The utility of comparing cities of 25,000 with ones having hundreds of thousands or millions of residents seems limited. Indeed, the whole concept of ranking places using one-year data, especially given the wide variation with respect to reporting statistics, is sick. Every one of us has a stake in reducing crime everywhere.
Pleasant to have another guest post that I genuinely enjoyed a lot. I think that makes 2 now?
"well, you see, if we don't report the crime, it didn't actually happen" I think perverts many aspects of the criminal justice process...and while I doubt cities explicitly Goodhart these rankings (it's not like US News and World Report's college rankings), the incentive is certainly there. Shoplifting is an interesting example - glad to see it is indeed not frequently reported, I'm not crazy. Everybody Knows it totally happens a ton in SF, but it rarely enters official data cause Everybody Knows also that it's so difficult to get any kind of restitution (forget actual prosecution)...so it's easy to claim there's No Evidence of any such crime wave. Which is quite maddening as a retail worker who's gotten used to ten-fingered discounts being a daily part of life one can do nothing about.
Wrt auto theft, it's also interesting to note that's apparently the most-frequently reported crime to the FBI. Wonder if it has anything to do with our extensive system of records-keeping and surveillance on all things car-related. [obligatory reference to Matt's crusade against tinted windows and illegible plates]
"Wonder if it has anything to do with our extensive system of records-keeping and surveillance on all things car-related". I think it's as simple as it being required to file an insurance claim.
What would the world look like if all run-ins with the healthcare system required filing insurance claims also?...though I guess we'd have to get to mandatory/universal coverage first, for an equivalence to the automotive situation. HIPAA probably also has implications for data-gathering off such reporting. Still, in the existing world, I guess I'd naively assume higher report rates for bodily-injury crimes like assault. (The whole "crime data is only accurate for homicides" thing, minus an OOM or something...)
Ugh..... I really didn't see any evidence that the data was flawed nor does the lack of data mean the collected data was flawed, or even necessarily invalidate an analysis, it just limits its usefulness.
If "a big If" we are to assume there was no bias in the collection of data or even categorization of data then it is possible to use, even incomplete data to draw conclusions regarding what the existing data is telling you, even while it tells you, you need more and consistent data collection methods to be more certain.
As to those cities which choose not to report their data, then a reasonable person could conclude that it is either a lack of effort or that entity has something they would rather people not know. With these two conclusions a reasonable person may choose not to move to that city or municipality. So in fact the lack or absence of data may be a very valid method of rankings.
As to Bessemer Alabama not reporting for 2022 after an awful 2021.
"There is a real cost to publishing bad rankings, especially for a small city like Bessemer, which has been labeled as the most dangerous place in the United States. Hopefully smart readers will understand the flaws of these rankings and ignore them now and into the future. "
It is highly unlikely that Bessemer had a sudden dramatic reversal of criminal activity from 2021 to 2022. If they, they would have been the first ones to tell you in 2022.
In this case only a fool would ignore the available data, instead what you should do is use it as a guidepost to help you evaluate possible courses of action, visit the city, talk to the residents and then look for other sources of information to help guide you.
"then a reasonable person could conclude that it is either a lack of effort or that entity has something they would rather people not know"
I've dug into this data and often the reasons are just more banal. Many of the biggest cities are having a helluva time transitioning to the FBI's new crime reporting system and have stopped reporting for that reason. The smallest PDs have as few as 2 or 3 officers and just don't have the resources or training to report. Other jurisdictions are just sloppy or don't care.
That may be true as well, though this still does not invalidate the data which is collected. What could be said is that among cities which report, these cities have more or fewer crimes per capita.
There are more distortions than you might be aware of. I think what you're saying would be true if crime reports were missed more-or-less at random, but trends in reporting are not random.
In general, communities with more crime tend to have a lower reporting rate - picture a high-crime urban neighborhood where there's not a lot of police trust and taking matters into your own hands is respected. Meanwhile the safest neighborhoods often have little crime, but reporting norms are very high. So those two trends can counteract each other and give misleading totals
Apart from that, different jurisdictions can have very different definitions of each category of crime and whether it's considered violent. For example, for burglary, whether it was at a residence or other building, whether it was at day or night, whether the building was occupied, value taken and whether the intruder carried a weapon all impact how any particular state defines whether a crime was burglary and whether or not it was a "violent crime"
Simple assault is another good example of a crime with reporting and recording differences. Simple assault is usually defined as threats or actions that make someone fear for their safety but that don't actually hurt them. But you can imagine many neighborhoods where people yelling or shoving each other attracts no attention at all, and others where that will get the police to show up right away.
I’m probably missing something obvious here, but how can you know what percent of crimes are reported without knowing how much crime actually occurred? If you do know that why no use those numbers? If you don’t how can there be a percent ?
I forget the details, but I think the FBI just conducts various kinds of annual surveys. Judging by the noise year-to-year, they probably aren't especially accurate:
Okay fine no list. But you're underplaying how important good crime stats are to people living in an area or looking to move to one.
How many people decided to avoid a neighborhood because they saw a liquor store they didn't like, or a group of people from a race they didn't like? People will absolutely resort to racial and other biases in the absence of better data.
I get that it's a very difficult data collection exercise, but is NeighborhoodScout worse than "I saw an abandoned gas station and that scares me"? I'm not so sure!
I had always thought the main issue with “safest city” and “most dangerous city” lists was that they left out the biggest factor in safety and danger by focusing only on crime. I want to know my chance of being killed, and I don’t really care whether I am killed by crime or by car crash. Interesting to know that these lists are really bad even just on crime!
