The curious case of the fall in crime | Hacker News Reader

The curious case of the fall in crime

economist.com

54 pointspg47 comments

There was a very interesting article[1] recently about the epidemiological link between leaded gasoline and crime.

[1] - http://www.motherjones.com/environment/2013/01/lead-crime-li...

I honestly find it dismaying that the Economist could publish a story specifically on the recent drop in crime and never have heard of this study.

I just read this story and its longer follow-up in the print edition. They do mention the lead study.

Then I find it dismaying that they know of it but intentionally refrained from mentioning it in the online edition. More dismaying, honestly, as they are specifically championing a panopticon solution to crime here and saying that increased police expenditure and profiling has resulted in lower crime rates.

The economist generally has 1 page "summary" articles at the front of the newspaper, and more in depth articles in the dedicated sections. Both are available online. Trying to put every point into the summary would defeat the entire purpose.

Except that the link between the drop in crime and the elimination of lead has very strong evidence, and the various social theories bandied about by the Economist have almost no support. They didn't just not put "every point" into the summary -- they completely ignored the biggest, best supported reason.

Here's the longer article: http://www.economist.com/news/briefing/21582041-rich-world-s...

The economist clearly doesn't agree with you, here's what they said about lead:

Jessica Wolpaw Reyes, an American researcher, has argued that the cognitive effects of exposure to lead were a primary determinant of violent crime, and unleaded petrol is to thank for the improvement. But the causal link is far from proven.

The Economist needs to read up a bit. There is strong support for lead as the primary determinant, and not just correlation.

http://www.motherjones.com/environment/2013/01/lead-crime-li...

Next time you feel like criticizing something you should probably know more than epsilon about it...

Well, you've certainly made a great point there, swordswinger12!

Correlation != Causation?

Correlation isn't causation, but there are methods you can use to get at the question of whether there is a causal link somewhere, and these methods involve looking at some correlations.

I suspect this is due to the wide availability of very inexpensive entertainment: game consoles, cheap flatpanels, internet, and smartphones. Who wants to cause mischief whenever you can sit on the couch, surf the web, play call of duty on a 50" screen, and eat a pizza that cost $5? The US should have dropped xboxes on Iraq instead of bombs, and infiltrated the country with Walmarts, Starbucks, and McDonalds. The youth would have come around quick, our capitalist overlords would have made $$$ while saving lives and expanded their loving grip on humanity. Just saying.

There might be something to that. See "Violence In The Media Prevents Violent Crime" at http://slatestarcodex.com/2013/06/22/social-psychology-is-a-...

> The US should have dropped xboxes on Iraq instead of bombs

If the US intention on that war was avoiding terrorism, there wouldn't be a war at all.

I used to believe and repeat this rhetoric 10 years ago. But then I went into finance and started noticing that BLS data resembles a work of fiction at least as much as it models reality; That CPI has been redefined through the years, and is basically not reproducibly measurable (hedonic adjustment and owner equivalent rent are both measured in a non-verifiable non reproducible way) and numbers are constantly revised in the least favorable direction when markets aren't looking (that is, numbers look better than they are when originally published, and then revised after most have already stopped looking at them)

And this got me wondering - did crime rate indeed go down? Or is it just that numbers are measured differently and thus look better?

Stuff like a tenfold drop in stolen cars in new york is hard to explain away with changes in recording.

While I generally agree, the devil is always in the details, and having no specific knowledge I do not reject the reported drop in crime, but I certainly do not accept it as gospel.

Tangentially related anecdote: 15 years ago, a friend of mine bought a house on the (wrong side of an) edge of a crime reporting district in Philadelphia for $80k. Across the road (which wasn't a highway or anything, just another inner neighborhood road), an exact copy of the same house (same developer, same year, same project, same layout, same everything) went for $200k at the time.

Three years later, the crime reporting districts changed, and his house (and a few others) were reported in te better district. His house value changed, practically overnight, from $100k to $240k.

Ergo, report methodology can effectively affect related value significantly. Quantum measurement effects on a macroeconomic scale.

If it was one set of figures from one country then you might have a point, but you are effectively describing noise and for such a wide range of crimes across such a wide range of countries you would expect the noise from reporting changes between different jurisdictions to more or less cancel out.

