I’ve gone down that rabbit hole, looking over the FBI’s, statista’s, Brookings, and other published crime rates over the 14- years. Over that time the crime type fluctuations weren’t as drastic as the news or police departments would have you believe.
As an example here are the homicide rates for that time period:
Crime rates before George Floyd:
Homicide
Based on the FBI Uniform Crime Reports data provided in the search results, the homicide rates for major U.S. cities from 2010 to 2019 showed the following trends:
The national homicide rate declined from 4.8 per 100,000 people in 2010 to 4.5 per 100,000 in 2014.
After 2014, there was an upward trend in homicide rates, which began in 2015.
edited for lame-o formatting and removed some weird percentages from notes I didn’t finish looking up and therefore the stats weren’t complete and not referenced either.
Hm… I think it’s important to do this, to check all various people’s assumptions against the reality of how it works out, but there are so many confounding factors that I don’t think you can say this proves anything about how defunding police relates to increased crime.
There were so many foundational differences in society during the years of Covid lockdown that I don’t think you can extrapolate from them to assuming something happened (or didn’t happen) because of defunding police (if that is in fact what you’re saying).
You’re limiting it to homicides, which probably behave differently from a lot of other crimes. Looking at all crimes or all violent crimes, and seeing if there’s a consistent pattern, might be a really useful thing.
I don’t think there was enough reform, on a national scale, in the wake of BLM to say that it would have had an impact.
You’re aggregating together all localities, when they had very different types and degrees of reform, if they had any at all.
There’s so much individual difference in reporting that you’re going to get all kinds of artifacts when you aggregate it all together on a global scale.
A lot of the roots of crime exist totally separate from policing. IMO there is sort of a minimum standard of policing you have to meet, so that people will understand that it’s pretty reliable that they’ll get in trouble if they do something wrong, and as long as you’ve met that standard, the amount of crime you have will depend on socioeconomic factors much more than anything the police do “better” or “worse”.
I do think that using the BLM reforms as a way to get at what the impact of reforms was would be a good thing. Maybe limit it to specific localities, see if there’s a pattern between particular types of reform and particular outcomes (both in terms of the police “improving” and in terms of the overall crime level changing). It would be a ton of work. Maybe you could limit to a few specific localities that did big reforms, and a few specific ones that didn’t, in similar cities over a similar time frame, and see if patterns emerge.
I do think it’s an important thing.
Your point about the media freaking out about “crime” in a way that’s totally divorced from any sense in which crime is increasing is absolutely true. That’s kind of a perennial feature of the media, though.
No. I have all different types of crimes. I just didn’t want to paste it all in here but they all follow the same pattern. And that’s why I went over the last 15 years of crime and not just now. The trends show that after 2015 things started to trend upward from larceny and thrift to homicide. I’m definitely going over averages because what else would I do? There’d be no point to going in and looking at individual municipalities. I think the average is to a pretty good job of explaining that defunding slave catchers didn’t really put a dent in the crime levels that the slave catchers would want you to believe.
The trends show that after 2015 things started to trend upward from larceny and thrift to homicide.
Yes, but why would you assume that has anything to do with police reform? It was infinitesimal before 2020 anyway, and once it started even to a small degree, it would have been mixed in with so many confounding factors that I’m not sure how much you could even get out of the analysis without a lot more detail and number-crunching. I would suspect that most of the trends you’re seeing throughout the entire time reflect underlying things in society and world events, and nothing to do with policing in any respect.
I’m definitely going over averages because what else would I do? There’d be no point to going in and looking at individual municipalities.
Why not? How is looking at the global average better than breaking it down to municipalities that did a lot of police reform, and ones that didn’t, and comparing the trends between the two (during the same time period to reduce the impact of other confounding factors)? That, to me, sounds like the precise exact opposite of “no point to.” That sounds like a better way to do the analysis.
I think the average is to a pretty good job of explaining that defunding slave catchers didn’t really put a dent in the crime levels that the slave catchers would want you to believe.
Oh, yeah. Got it. That part makes sense. I sort of glossed over things by saying “you’re going to get more crime” if you defund the police… it’s a lot more complex than that. The point that I guess I was trying to make, was that the basic function of policing (deterring crime) is something you want to have in your society. If that’s not what the police are doing, then fix that, don’t “punish” them but keep them around in the same role just after you have “punished” them.
But yeah, if you were saying that I was feeding into a stereotype that police reform always increases crime, you’re 100% right. I should have made a more nuanced point and figured out a more nuanced way to say it. What I literally said, is often not true (in my non-data-backed opinion).
I’ve gone down that rabbit hole, looking over the FBI’s, statista’s, Brookings, and other published crime rates over the 14- years. Over that time the crime type fluctuations weren’t as drastic as the news or police departments would have you believe.
As an example here are the homicide rates for that time period:
Crime rates before George Floyd:
Crime rates after GF:
edited for lame-o formatting and removed some weird percentages from notes I didn’t finish looking up and therefore the stats weren’t complete and not referenced either.
Hm… I think it’s important to do this, to check all various people’s assumptions against the reality of how it works out, but there are so many confounding factors that I don’t think you can say this proves anything about how defunding police relates to increased crime.
I do think that using the BLM reforms as a way to get at what the impact of reforms was would be a good thing. Maybe limit it to specific localities, see if there’s a pattern between particular types of reform and particular outcomes (both in terms of the police “improving” and in terms of the overall crime level changing). It would be a ton of work. Maybe you could limit to a few specific localities that did big reforms, and a few specific ones that didn’t, in similar cities over a similar time frame, and see if patterns emerge.
I do think it’s an important thing.
Your point about the media freaking out about “crime” in a way that’s totally divorced from any sense in which crime is increasing is absolutely true. That’s kind of a perennial feature of the media, though.
No. I have all different types of crimes. I just didn’t want to paste it all in here but they all follow the same pattern. And that’s why I went over the last 15 years of crime and not just now. The trends show that after 2015 things started to trend upward from larceny and thrift to homicide. I’m definitely going over averages because what else would I do? There’d be no point to going in and looking at individual municipalities. I think the average is to a pretty good job of explaining that defunding slave catchers didn’t really put a dent in the crime levels that the slave catchers would want you to believe.
Yes, but why would you assume that has anything to do with police reform? It was infinitesimal before 2020 anyway, and once it started even to a small degree, it would have been mixed in with so many confounding factors that I’m not sure how much you could even get out of the analysis without a lot more detail and number-crunching. I would suspect that most of the trends you’re seeing throughout the entire time reflect underlying things in society and world events, and nothing to do with policing in any respect.
Why not? How is looking at the global average better than breaking it down to municipalities that did a lot of police reform, and ones that didn’t, and comparing the trends between the two (during the same time period to reduce the impact of other confounding factors)? That, to me, sounds like the precise exact opposite of “no point to.” That sounds like a better way to do the analysis.
Why do you think that?
I’m just saying police reform doesn’t really seem to have much to do with crime rates. So may as well reform!
Oh, yeah. Got it. That part makes sense. I sort of glossed over things by saying “you’re going to get more crime” if you defund the police… it’s a lot more complex than that. The point that I guess I was trying to make, was that the basic function of policing (deterring crime) is something you want to have in your society. If that’s not what the police are doing, then fix that, don’t “punish” them but keep them around in the same role just after you have “punished” them.
But yeah, if you were saying that I was feeding into a stereotype that police reform always increases crime, you’re 100% right. I should have made a more nuanced point and figured out a more nuanced way to say it. What I literally said, is often not true (in my non-data-backed opinion).
Yea, I can get on board with that. There’s defo room for reform. They seem to disagree but that’s another story.