Off topic completely, but I think I need to say this to you and don't know a better way to do this. It's ok to say "my bad" regarding your willingness to engage Richard Hanania. I absolutely do think there are some bad faith commentators out there who are saying or insinuating that you support or gave positive feedback to Richard's most odious views even before the latest revelations came out.
Having said that, I've cringed at commentators (including yourself) giving voice or engaging with this guy even before the latest revelations. I honestly did not know who this guy was until the Russia invasion of Ukraine and then suddenly he popped up in my Twitter mentions as someone saying Russia is going to easily conquer Ukraine. So far, not so terrible; a whole lot of people on all sides of the political spectrum thought Russia would win easily. But once he popped in my Twitter feed, I started wondering who this guy was. And immediately it became clear that his worldview was coming from a pretty troubling place. For example, it seemed really clear to me that he thinks we failed in Afghanistan because we were somehow too committed to advancing girls' rights and somehow too committed to feminism or something. I say this to be kind of critical of you and say it wasn't that hard to discern even from this published writings that he had some problematic views.
But I'll say these are things I concluded or was able to discern from reading his writings. It was not necessarily explicitly said verbatim as I wrote it. So there is sort of a "plausible deniability" aspect to what he wrote if that makes sense. So I do understand to a certain degree where you are coming from. You are committed to the idea that you need to engage with people who have policy positions and beliefs opposed to your own. Sometimes those people have what appear to be troubling world views, but it's not a 100% clear how troubling so in the meantime maybe it's worth listening to what they have to say when their more troubling worldviews aren't front a center a part of their arguments or when it is seemingly not relevant to a topic being discussed.
But then new revelations like the latest ones come out and make clear that a) his troubling worldviews are much much more troubling than we first thought and they were fairly troubling in the first place b) it's clearly a much more front of center part of their general worldview on a variety of topics.
Which is why I think my conclusion is it's ok to give a mea culpa. I do think you were a little too willing to listen to someone who's views were probably not worth platforming or engaging with. But again, it comes from a general place I can get behind which is willingness to engage with different viewpoints. But now that you "how deep the rot is" so to speak, you can say I was little too willing to engage with this person and shouldn't have been as credulous and willing to do so.
Also worth noting that a lot of the things that are interesting about Hanania’s work are also signals that you probably shouldn’t be friends with him. He’s the conservative writer who’s probably most clear-eyed and honest about the personal characteristics of the typical American conservative, the real motives behind a lot of conservative attitudes about social issues (including his own), and the legal/institutional implications of what a real policy “war on wokeness” would entail.
But anybody who can see and understand all of those things and still align with the contemporary American conservative movement is showing you that… they’re just kind of a bad person.
Hanania had already published deeply racist material before being "doxxed." Like...I don't know why respectable liberals pundits allowed him to be part of their circle to begin with. The guy advocated for mass incarceration of black men without cause just a few months ago! Following well-spoken racists doesn't make you heterodox, it makes you an asshole.
I suppose it's okay because he praises Asians' IQ to drive a wedge between them and black people? Gotta own the DEI woke libs, right?
I am always skeptical of Top # Cities In America lists because everyone has different values on how to judge the best cities, and from my experience, the top two criteria that I most see actual people cite are family (which is individualized for every person) and weather (preference of which is about as subjective as it gets).
Normally I'm fine with reading this in a Twitter thread format, but this might be a case where it would be also nice to see it in just regular text somewhere--perhaps here some time!
“…a nationally published columnist and not just some rando on twitter”
Who, according to Wikipedia,
“…was suspended without pay from the LA Times for sockpuppeting on his blog "The Golden State". Hiltzik admitted to posting under false names on multiple sites, using the pseudonym "Mikekoshi" to criticize commentators Hugh Hewitt and Patrick Frey…”
And,
“… he encouraged public humiliation of unvaccinated people who died from COVID-19.”
I think the situation is somewhat overwrought. If I saw an article written by someone and commented on it, I would hope that doesn't mean that I have read everything they have ever written, much less agreed with it.
That being said, I was disappointed that he turned to this as a defense:
"My view (one of my most woke opinions!) is that racism is deeply entwined with conservative politics in the United States of America so if you want to talk to conservatives about anything you're going to be dealing with some people who have problematic views."
Does he not see how someone to his left would say the same thing about him and use his links to Hanania as evidence thereof?!?
I thought that was a very interesting point he raised. Have to think about that a bit. I do wonder whether Matt is willing to do the same thing with antisemites, who appear to have some representation in the US, and not only on the right.
Twitter doesn't work for me since I deactivated, so I assume this is about Hanania? I love Matt, but I always thought he was too jovial with an obvious racist (yes, it was obvious pre-doxxing). You can "know your enemy" without politely going back and forth with them like they're an esteemed colleague and not a wannabe George Wallace. Steve Sailer uses plenty of big words too and I suppose he's been correct about something once in his life, right? But Matt knows the guy is a kooky white supremacist so he ignores him.
The tweet just loaded while I was typing this, and no, I don't think Matt is "best friends" with Hanania. I just don't think creeps like him should be treated with respect and good faith on Twitter. It's okay to avoid bad people!
Just for the record, Matt didn't always ignore Steve Sailer. He's referenced in Matt's early books, and I expect the next one to fall will be Razib Khan, once the wider community realizes what he was up to earlier in his career.
My takeaway is that we need better crime data, presented in a way that makes sense to people. Clearly, if presenting lists, irrespective of how accurate they are, is a good strategy for getting clicks, then there's a demand for that data that isn't being met with good data.
