nationwide cleared 36.7% of violent crimes that were reported to them and 12.1% of the property crimes that came to their attention.

https://www.pewresearch.org/short-reads/2024/04/24/what-the-...

You still don't have any data supporting your claims that crime is high. All you say is that it's not always reported - which is well known and has been for generations, if not forever.

What shows that it's high? It's circular to say that the unknown numbers are higher, not lower, because you think crime is high.

> a large Democrat-dominated city

What does the political party have to do with it, unless this really is about your politics? Republican areas of the country have higher crime rates, last I checked. If you think there's a correlation between party and crime rate, feel free to show us.

> (Pew data)

It's great to have some data, thanks. I don't know that anything has changed, however, though I imagine numbers were different during the pandemic and immediately after.

Numbers could be better now, for all we know.

see above, NY feel 50% more unsafe than in 2017

> NY feel 50% more unsafe than in 2017

You have actual data - why kill your argument by exaggerating it?

The stats you posted are about perception, not actual events. If people read other people constantly badgering them about safety, of course they will worry about it.

When you say "shoplifting," do you mean someone has simply walked/run out of the store without paying for something? If so, I don't really understand what that has to do with safety. Same with plenty of other crimes, such as someone jumping a subway turnstile, graffiti, etc. These things surely lead to a lower quality of life and I'd prefer that they didn't happen, but I personally wouldn't say that they make a city dangerous.

Focusing the discussion around "safety" doesn't make sense to me. It's just as reasonable to focus around "order" or "lawfulness" or "cleanliness" or anything else.

I never felt unsafe in LA, but I sure as hell felt disgusted when someone spit on us, and a bunch of other negative emotions when you saw the worst of the homeless population or drug use or anything else.

Was I unsafe ? No, but was it clearly disorderly? Yep.

This is controversial. Some studies have found that petty crime like this leads to more crime. Or stated differently if you solve these little crimes there is less big crime as well. However this is very controversial and those studies have been criticized - I am not able to figure out the truth here, feel free to do your own research.

A policing tactic back in the 1990s was 'Broken Windows', which did what you said - fix the little stuff and the big issues will improve. It was controversial, as you say, because at least in some places the strategy became 'oppress black and brown males' so the white people can feel safe.

I've read one news story on an analysis of Broken Windows (so not a lot of data) said that outcomes were not correlated with that strategy. Crime went down everywhere, whether or not they used Broken Windows.

Mayors and police chiefs, etc. are called geniuses or fools in strong correlation with national trends, especially the economy. Lots of 1990s mayors, etc. were geniuses as the economy boomed and crime came down nationwide.

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