Falling Crime: Where have all the burglars gone? • Hacker News Board

Re: Falling Crime: Where have all the burglars gone?

#151

Post by mpyne » Wed, Jul 24, 2013, 12:47 AM UTC

cpncrunch wrote: post #147

PhasmaFelis wrote: post #142

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"Rich" is a pretty flexible yardstick. Somebody who can afford to drop the price of a new car on a hobby item is rich compared to most Americans. I recall a thing a while back about how hardly anyone in America will admit to being rich, because they all measure themselves against someone even richer. "Sure, I have three houses and a yacht, but I'm not rich! It's not like I can afford a private island!" Your points ab…

Well I'm pretty sure I'm less rich than Cory if he is a MS employee. I pay about $85/hour to fly and don't own a plane. If I lived in the USA it would be $68/hr due to lower gas prices. I think the majority of Americans can afford to spend $68/month on their hobby (assuming they flew once a month).

There are high school students who drop thousands of $$$ into their hobbies. My hobby (computers and video games) was cheap in comparison to those getting tuned-up small cars as made famous in movies and racing games. $68/hr is a fairly inexpensive hobby indeed.

Re: Falling Crime: Where have all the burglars gone?

#152

Post by mpyne » Wed, Jul 24, 2013, 12:48 AM UTC

pekk wrote: post #133

fnordfnordfnord wrote: post #104

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Talk to the FAA, who have made it so expensive to upgrade/update anything related to airplanes. There is a marginally viable aftermarket parts market for these engines now, but for a long time owners were strictly limited to OEM, salvage, and remanufactured parts. Also, the number of older GA Airplanes, and antique/warbirds in service are so small, it's got to be nothing compared to the exposure from thirty years ago…

If it's 50% of our current exposure, it's not "nothing".

50% of approximately nothing is still approximately nothing. What's our current exposure nowadays?

Re: Falling Crime: Where have all the burglars gone?

#153

Post by mpyne » Wed, Jul 24, 2013, 12:51 AM UTC

bluedino wrote: post #88

pekk wrote: post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I remember how ubiquitous the SNES, Sega Genesis and PS1 were in the 90s They weren't "ubiquitous" for poor kids. For those kids, there was no way they would get their parents to buy us anything for (the 1991 equivalent of) $350 and $85/game. Nobody assumed that upper middle class kids were normally carrying out burglaries...

The poor kids had Nintendo and Sega back then, just like the poor kids have Xbox and PlayStation today.

My dad sold my SNES and Final Fantasy II for money to keep his kids fed. Poor kids didn't necessarily have shit back then, and certainly the used game market wasn't as available as it is now.

Re: Falling Crime: Where have all the burglars gone?

#154

Post by vacri » Wed, Jul 24, 2013, 12:55 AM UTC

tmorton wrote: post #5

This article mentions, but undersells, the lead factor. Lead exposure causes cognitive problems in children, especially related to impulse control. The drop in crime correlates very well with lead cleanup. Kevin Drum (a left-leaning US journalist) has been making this argument: http://www.motherjones.com/kevin-drum/2013/01/lead-and-crime...

The drop in crime also correlates very well with the massive upswell of incarceration in the US, not to mention that 'entertainment-on-demand' swelled over the same period (crime is frequently a result of boredom).

Re: Falling Crime: Where have all the burglars gone?

#155

Post by vacri » Wed, Jul 24, 2013, 1:01 AM UTC

rwhitman wrote: post #28

I don't think enough emphasis is put in these studies on the rise of cheap entertainment for bored male youth. Teenage boys that normally would have been running around in the streets committing entry level crimes are now glued to their Xbox. The declines in crime also happen to correlate with the ubiquitousness and availability of video games. As they get cheaper and more violent, crime goes down. Sure policing has…

It's not the violence per se, it's the ability to get entertainment on demand. Whether it's Call of Duty or Minecraft, the thing is that you aren't left with 'nothing to do'.

Re: Falling Crime: Where have all the burglars gone?

#156

Post by vacri » Wed, Jul 24, 2013, 1:04 AM UTC

danso wrote: post #29

A little OT, but related to current events: Detroit, which has been facing fiscal problems, has enjoyed a drop in crime even though budget deficits has forced the city to cut hundreds of officers: http://news.yahoo.com/detroit-crime-down-murder-rate-1736002... And yet the murder rate is relatively stagnant, and this year reached a peak: http://usnews.nbcnews.com/_news/2013/01/04/16352612-weve-los... How to reconcile…

Criminologists understand that crime moves in waves, and different crimes move differently. Crime overall might be down, but a particular class of crimes might have risen.