If you think about it, just the fact that we have police forces around the country that don't bother to report data doesn't sound like a good starting point. My own inclination would be to consider any such community as one to be avoided.
according to my map, Illinois, Nebraska, Mississippi. I think Florida and Washington, DC would be extremely low, also, except a reporter got their crime data using the freedom of information act. None of the biggest cities in Pennsylvania have reported since 2019. But most of the departments that "don't bother reporting" are just teeny tiny. There are 18,000 PDs in the country, the median has 5 employees (not officers, employees). Reporting crime to the FBI is just not a priority for a department that small
Somebody print this bumper sticker: consolidate police departments to save money and reduce crime!
Seriously, it's surprising this doesn't get more political traction. If all policing was done at the county level or above, it seems like that would be categorically good?
I always forget that I'm only talking about murder data here. General crime data has much worse gaps in reporting. Murder is the most reported crime and even it is underreported.
Yeah. In a way I'm surprised it's not even more though, since we have: 19,519 cities, 16,360 towns, and 3,031 counties. There are also state agencies, university depts, Native American reservations, etc
Wait so the average county only has five towns and six cities? I assumed it would be more than that, but I guess there are probably a good number of small west Texas counties with zero of each.
“Ignore” is bad advice. “Discount” or something similar is better. Just turning away without reading and analyzing data that does not support your narrative is done way too often these days l, leading to the press just producing comfort food for its biased readers.
Turning away from data because it doesn’t support your narrative is bad. But no one mentioned anything about a narrative here. Here the issue is turning away from data because it is known to be misleading.
No, you can't just discount bad analysis and hope that gets you somewhere good. Daniel Davies had a good post about this a very long time ago: https://blog.danieldavies.com/2004/05/
Feel like there should be a way to get this into secret congress. Attach a string to funding of something to require states track all deaths and provide cause of death. Once you get that database rolling, you can expand to cover other crimes.
I'm vaguely curious how many Slow Borers have ever entered a police report. I have done so exactly once (knock on wood).
Someone broke into my car about fifteen years ago. I was on a run in peak summer in Utah and, among other things, they stole my gatorade--a crime worse than murder.
Someone broke into my car and stole my laptop when I was in Beverley Hills. I obviously didn't have any real hope of it being recovered but I had to file a police report so my insurance would cover it.
While I realize most crimes are more about opportunity than maximizing value, I'm still a bit shocked that my Ford Fiesta got targeted in that location. Surely you're going to find something better than my old laptop if you do your smash and grab on the Lambo or whatever in the same parking lot?
Quite a few, actually. When I lived in a SFH in DC (described above, sold in 2016), my house was broken into multiple times and my detached garage a couple of times (bike/tools stolen). I was assaulted by a mentally ill woman who tried to pull me out of the driver's seat of my car. My wallet was stolen from the (locked) locker of my posh gym. I was involved in our Neighborhood Watch, and reporting such crimes was encouraged (didn't do me any good in terms of apprehension or getting my stuff back).
In NYC I was technically assaulted by a large man who shoved me hard in a park, but there were no cops around (thank goodness a kind dude distracted the mentally ill man so I could get away).
I feel similarly lucky. But these experiences have certainly affected my perception of my surroundings. I'm a 5'2" woman, in good shape for my (old!) age but it would be very easy for a normal- or large-sized person (as both of the people described above were) to hurt me if minded to do so.
I'm so sorry that some of your favorite places are now off-limits to visit with your daughter. As an urbanist and city planner, this is exactly what I worry about when people dismiss antisocial behavior in public spaces as a serious problem. I understand that these are complex and difficult problems, but the situation you describe is terrible for you and your family (and those institutions, and the city) and does nothing to help the mentally ill people on the streets.
I'm considering going to LA this fall with my young kid and I'm worried enough about mentally ill people that I'm sort of planning the trip around where I think they might be. Do you have any advice or popular places that should be avoided? How is Los Feliz / Griffith Park area nowadays?
Wow and thanks - sorry to pepper you with one more question but is it noticeably worse than it was in 2017, which is when I left? There were definitely some sketchballs bad then, too, mostly on certain streets, but you could run into them almost anywhere.
I have two friends I keep in touch with who still live in the general area, and one is prone to exaggerate in the negative direction and the other is prone to claim I'm being somehow "fooled by right-wingers" for even asking if crime has gotten worse there.
Just once for me: someone stole my rear license plate, which wasn't something that was even on my radar as a potential crime. Realistically the Baltimore police weren't going to pull me over for driving without a plate anyway, but I wanted to have some sort of proof to show while I waited on a replacement just in case.
The only other time I've been a victim of a crime I didn't report it. A friend from out of town was staying with us and forgot to lock the door when he got back late. A homeless guy was trying all the doors and tried to steal my friend's backpack. My friend caught him and shooed the guy out of the house, then woke me up to ask if we should call the police. I asked him whether the guy was still there, he said no and I said doesn't sound like the police can do anything then.
When my friend tells this story a lot of people say "you should've had a gun!" Which seems to me like a crazy reaction. The situation was resolved without escalating into violence, whereas if a gun had been pulled it'd have been guaranteed escalation.
Same thing happened to me. They actually replaced it with another plate and fortunately I noticed it the same day and reported it. I would have hated to have been pulled over after someone committed armed robbery with my license plate.
I moved into the City of Detroit in the late 90s. Within six months our garage had been broken into and in a separate incident one of our cars sitting in the driveway had the air bag stolen. In both cases I filled out a police report so i could file an insurance claim.