I am not arguing or contradicting you in any way, as I do not have any specific knowledge - but there are globally misreported (or misunderstood, I won't argue semantics) cost-of-living figures, without requiring conspirators or any centralized planning - do not rule out global bias in reporting just because a mechanism for such bias is not evident.

I don't rule out bias, I am just noting that in this case it would seem unlikely to all be pushing in one direction for the reasons I stated.

You are right that one aspect of lower crime rates is that police department leadership, in some places, discourage reporting crimes. Especially if they have an incentive structure based on crime rates. There is enough variability in reporting rates to hide a lot of crime.

BUT this article was very unsatisfying. The above factor is just one of many. And the problem is that paramilitary "boys' toys" enthusiasts, prison guard unions, recipients of anti-terrorism grants, and all the other interest groups are all contending to lead the low-crime parade.

It's pretty certain that some crime is becoming less prevalent. It's hard to hide a shooting or stabbing victim. But these gains have to be defended against the kinds of fudging you describe. And, to reap the social and budget benefits of real reductions, we also have to call BS on false claims of the lock-'em-up interest groups.

It could be that the answer is that more people know what a normal middle class life is like and therefore more people want to live that way, even if it is just aspirational.

Personally, I blame the internet for the fall in crime. The rise of internet usage during the late 90's and early 00's certainly coincides with the fall in crime.

I'm actually being serious, I can think of nothing else that has had such a widespread impact on society as a whole. Our ability to be connected with others, research information, etc. Misfits now have an outlet where they can find likeminded individuals like never before.

Think about it.

It's certainly not the only reason but I 100% agree with you and have been preaching this for a while and no one takes it seriously. There is just a lot more to entertain everyone than there was 20 years ago. The internet & technology as a whole has just increased the options of things to do. Kid's aren't just sitting around and literally staring at a wall. Boredom forces people to go out and find something not boring which can in some cases lead to criminal activity.

well it's not just about boredom, it's about the feeling of connectedness to others.

I think you are pointing in the right direction re the internet. Crime is cultural. The internet has spread cultural influence farther and faster than broadcasting, even if internet culture is more diverse.

Let's not forget about the legalization and destigmatization of birth control and abortion. Unwanted children born to poor and desperate mothers led equally desperate liveas and often ended up in prison.

Also the awareness of the hazards of lead, such as in lead paint and gasoline. A study showed the stunningly high lead levels in the blood of the prison population.

Of course, at the same time, prisons are overcrowded, the media tells us the world is becoming more dangerous every second and local police need SWAT teams and assault rifles to protect them from the rise in crime.

Comments like this are basically predicated upon the idea that anyone reading it will agree. That is, there's nothing persuasive put forth if I disagree, and no real information offered. They're not very good as conversation starters either.

So why the heck do people post them?

e: I care not for your downvote! Posts like the parent kind of ruin HN for me, so if my opinion is so out of the new norm here I'll know to just stop reading it. :)

Perhaps they're bait. Which is to say:

1. You want to make sure everyone in a community is persuaded of some fact.

2. But you don't want to expend unneeded effort in producing evidence to convince them if nobody needs convincing.

3. So you assert your conclusion as a bald statement.

4a. If anyone denies it, then you know there's a point in expending effort.

4b. ...or, maybe you'll just wait and hope that someone else gets annoyed with the denial and expends that effort for you.

Either way, you've increased the probability that your point will be made. The second strategy (#4b) is likely pursued more often than the first (#4a), because given a saturated community of "vigilant believers", the likelihood of the denial being fought will be nearly the same with or without you--and the cost will be much lower without you. I imagine these people write these as "drive-by" comments, not looking at the results, but feeling smug knowing that they've sicced their in-group on any vocal proponents of their associated out-group.

I don't think it's anything quite so conscious as that. The majority of human actions are impulses, not calculated decisions. That's certainly true of drive-by discussion posts. :)

I think in cases like this, the urge is just to show off -- to show that they're not one of the "sheeple". The poster certainly knows that the POV they expressed is already very common on HN.

It's not even that I really disagree with the claims. But this was an interesting article, and there are so many more relevant things to discuss!

So, I agree with you that more effort could have been put in the comment. That being said, poster 'revelation' is not really wrong either. Some links to dig deeper into his points:

>prisons are overcrowded

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

>the media tells us the world is becoming more dangerous every second

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

>local police need SWAT teams and assault rifles

http://www.businessinsider.com/the-militarization-of-america...

