Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Violent crime is dropping fast in the U.S. – even if Americans don't believe it

npr.org

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

71–80 of 122 posts

Re: Violent crime is dropping fast in the U.S. – even if Americans don't believe it

#71

Post by bmmayer1 »

UtopiaPunk wrote: post #35
lp4vn wrote: post #7

Sometimes criminality drops but at a too high price. Some cities in Latin America are "safe" from a statistical point of view but nobody dares go out at night, or even during the day, in some neighbourhoods because it's too dangerous.

Can you elaborate? I don't think I understand what it would mean to be "safe" statistically, but it's too dangerous to go outside. - Are you implying that the statistic data on crime is incorrect and/or falsified? - Are you including dangers besides criminality (like motor vehicle collisions or stormy weather)? - Are you implying the police make the area unsafe (the police being, practically if not literally, the opp…

I assumed OP was talking about seeing crimes as a percentage of crime opportunities, whereas overall crime counts on a per capita basis might mask that people spend less time outdoors because of the risk of crime.

Re: Violent crime is dropping fast in the U.S. – even if Americans don't believe it

#72

Post by none_to_remain »

_Parfait_ wrote: post #30

Even in the face of all the data look at the early comments in this thread. For some reason these individuals want you to believe there's this high level of crime. Blatantly ignoring the good trends and focusing on the outliers, in worse cases calling anecdotes better than facts. So strange and quite frankly weird as hell.

I know for a fact that since pandemic I've been threatened a bunch by bums and once minorly assaulted. None of that made it into the statistics as there's no point to reporting; the city council, the state legislature, and the DA are cool with me getting threatened and assaulted.

Foolish use of metrics is everywhere these days. Carefully consider what the facts you have mean.

There are also crime victimization surveys which, instead of counting reported crime, sample the population and ask which crimes the respondent have been victims of - the DOJ nationwide one doesn't seem to be out for 2023 yet.

Re: Violent crime is dropping fast in the U.S. – even if Americans don't believe it

#73

Post by legitster »

verdverm wrote: post #41
legitster wrote: post #32

> "The national picture shows that murder is falling. We have data from over 200 cities showing a 12.2% decline ... in 2023 relative to 2022," Asher said, citing his own analysis of public data. He found instances of rape, robbery and aggravated assault were all down too. > A Gallup poll released in November found 77% of Americans believed there was more crime in the country than the year before. And 63% felt there w…

If we weight crime counts by severity, than the total area under the curve is smaller, which seems like a good thing

Even if that was a falsifiable premise, that's not a very strong argument. If "average" income goes up just because there are a few more billionaires that move to my city, it doesn't actually mean I am richer.

If most people are living measurably worse lives because of crime, but the already low rate of murders drops a few points, I don't think we should rest on our laurels.

Re: Violent crime is dropping fast in the U.S. – even if Americans don't believe it

#74

Post by macinjosh »

NPR always does this. They tweak the valid criticism ever so slightly in attempt to invalidate it.

Americans don't believe that crime is down in general, they are narrowing it to violent crime. Car break-ins and thefts, identity theft, mail theft, shoplifting, opiods etc. are all rampant but aren't violent crime. Also the sources for the quoted study are dubious. They picked random sources that fit the narrative including an AM radio news site filled with scammy ads, and a local news station quoting unnamed police sources. The data is cherry-picked.

Re: Violent crime is dropping fast in the U.S. – even if Americans don't believe it

#75

Post by Natsu »

vaidhy wrote: post #20
TMWNN wrote: post #5

"The thing I have noticed is when the anecdotes and the data disagree, the anecdotes are usually right. There's something wrong with the way you are measuring it". —Jeff Bezos https://sports.yahoo.com/amazon-ceo-jeff-bezos-explains-2123... >

Just wanted to make sure I understand this right - Since Jeff B made that one statement, anecdotes are a better measure? And the second part of it talks about measurement, not data. People are irrational and we give in to irrational fears. If I heard about one incidence of someone who is homeless attacking a bystander, I would be afraid of all homeless people. I do not have enough data to analyze (nor do I care to an…

In most places, your car will almost never get broken into. In a few cities, this will happen basically all the time.

The averages are removing information about how crime is distributed and focusing on violent crime when people are more worried currently about property crime. This uneven distribution and the rise in property crime does a lot explain the difference between these national averages and people's personal experiences of crime.

While the plural of anecdote isn't data, it's not some mystery why people look at local temperatures to decide how to dress themselves, instead of the national average, nor are they statistically illiterate for doing so. Nobody with any sense is going outside in a blizzard without a coat just because the national average temperature is warm.

The same is true with crime. It is not evenly distributed and that variance defines people's lived experience with it.

Re: Violent crime is dropping fast in the U.S. – even if Americans don't believe it

#76

Post by happytiger »

UtopiaPunk wrote: post #35
lp4vn wrote: post #7

Sometimes criminality drops but at a too high price. Some cities in Latin America are "safe" from a statistical point of view but nobody dares go out at night, or even during the day, in some neighbourhoods because it's too dangerous.