The crimes themselves, along with the absolute indifference and inaction about them by the police, were a large part of the reason that we moved out of the city and into the suburbs just over a year after first moving in.
Working at the US attorney's office a year or so later I did get to play a very small role in prosecuting the ring leaders of the air bag theft organization.
Some grabbed the iPad out of my hand while I was getting off the bus in Los Angeles and I chased him yelling “stop thief”, and a police officer completed the chase and got it back. I think a report was entered, and I recall the cop saying “don’t worry it’s probably his third strike and he’ll be away for life” or something, which didn’t actually make me feel better.
I'm a bit surprised that grabbing an iPad is a felony and the cop was probably being more flippant than factual, but I just want to point out that that's likely the tip of the iceberg as as that person goes. Who knows how many people he's hurt or lives he's derailed. A guy who will rip an iPad out of a stranger's is pretty likely to financially support the drug trade, to break into houses, destroy property while trying to rip out copper wires or catalytic converters. 3 strikes is a lot! If you living in free society actually matters/mattered to that criminal, all he has to do is not try to destroy said society!
Whether a theft is a felony or misdemeanor has a lot to do with the value of what's stolen. A $1000 ipad is probably going to cross the threshold for felony in most jurisdictions.
Forgive me for derailing this to a completely unimportant direction but: how do you determine the valuation for an item with dynamic price hovering on the threshold ?? First in terms of time (these things can lose value fast): is it the price purchased or At the time the crime was committed or by the time of the trial or what? Secondly is it some “market rate”
Or the retail listing ? Does it matter if the victim bought it used or at significant discount ?
I'm rusty on these things, so someone with better information can give a better answer. But it's basically the fair market value at the time of the theft.
How is that determined? Through evidence, which could include expert witnesses familiar with the market or some sort of sales data such as records of eBay sales of the same item at that time.
It is a question of fact for the "trier of fact" such as a jury or if there is no jury, the judge to decide. So both sides, the prosecution and defense, could present their evidence and then the trier decides. Much of the time it would not be a contested issue and the value is stipulated to.
It mostly doesn't matter what the victim paid, if anything, they could have received it as a gift and therefore paid nothing. On the other hand, if they paid $X that morning in an arm's length transaction that is at least evidence, not necessarily conclusive, that X is the market value.
What was described was larceny using force, i.e., robbery. Robbery is always a felony - the degree of seriousness depends not on the value of the property but on the level of force or threat used or available.
You know I’m relatively on the law and order side on these threads but Getting someone a life sentence for committing petty crime three times is a gross miscarriage of Justice. Life sentences should be reserved for killers.
Forceful robbery seems like more than a petty crime. I'll give it to you that Ken's description is a pretty light-touch use of force, and quite possibly DA's wouldn't charge it that way for just the reason you're saying. But still...maybe don't go out of your way to commit a felony if you've already been convicted of two previous one?
And it may be punished by prison! But even robbery at gun point shouldn’t merit a lifetime sentence ! The punishment should fit it’s crime! A pattern of criminal behavior is good consideration to give the felon a punishment towards the legal maximum but never beyond that!
Sure, life is probably too long even for a patter. But the pattern is probably more important than the particulars of the specific crime, simply because it's the single most predictive element.
The 3 strikes law aims to address that predictiveness: 3 time felons seldom reform, and statistically speaking, multiple felons are responsible for a hugely disproportionate share of all crime, bc/ the crimes they've been convicted of are usually the tip of the iceberg. Whether that's unjust has an element of subjectivity.
Someone grabbing an ipad is probably primarily just trying to support a drug addiction. It would be more cost efficient both in financial and human costs to find a different solution than lock him up for life.
I recognize treating drug addiction is complex, but if we could do a better job of that we could reduce a lot of low level crimes and improve our stock of human capital at a much lower cost than long time imprisonment.
I think we could make some real headway in crime if we could figure out a way to make opioid addiction as cheap as alcohol addiction. Nobody snatches ipads to buy rotgut vodka.
No one really knows how to find another solution, and most drug addicts don't resort to strong-arm robbery and violent crime. I'm all for it if you know a good way.
From what I understand, the price of heroin and meth has plummeted 50-90% over just the past 5 years. Meth used to be cooked up in American labs, but now much more efficient, cheaper labor and larger Mexican labs produce it and ship it north. Heroin's way cheaper because fentanyl is basically a multiplier on heroin potency.
So I think we are much closer to them being as cheap as alcohol, if not actually there already.
I have had my house broken into twice and called the police both times. They asked me a bunch of questions and took notes. Is that filing a police report? There was follow up in both cases. The second time involved dusting for fingerprints and showing both me and my daughter a photo line up. They came so close to arresting someone for the crime each time, but as far as I know never got there.
I did one when someone broke in to my car about 15 years ago and stole $200 I had received as Christmas present the night before at a family event (I had accidently left the money in the car).
Still very suspicious the only time in my entire life my car was broken into was the night I received the cash - literally have never had more than $20 in the car before or since and never been broken into (that night it was pillaged).
in NYC it was enough hassle that I'd probably not do it again unless I needed the insurance paperwork or something really serious had happened. But for basic stolen stuff, there's just no point.
I mean, without knowing about the longitudinal trend in your neighborhood the old people aren't self-evidently wrong here. Leaving your car doors unlocked and *not* having rotten teens ransack them for valuables at 4:42 AM is also a thing people do in various places.
Many years ago I moved from Atlanta to Boston with all my possessions in a Honda Accord. The night before I left on this drive, someone stole my car stereo. I’m normally against any kind of corporal punishment, but I may have fantasized about some things during that long drive.
