Fell back to pre pandemic levels? I guess people are right that the last few years (covid era) have quite concerning crime rates.
Most people think the U.S. crime rate is rising. They're wrong
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Re: Most people think the U.S. crime rate is rising. They're wrong
#32There is a growing consensus that there is no point in reporting a crime to the police in most instances since it will take up your time doing so and either the police either won't even try to catch the perp or will fail to do so--and even if they do he will not receive a significant sanction.
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Re: Most people think the U.S. crime rate is rising. They're wrong
#33Fell back to pre pandemic levels? I guess people are right that the last few years (covid era) have quite concerning crime rates.
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Re: Most people think the U.S. crime rate is rising. They're wrong
#34Re: Most people think the U.S. crime rate is rising. They're wrong
#35I don't trust the stats. Things that would have been reported as crimes 15 years ago aren't being called in now.
* Leaders inside the police force have incentives to make it look like their departments are effective and nudge the numbers.
* Elected officials, such as the mayor, have incentives to make it look like the police department is effective and reinforce the number nudgers.
* This has a reinforcing cycle where number nudgers are promoted and in turn promote other number nudgers until leadership is saturated. More creative accounting practices are encouraged as the environment becomes more competitive.
* Many District Attorney's are happy to prosecute lesser charges that are easier to convict on instead of more serious charges that more accurately reflect the reality of what happened.
Re: Most people think the U.S. crime rate is rising. They're wrong
#36Nobody cares that it dropped in 2023. We care that it's worse than a decade ago, which it is. We hit a local minimum of 4.4 murders per 100k in 2014. It was 6.3 in 2022. That's a big difference.
Property crime goes unreported. It's not worth the trouble. I've had a dozen packages stolen, for example. My apartment building had 30 bikes stolen and hundreds more packages stolen. None of these will show up in the statistics. I have friends that have been carjacked or witnessed carjacking. Carjacking numbers are way up in my city compared to 10 years ago. Murders hit a low of 246 for us in 2013. The last 3 years were 499, 562, and 516, and they now cook the books by not counting suspicious deaths. We're down this year, which is great, but the past 5 years have been bloody as hell.
Major crimes dropping 8% from recent local maxima is not an achievement and doesn't mean people's perceptions of rising crime are incorrect. The past single year's delta alone is just not super relevant.
Re: Most people think the U.S. crime rate is rising. They're wrong
#37I don't trust the stats. Things that would have been reported as crimes 15 years ago aren't being called in now. * Leaders inside the police force have incentives to make it look like their departments are effective and nudge the numbers. * Elected officials, such as the mayor, have incentives to make it look like the police department is effective and reinforce the number nudgers. * This has a reinforcing cycle wher…
What’s new about these incentives? Why would this be happening now, uniquely?
Re: Most people think the U.S. crime rate is rising. They're wrong
#38I had to get someone to unlock a case the other day to buy underwear at Target. Other times it's been toothpaste or deodorant. Someone want to explain to me why these things are locked up now, but they used to not be? Someone want to explain to me why I see videos of people stealing without consequence while security looks on powerless to do anything? Someone want to explain to me why there are open air markets for s…
Someone want to explain to me why my tax dollars should go towards protecting target and Walgreen’s inventory? When they have one security guard in their entire store? When police could instead be spending that time finding the driver of the truck that smashed into my car and drove away?
Re: Most people think the U.S. crime rate is rising. They're wrong
#39"Who are you going to trust, me or your lying eyes?" The issue is that the stats don't tell the whole story. Most states/cities have simply decriminalized behavior that was previously considered 'crime' so that's why people think crime rates are rising when they see more open drug use, brazen theft like shoplifting or car break ins, and prostitutes walking around in public in their underwear--so people rightfully fee…
It seems like this effect should be measurable in some kind of principled way. Also, there are some crimes that haven't been decriminalized and are hard to sweep under the carpet (murder, manslaughter, etc). Are there trends for those crimes? Edit: The article does say that murder is down in big cities, but there is some weasel text in there about it being down "since the pandemic" which leaves me wondering whether i…
In round numbers, US homicides per 100,000 were about 10 in the 80s-90s, 5 before the pandemic, and back down to 6.3 in 2022. --
https://www.google.com/search?q=us+homicide+rate
Re: Most people think the U.S. crime rate is rising. They're wrong
#40I dunno, I see a pretty large spike in homicide rate: https://www.wolframalpha.com/input?i=us+homicide+rate
or https://i.imgur.com/v38RdZU.png https://cde.ucr.cjis.gov/LATEST/webapp/#/pages/explorer/crim... (not per-capita)
Much like inflation, people aren't great at estimating the precise year-over-year change, but the last 5 or 10 years shows some real reasons for concern.