An alternate hypothesis by Stephen Thomas of Harvard Medical School is that medicine has been getting so good that many crimes that would have been murders in a previous era are becoming attempted murders.

http://people.wku.edu/james.kanan/Murder%20and%20Medicine.pd...

  Despite the proliferation of increasingly dangerous weapons 
  and the very large increase in rates of serious criminal 
  assault, since 1960, the lethality of such assault in the 
  United States has dropped dramatically. This paradox has 
  barely been studied and needs to be examined using national 
  time-series data. Starting from the basic view that 
  homicides are aggravated assaults with the outcome of the 
  victim’s death, we assembled evidence from national data 
  sources to show that the principal explanation of the 
  downward trend in lethality involves parallel developments 
  in medical technology and related medical support services 
  that have suppressed the homicide rate compared to what it 
  would be had such progress not been made. We argue that 
  research into the causes and deterrability of
  homicide would benefit from a “lethality perspective” that 
  focuses on serious assaults, only a small proportion of 
  which end in death.

As for whether governments should focus on prevention rather than punishment, it can also be argued that incarceration does indeed prevent recidivism during the period of incarceration.

Err, did you read the article? It was about all types of crime, not just murders.

It is an interesting thought though. With the (assumed) improvements in life saving medical procedures coupled with the fact that due to cell phones you're likely going to get help faster than you would have 20 years ago more murders are probably turning into attempted murder. Although I believe all violent crime is way down and if murder was just shifting to attempted murder violent crime would of course remain steady.

Nothing related to religion in the article though. I'd love to find out if there's any correlation/causation between the decrease in crime rates and the increase or decrease of active church goers

While crime rates are at their lowest since the 1970's, it should be noted that most cities are a lot smaller than they were in 1970. Chicago is down 650,000, Philadelphia is down 400,000, etc.

Chicago and Philadelphia are two of the ten most populous US cities. The other eight on that list have increased their population in the same period:

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

(See the Demographics section of each city's article.)

Why should cities have more crime than suburban and rural areas, per capita? I know we take it as a given, but I've not heard a particularly good explanation for it (other than the Mother Jones lead article).

Purely speculation, but I suspect the reason is that it is easier to be poor in the cities, so cities would tend to have more poor people, and poor people are more willing to commit crimes because they are more desperate.

That's not accurate.

[edit] I know I should link studies and such but even on the face of it you can see inaccuracy; where are people more impoverished: rural Alabama, or San Francisco? There are larger populations of homeless in cities, but you can get a roof over your head for less money outside. That said, why would it be easier to be poor in a city?

> why would it be easier to be poor in a city?

Well, I would assume there's some correlation between population density and having a difficult job market. More people == more competition, and under those conditions the types of jobs that wouldn't require extensive experience/skill/training are naturally gonna be a rare commodity.

So of course poverty is gonna be a function of joblessness, but there is also a certain frustration that goes along with the difficulty of finding a job specifically, that seems like it would correlate to crime more neatly than the actual impoverished conditions themselves as well.

This is all pure speculation of course. Actual studies on the matter would be much more interesting.

for one reason mobility is much easier in larger cities. you are usually able to be around without a car, albeit at the cost of time/convenience, or with a car using less gas than if you're commuting from the suburbs.

also housing, while nicer housing in city centers tends to be very expensive, cheap high density housing is nearly non existent outside of it.

You don't really need the high density part, though. Let's take a small mill town I know as an example. The mill closed in 2000, and left half the town unemployed. Many of the people living there are still without full time jobs. They live in houses; how can they do that?

They either bought a house years earlier or it's because rent for an entire house is about $340 a month. Multiple people live in the house, so that cost is split. They can live there legally and without resorting to squatting.

Crime actually went up slightly in suburban and rural areas during 2000-2010. The suburban homicide rate actually increased by about the same percentage as the urban rate went down.

Again purely speculation but I always believed that crime is highest in areas with the greatest disparity in wealth and freedom. It's as though there is a social pressure to equalise the distribution of resources. You can see this in cities that have both the very poor and the very wealthy. The houses of the wealthy look like fortresses, cameras on high walls, perhaps a guard at the gate etc.

In the area of bank robberies, one wonders if it has become so easy to rob a bank using re-created ATM cards or stolen credit cards that its simply not worth driving up and taking money out of them. Besides you can rob a bank in New York from Lithuania, talk about your easy getaway!

Reply on news.ycombinator.com