No police report, though. Once filed a police report in New Orleans (lived Uptown, near Tulane) after a guy broke into my apartment while my girlfriend was asleep (I was already at work). Guy started robbing the place, realized she was there, thankfully took off.
Really confused by the crime reporting statistics. Do 25% of people whose car is stolen not call police? And I’m really surprised that domestic violence reporting is so high - I had always read victims may be reluctant/unable to report but it’s reported just as much as things like trespassing.
Unless you have insurance that will make good your loss, low level property and vandalism are likely not seen as worth your time in reporting, especially in a larger city where they're really not going to be able to do much about catching the perpetrator of getting your stuff back.
Coincidentally, I just saw a story about a woman who had just moved to my town and had all her earthly possessions in her car. It was stolen, and she didn’t report it!! Or she didn’t until after asking for advice on a Facebook group. It was stunning.
Maybe Democrats should do an everything bagel crime bill consisting of inter alia, a) a national Police Academy b) big money in NAS for crime, policing, prosecution, prison, social science research, c) money for police departments to report crimes according to a uniform methodology d) subsidies for technology like position trackers for people on parole/conditional release (useful for people awaiting hearing for asylum and irregular entry cases, too), surveillance and traffic control cameras, DNA database of everyone passing through the justice systems e) more prosecutors, court personnel, and police officers including para-police officers that handle administrative and most traffic and public order events.
I don't think that bill would qualify as an "everything bagel," because all those things are pretty closely related to crime and enforcement. The EB version would include a bunch of green policies, arcane rules about procurement (e.g., small and minority-owned business requirements, overwrought bidding processes), maybe some childcare stuff, etc.
Separately, if such a bill led to better (increased) reporting, you can just imagine the dumb attack ads: "...and Senator So-and-So championed the TK Crime Act, which led to a 30% increase in violent crime nationwide."
ALL ABOUT FLAWED DATA ON A DIFFERENT THREAT TO QUALITY OF LIFE/LIFE ITSELF :
https://www.spectator.co.uk/article/science-fiction-the-crisis-in-research/
The utility of comparing cities of 25,000 with ones having hundreds of thousands or millions of residents seems limited. Indeed, the whole concept of ranking places using one-year data, especially given the wide variation with respect to reporting statistics, is sick. Every one of us has a stake in reducing crime everywhere.
Pleasant to have another guest post that I genuinely enjoyed a lot. I think that makes 2 now?
"well, you see, if we don't report the crime, it didn't actually happen" I think perverts many aspects of the criminal justice process...and while I doubt cities explicitly Goodhart these rankings (it's not like US News and World Report's college rankings), the incentive is certainly there. Shoplifting is an interesting example - glad to see it is indeed not frequently reported, I'm not crazy. Everybody Knows it totally happens a ton in SF, but it rarely enters official data cause Everybody Knows also that it's so difficult to get any kind of restitution (forget actual prosecution)...so it's easy to claim there's No Evidence of any such crime wave. Which is quite maddening as a retail worker who's gotten used to ten-fingered discounts being a daily part of life one can do nothing about.
Wrt auto theft, it's also interesting to note that's apparently the most-frequently reported crime to the FBI. Wonder if it has anything to do with our extensive system of records-keeping and surveillance on all things car-related. [obligatory reference to Matt's crusade against tinted windows and illegible plates]
"Wonder if it has anything to do with our extensive system of records-keeping and surveillance on all things car-related". I think it's as simple as it being required to file an insurance claim.
What would the world look like if all run-ins with the healthcare system required filing insurance claims also?...though I guess we'd have to get to mandatory/universal coverage first, for an equivalence to the automotive situation. HIPAA probably also has implications for data-gathering off such reporting. Still, in the existing world, I guess I'd naively assume higher report rates for bodily-injury crimes like assault. (The whole "crime data is only accurate for homicides" thing, minus an OOM or something...)
Ugh..... I really didn't see any evidence that the data was flawed nor does the lack of data mean the collected data was flawed, or even necessarily invalidate an analysis, it just limits its usefulness.
If "a big If" we are to assume there was no bias in the collection of data or even categorization of data then it is possible to use, even incomplete data to draw conclusions regarding what the existing data is telling you, even while it tells you, you need more and consistent data collection methods to be more certain.
As to those cities which choose not to report their data, then a reasonable person could conclude that it is either a lack of effort or that entity has something they would rather people not know. With these two conclusions a reasonable person may choose not to move to that city or municipality. So in fact the lack or absence of data may be a very valid method of rankings.
As to Bessemer Alabama not reporting for 2022 after an awful 2021.
"There is a real cost to publishing bad rankings, especially for a small city like Bessemer, which has been labeled as the most dangerous place in the United States. Hopefully smart readers will understand the flaws of these rankings and ignore them now and into the future. "
It is highly unlikely that Bessemer had a sudden dramatic reversal of criminal activity from 2021 to 2022. If they, they would have been the first ones to tell you in 2022.
In this case only a fool would ignore the available data, instead what you should do is use it as a guidepost to help you evaluate possible courses of action, visit the city, talk to the residents and then look for other sources of information to help guide you.
"then a reasonable person could conclude that it is either a lack of effort or that entity has something they would rather people not know"
I've dug into this data and often the reasons are just more banal. Many of the biggest cities are having a helluva time transitioning to the FBI's new crime reporting system and have stopped reporting for that reason. The smallest PDs have as few as 2 or 3 officers and just don't have the resources or training to report. Other jurisdictions are just sloppy or don't care.