This is not an unusual state of affairs, but the news for the general public has no interest in educating people on this topic - after all, they need something with which to excoriate politicians; something will usually be 'on the rise', so politicians will be 'failing' in the whole field.

Re: Falling Crime: Where have all the burglars gone?

#157

Post by vacri » Wed, Jul 24, 2013, 1:06 AM UTC

omegaham wrote: post #86

DanI-S wrote: post #36

There's no mention of the rise of the welfare state. I'd be surprised if the presence of an economic safety net didn't have an impact on people's willingness to commit crime. In the end, I'm sure the answer is a combination of all these factors. As individuals and as a species, we get better at living as time goes on.

Actually, welfare benefits are much lower than they were under Johnson's Great Society programs. They declared a War on Poverty back in the 60s, and it did about as well as the current War on Drugs. We've actually been cutting welfare benefits for some time, culminating in the reforms done under the Clinton administration.

Are those lower benefits spread across a wider demographic, or has the demographic been reduced as well? Just wondering about "10% of the population on $$" versus "40% on $"...

Re: Falling Crime: Where have all the burglars gone?

#158

Post by PeterisP » Wed, Jul 24, 2013, 1:06 AM UTC

xradionut wrote: post #37

Here's another factor to consider: Sometimes crime is under reported or covered up or not acted on. I've known of property and other crimes that did not show up in the statistics/annual reports of a particular city. The city in question was/is known for low crime and used that as a selling up point to attract businesses and home buyers. I'd be surprised if this was the only municipality that "fudged" their numbers.

1) For many categories measured in the original article (murders, armed robberies of stores) it's not likely that a major part is unreported;

2) For simple thefts, of course, a large portion is not reported because people don't bother - but are you really arguing that in suddenly all the (very different) countries people started reporting crimes much less than 20 years ago; or that municipalities in 2000'ies are fudging numbers much more massively than they could in 1980's?

Re: Falling Crime: Where have all the burglars gone?

#159

Post by bmelton » Wed, Jul 24, 2013, 1:08 AM UTC

cstavish wrote: post #149

lolcraft wrote: post #100

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> They are dealing with the impoverished young men of today, high on pot and trolling for snacks. That is, they would be trolling for snacks if the munchies are ever able to override their desire to keep playing whatever video game. Downvoted for being hilarious while talking out of your ass. FYI, pot has a (very) mellowing and relaxing effect. The idea of the munchies as some sort of dangerous rampage in search of f…

Dude, your missing his point entirely. He's saying that young males are smoking weed instead of doing hard drugs and therefore less likely to commit violent crimes. It may or may not be true, but it's an interesting thought.

It's slightly more than just interesting. It's been a fairly long-held belief that, at least in New York City, their continued and constant drop in crime was largely attributable to the fall in popularity of crack and cocaine usage.

I'm not sure why he's been downvoted to gray. I don't know that his ideas extend well to areas outside of NYC, but there's at least one (fairly large) data point lending credence to his notions.

Re: Falling Crime: Where have all the burglars gone?

#160

Post by PeterisP » Wed, Jul 24, 2013, 1:16 AM UTC

marknutter wrote: post #44

DanI-S wrote: post #36

There's no mention of the rise of the welfare state. I'd be surprised if the presence of an economic safety net didn't have an impact on people's willingness to commit crime. In the end, I'm sure the answer is a combination of all these factors. As individuals and as a species, we get better at living as time goes on.

If it's true that welfare makes it less likely for someone to commit a crime then wouldn't that also mean it makes them less likely to get a job?

The future doesn't need us - or at least many of us. Already now we have no need whatsover for 15-20% of population to get jobs, as demand for low-skilled labor is permanently reduced.

Soon it will be 30%, 40% and more. As soon as robots for stocking shelves, driving trucks and flipping burgers will be cheaper than minimum (or any livable) wage, we can expect that there will be no practical need whatsoever for large parts of population to work - the goods/services will be more and better if they don't get involved, and instead of "job" the question is how social policy will distribute resources to them - welfare, universal income, crime or starvation?