Can you elaborate? I don't think I understand what it would mean to be "safe" statistically, but it's too dangerous to go outside. - Are you implying that the statistic data on crime is incorrect and/or falsified? - Are you including dangers besides criminality (like motor vehicle collisions or stormy weather)? - Are you implying the police make the area unsafe (the police being, practically if not literally, the opp…

Police only get data that’s reported. Most places don’t call the cops the moment something drops.

There’s a reason so many tops of house walls in Latin America are covered in shards of broken glass.

Official statistics on crime have long been manipulated as well.

Remember this rule: if it’s positive, politicians try to maximize its importance with lavish news conferences and self-congratulatory declarations.

But! If the data is negative, they will be released quietly, often late on a Friday afternoon, to minimize media coverage.

You can actually map the release time of crime data in some places to show whether it’s positive or negative news.

There is also a profound difference in transparency levels and therefore data. Check out this report to see how much it varies.

https://policetransparency.vera.org/PTI-factsheet.pdf

In California, crime is up in the latest reports. Homicides included.

https://data-openjustice.doj.ca.gov/sites/default/files/2023...

So, it’s cool that “crime is down” but honestly the article that NPR published is pretty awful journalism and really doesn’t present the truth, which is more complicated.

Most of the time they are reporting on the FBI’s uniform crime reporting index:

https://www.fbi.gov/how-we-can-help-you/more-fbi-services-an...

This data has been under huge scrutiny and criticism for its inaccuracy:

The FBI Uniform Crime Report's (UCR's) 'murder and nonnegligent manslaughter' data are so seriously flawed that the only figure they can provide criminologists is the number of deaths investigated by police as potentially criminal homicides, and the weapons use data reported by the UCR and the National Crime Survey (victimization data) are unreliable as well.

Source: https://www.ojp.gov/ncjrs/virtual-library/abstracts/flaws-fb...

The “journalists” at NPR annd other news organizations even bother to mention any of this when they write their articles. The quality of their journalism should be questioned and people should be very aware of the unreliability of the statistical data, especially violent crimes like homicides.

Re: Violent crime is dropping fast in the U.S. – even if Americans don't believe it

#77

Post by lp4vn »

resolutebat wrote: post #27
lp4vn wrote: post #7

Sometimes criminality drops but at a too high price. Some cities in Latin America are "safe" from a statistical point of view but nobody dares go out at night, or even during the day, in some neighbourhoods because it's too dangerous.

Can you give an example?

Some areas of the city get historically low crime rates because they are essentially avoided at all costs, not because the place is safe. People "locked up" inside their own homes is not what I would call public security, even though the data will show that the numbers improved.

Re: Violent crime is dropping fast in the U.S. – even if Americans don't believe it

#78

Post by legitster »

colechristensen wrote: post #52
sxp wrote: post #19

"The number of murders across the country surged by nearly 30% between 2019 and 2020..." "We have data from over 200 cities showing a 12.2% decline ... in 2023 relative to 2022,...." It's so annoying that even "good" news outlets like NPR are incompetent when it comes to showing statistical data. There is no good reason to mix city rates vs country rates or speak only in percentages instead of absolute numbers. Some…

NPR is no longer a "good" news outlet. I am not aware of any "good" news outlets, unless it's one of the wire services that give you one sentence feeds per news item.

It's a pity. They had a really good run for like a decade. But even AP has its ideological problems now.

Re: Violent crime is dropping fast in the U.S. – even if Americans don't believe it

#79

Post by FooBarBizBazz »

lp4vn wrote: post #61
UtopiaPunk wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Can you elaborate? I don't think I understand what it would mean to be "safe" statistically, but it's too dangerous to go outside. - Are you implying that the statistic data on crime is incorrect and/or falsified? - Are you including dangers besides criminality (like motor vehicle collisions or stormy weather)? - Are you implying the police make the area unsafe (the police being, practically if not literally, the opp…

I mean that the statistics sometimes don't tell the whole story. The city might be "safe", statistically speaking, but nobody gets out of home because everybody is afraid and tries to avoid public spaces as much as possible. So you have a whole generation being raised inside apartments and closed spaces basically, this was the high price I was talking about.

I.e., "the number of muggings is low only because nobody goes outside where they would get mugged. Offense isn't low; defense is just high."

Re: Violent crime is dropping fast in the U.S. – even if Americans don't believe it

#80

Post by NickM »

It is really scary that peoples' perceptions of reality seem to be getting less accurate over time, especially in regards to important issues like crime levels and the health of the economy.

The success of democracy depends on people being able to elect effective representatives, and if people can't even accurately perceive what's happening around them in the world right now then I just don't see how we can expect people to make remotely informed decisions at the voting booth :-(

If I had to guess, I feel like this problem is stemming from social media, both due to it spreading misinformation and due to it acting as an echo chamber that amplifies negative sentiments in general. I don't know if this is really what's going on though or if there's some other explanation for this phenomenon. I wish there was something I could do.

Post reply on HN