That may be true as well, though this still does not invalidate the data which is collected. What could be said is that among cities which report, these cities have more or fewer crimes per capita.
There are more distortions than you might be aware of. I think what you're saying would be true if crime reports were missed more-or-less at random, but trends in reporting are not random.
In general, communities with more crime tend to have a lower reporting rate - picture a high-crime urban neighborhood where there's not a lot of police trust and taking matters into your own hands is respected. Meanwhile the safest neighborhoods often have little crime, but reporting norms are very high. So those two trends can counteract each other and give misleading totals
Apart from that, different jurisdictions can have very different definitions of each category of crime and whether it's considered violent. For example, for burglary, whether it was at a residence or other building, whether it was at day or night, whether the building was occupied, value taken and whether the intruder carried a weapon all impact how any particular state defines whether a crime was burglary and whether or not it was a "violent crime"
Simple assault is another good example of a crime with reporting and recording differences. Simple assault is usually defined as threats or actions that make someone fear for their safety but that don't actually hurt them. But you can imagine many neighborhoods where people yelling or shoving each other attracts no attention at all, and others where that will get the police to show up right away.
I’m probably missing something obvious here, but how can you know what percent of crimes are reported without knowing how much crime actually occurred? If you do know that why no use those numbers? If you don’t how can there be a percent ?
I forget the details, but I think the FBI just conducts various kinds of annual surveys. Judging by the noise year-to-year, they probably aren't especially accurate:
https://bjs.ojp.gov/content/pub/pdf/cv20sst.pdf
Okay fine no list. But you're underplaying how important good crime stats are to people living in an area or looking to move to one.
How many people decided to avoid a neighborhood because they saw a liquor store they didn't like, or a group of people from a race they didn't like? People will absolutely resort to racial and other biases in the absence of better data.
I get that it's a very difficult data collection exercise, but is NeighborhoodScout worse than "I saw an abandoned gas station and that scares me"? I'm not so sure!
I had always thought the main issue with “safest city” and “most dangerous city” lists was that they left out the biggest factor in safety and danger by focusing only on crime. I want to know my chance of being killed, and I don’t really care whether I am killed by crime or by car crash. Interesting to know that these lists are really bad even just on crime!
Off topic completely, but I think I need to say this to you and don't know a better way to do this. It's ok to say "my bad" regarding your willingness to engage Richard Hanania. I absolutely do think there are some bad faith commentators out there who are saying or insinuating that you support or gave positive feedback to Richard's most odious views even before the latest revelations came out.
Having said that, I've cringed at commentators (including yourself) giving voice or engaging with this guy even before the latest revelations. I honestly did not know who this guy was until the Russia invasion of Ukraine and then suddenly he popped up in my Twitter mentions as someone saying Russia is going to easily conquer Ukraine. So far, not so terrible; a whole lot of people on all sides of the political spectrum thought Russia would win easily. But once he popped in my Twitter feed, I started wondering who this guy was. And immediately it became clear that his worldview was coming from a pretty troubling place. For example, it seemed really clear to me that he thinks we failed in Afghanistan because we were somehow too committed to advancing girls' rights and somehow too committed to feminism or something. I say this to be kind of critical of you and say it wasn't that hard to discern even from this published writings that he had some problematic views.
But I'll say these are things I concluded or was able to discern from reading his writings. It was not necessarily explicitly said verbatim as I wrote it. So there is sort of a "plausible deniability" aspect to what he wrote if that makes sense. So I do understand to a certain degree where you are coming from. You are committed to the idea that you need to engage with people who have policy positions and beliefs opposed to your own. Sometimes those people have what appear to be troubling world views, but it's not a 100% clear how troubling so in the meantime maybe it's worth listening to what they have to say when their more troubling worldviews aren't front a center a part of their arguments or when it is seemingly not relevant to a topic being discussed.
But then new revelations like the latest ones come out and make clear that a) his troubling worldviews are much much more troubling than we first thought and they were fairly troubling in the first place b) it's clearly a much more front of center part of their general worldview on a variety of topics.
Which is why I think my conclusion is it's ok to give a mea culpa. I do think you were a little too willing to listen to someone who's views were probably not worth platforming or engaging with. But again, it comes from a general place I can get behind which is willingness to engage with different viewpoints. But now that you "how deep the rot is" so to speak, you can say I was little too willing to engage with this person and shouldn't have been as credulous and willing to do so.
Also worth noting that a lot of the things that are interesting about Hanania’s work are also signals that you probably shouldn’t be friends with him. He’s the conservative writer who’s probably most clear-eyed and honest about the personal characteristics of the typical American conservative, the real motives behind a lot of conservative attitudes about social issues (including his own), and the legal/institutional implications of what a real policy “war on wokeness” would entail.
But anybody who can see and understand all of those things and still align with the contemporary American conservative movement is showing you that… they’re just kind of a bad person.
Hanania had already published deeply racist material before being "doxxed." Like...I don't know why respectable liberals pundits allowed him to be part of their circle to begin with. The guy advocated for mass incarceration of black men without cause just a few months ago! Following well-spoken racists doesn't make you heterodox, it makes you an asshole.
I suppose it's okay because he praises Asians' IQ to drive a wedge between them and black people? Gotta own the DEI woke libs, right?
When your initial defense is "I always knew he was racist," it's time to touch grass and reevaluate who you choose to interact with online.
I am always skeptical of Top # Cities In America lists because everyone has different values on how to judge the best cities, and from my experience, the top two criteria that I most see actual people cite are family (which is individualized for every person) and weather (preference of which is about as subjective as it gets).
