The curious case of the fall in crime

http://www.economist.com/news/leaders/21582004-crime-plunging-rich-world-keep-it-down-governments-should-focus-prevention-not

by pg • 13 years ago

54 47 13 years ago

economist.com

blerp• 13 years ago

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.

abecedarius• 13 years ago

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-...

marcosdumay• 13 years ago

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.

gnosis• 13 years ago

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...

Vivtek3• 13 years ago

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.

swordswinger122• 13 years ago

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

zeckalpha• 13 years ago

Correlation != Causation?

dllthomas• 13 years ago

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.

revelation• 13 years ago

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.

shardling3• 13 years ago

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. :)

GuiA• 13 years ago

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...

derefr• 13 years ago

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.

temphn• 13 years ago

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.

shardling3• 13 years ago

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

brentm2• 13 years ago

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.

dark_void• 13 years ago

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.

rayiner• 13 years ago

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.

weeksie• 13 years ago

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).

gizmo686• 13 years ago

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.

rdouble• 13 years ago

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.

ollysb• 13 years ago

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.

johansch• 13 years ago

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.)

ChuckMcM• 13 years ago

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!

beagle33• 13 years ago

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?

moocowduckquack3• 13 years ago

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

beagle33• 13 years ago

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.

Zigurd2• 13 years ago

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.

tudorconstantin• 13 years ago

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

isaacn• 13 years ago

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.

brentm2• 13 years ago

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.

geden• 13 years ago

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

The curious case of the fall in crime

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