Pour one out for our host today. He's fighting the good fight on Twitter against those who are using bad faith to attack him.
I thought his reply to Jeet Heer was a good one. Jeet is trying to pin something on Matt, but doesn't really have the goods and is reaching anyway.
On twitter, there are no good fights, only nonsense.
Some days I start to suspect that social media was really invented by the aliens in that Twilight Zone episode "The Monsters Are Due on Maple Street".
The thread where he clearly laid out his views:
https://twitter.com/mattyglesias/status/1688515051920019456
Normally I'm fine with reading this in a Twitter thread format, but this might be a case where it would be also nice to see it in just regular text somewhere--perhaps here some time!
It's sad and a little jarring that the guy calling Yglesias a "fucking idiot" is a nationally published columnist and not just some rando on twitter.
“…a nationally published columnist and not just some rando on twitter”
Who, according to Wikipedia,
“…was suspended without pay from the LA Times for sockpuppeting on his blog "The Golden State". Hiltzik admitted to posting under false names on multiple sites, using the pseudonym "Mikekoshi" to criticize commentators Hugh Hewitt and Patrick Frey…”
And,
“… he encouraged public humiliation of unvaccinated people who died from COVID-19.”
A real prince.
The profession that Matt has said has jarred him before is the behavior of college professors on Twitter.
I think the situation is somewhat overwrought. If I saw an article written by someone and commented on it, I would hope that doesn't mean that I have read everything they have ever written, much less agreed with it.
That being said, I was disappointed that he turned to this as a defense:
"My view (one of my most woke opinions!) is that racism is deeply entwined with conservative politics in the United States of America so if you want to talk to conservatives about anything you're going to be dealing with some people who have problematic views."
Does he not see how someone to his left would say the same thing about him and use his links to Hanania as evidence thereof?!?
I thought that was a very interesting point he raised. Have to think about that a bit. I do wonder whether Matt is willing to do the same thing with antisemites, who appear to have some representation in the US, and not only on the right.
Twitter doesn't work for me since I deactivated, so I assume this is about Hanania? I love Matt, but I always thought he was too jovial with an obvious racist (yes, it was obvious pre-doxxing). You can "know your enemy" without politely going back and forth with them like they're an esteemed colleague and not a wannabe George Wallace. Steve Sailer uses plenty of big words too and I suppose he's been correct about something once in his life, right? But Matt knows the guy is a kooky white supremacist so he ignores him.
The tweet just loaded while I was typing this, and no, I don't think Matt is "best friends" with Hanania. I just don't think creeps like him should be treated with respect and good faith on Twitter. It's okay to avoid bad people!
Just for the record, Matt didn't always ignore Steve Sailer. He's referenced in Matt's early books, and I expect the next one to fall will be Razib Khan, once the wider community realizes what he was up to earlier in his career.
My takeaway is that we need better crime data, presented in a way that makes sense to people. Clearly, if presenting lists, irrespective of how accurate they are, is a good strategy for getting clicks, then there's a demand for that data that isn't being met with good data.
If you think about it, just the fact that we have police forces around the country that don't bother to report data doesn't sound like a good starting point. My own inclination would be to consider any such community as one to be avoided.
according to my map, Illinois, Nebraska, Mississippi. I think Florida and Washington, DC would be extremely low, also, except a reporter got their crime data using the freedom of information act. None of the biggest cities in Pennsylvania have reported since 2019. But most of the departments that "don't bother reporting" are just teeny tiny. There are 18,000 PDs in the country, the median has 5 employees (not officers, employees). Reporting crime to the FBI is just not a priority for a department that small
https://theusaindata.pythonanywhere.com/underreported_murders
Somebody print this bumper sticker: consolidate police departments to save money and reduce crime!
Seriously, it's surprising this doesn't get more political traction. If all policing was done at the county level or above, it seems like that would be categorically good?
Wish we could still edit:
I always forget that I'm only talking about murder data here. General crime data has much worse gaps in reporting. Murder is the most reported crime and even it is underreported.
"There are 18,000 PDs in the country, the median has 5 employees (not officers, employees)"
That seems like an issue to me. I understand that people want "local" policing, but this seems a little over the top.
Yeah. In a way I'm surprised it's not even more though, since we have: 19,519 cities, 16,360 towns, and 3,031 counties. There are also state agencies, university depts, Native American reservations, etc
There are also special jurisdiction police departments for airports, transit systems, ports, etc.
Wait so the average county only has five towns and six cities? I assumed it would be more than that, but I guess there are probably a good number of small west Texas counties with zero of each.
Something like 40% of Americans lived in unincorporated areas.
Median county population is 24,000, mean or average is about 100,000.
“Ignore” is bad advice. “Discount” or something similar is better. Just turning away without reading and analyzing data that does not support your narrative is done way too often these days l, leading to the press just producing comfort food for its biased readers.
Turning away from data because it doesn’t support your narrative is bad. But no one mentioned anything about a narrative here. Here the issue is turning away from data because it is known to be misleading.
No, you can't just discount bad analysis and hope that gets you somewhere good. Daniel Davies had a good post about this a very long time ago: https://blog.danieldavies.com/2004/05/
It’s pretty embarrassing and sad that the US doesn’t publish better crime data even though there is clearly a lot of demand for it.
Feel like there should be a way to get this into secret congress. Attach a string to funding of something to require states track all deaths and provide cause of death. Once you get that database rolling, you can expand to cover other crimes.
I'm vaguely curious how many Slow Borers have ever entered a police report. I have done so exactly once (knock on wood).
Someone broke into my car about fifteen years ago. I was on a run in peak summer in Utah and, among other things, they stole my gatorade--a crime worse than murder.
Three times, two car break-ins and one hit-and-run while I was on my bike. Twice, both in DC, the cop asked me out. Very awkward.
I had someone blow up my car when I was 18, I definitely filed a police report for that.
If we're being technical, they doused it in an accelerant and lit it on fire, but you know, same thing.
Someone broke into my car and stole my laptop when I was in Beverley Hills. I obviously didn't have any real hope of it being recovered but I had to file a police report so my insurance would cover it.
While I realize most crimes are more about opportunity than maximizing value, I'm still a bit shocked that my Ford Fiesta got targeted in that location. Surely you're going to find something better than my old laptop if you do your smash and grab on the Lambo or whatever in the same parking lot?
Quite a few, actually. When I lived in a SFH in DC (described above, sold in 2016), my house was broken into multiple times and my detached garage a couple of times (bike/tools stolen). I was assaulted by a mentally ill woman who tried to pull me out of the driver's seat of my car. My wallet was stolen from the (locked) locker of my posh gym. I was involved in our Neighborhood Watch, and reporting such crimes was encouraged (didn't do me any good in terms of apprehension or getting my stuff back).
In NYC I was technically assaulted by a large man who shoved me hard in a park, but there were no cops around (thank goodness a kind dude distracted the mentally ill man so I could get away).
I feel similarly lucky. But these experiences have certainly affected my perception of my surroundings. I'm a 5'2" woman, in good shape for my (old!) age but it would be very easy for a normal- or large-sized person (as both of the people described above were) to hurt me if minded to do so.
I'm so sorry that some of your favorite places are now off-limits to visit with your daughter. As an urbanist and city planner, this is exactly what I worry about when people dismiss antisocial behavior in public spaces as a serious problem. I understand that these are complex and difficult problems, but the situation you describe is terrible for you and your family (and those institutions, and the city) and does nothing to help the mentally ill people on the streets.
I'm considering going to LA this fall with my young kid and I'm worried enough about mentally ill people that I'm sort of planning the trip around where I think they might be. Do you have any advice or popular places that should be avoided? How is Los Feliz / Griffith Park area nowadays?
Wow and thanks - sorry to pepper you with one more question but is it noticeably worse than it was in 2017, which is when I left? There were definitely some sketchballs bad then, too, mostly on certain streets, but you could run into them almost anywhere.
I have two friends I keep in touch with who still live in the general area, and one is prone to exaggerate in the negative direction and the other is prone to claim I'm being somehow "fooled by right-wingers" for even asking if crime has gotten worse there.
Just once for me: someone stole my rear license plate, which wasn't something that was even on my radar as a potential crime. Realistically the Baltimore police weren't going to pull me over for driving without a plate anyway, but I wanted to have some sort of proof to show while I waited on a replacement just in case.
The only other time I've been a victim of a crime I didn't report it. A friend from out of town was staying with us and forgot to lock the door when he got back late. A homeless guy was trying all the doors and tried to steal my friend's backpack. My friend caught him and shooed the guy out of the house, then woke me up to ask if we should call the police. I asked him whether the guy was still there, he said no and I said doesn't sound like the police can do anything then.
When my friend tells this story a lot of people say "you should've had a gun!" Which seems to me like a crazy reaction. The situation was resolved without escalating into violence, whereas if a gun had been pulled it'd have been guaranteed escalation.
Same thing happened to me. They actually replaced it with another plate and fortunately I noticed it the same day and reported it. I would have hated to have been pulled over after someone committed armed robbery with my license plate.
I moved into the City of Detroit in the late 90s. Within six months our garage had been broken into and in a separate incident one of our cars sitting in the driveway had the air bag stolen. In both cases I filled out a police report so i could file an insurance claim.
The crimes themselves, along with the absolute indifference and inaction about them by the police, were a large part of the reason that we moved out of the city and into the suburbs just over a year after first moving in.
Working at the US attorney's office a year or so later I did get to play a very small role in prosecuting the ring leaders of the air bag theft organization.
Satisfying conclusion!
Some grabbed the iPad out of my hand while I was getting off the bus in Los Angeles and I chased him yelling “stop thief”, and a police officer completed the chase and got it back. I think a report was entered, and I recall the cop saying “don’t worry it’s probably his third strike and he’ll be away for life” or something, which didn’t actually make me feel better.
I'm a bit surprised that grabbing an iPad is a felony and the cop was probably being more flippant than factual, but I just want to point out that that's likely the tip of the iceberg as as that person goes. Who knows how many people he's hurt or lives he's derailed. A guy who will rip an iPad out of a stranger's is pretty likely to financially support the drug trade, to break into houses, destroy property while trying to rip out copper wires or catalytic converters. 3 strikes is a lot! If you living in free society actually matters/mattered to that criminal, all he has to do is not try to destroy said society!
Robbery is a felony, at least in any state I’ve lived in.
Whether a theft is a felony or misdemeanor has a lot to do with the value of what's stolen. A $1000 ipad is probably going to cross the threshold for felony in most jurisdictions.
Forgive me for derailing this to a completely unimportant direction but: how do you determine the valuation for an item with dynamic price hovering on the threshold ?? First in terms of time (these things can lose value fast): is it the price purchased or At the time the crime was committed or by the time of the trial or what? Secondly is it some “market rate”
Or the retail listing ? Does it matter if the victim bought it used or at significant discount ?
I'm rusty on these things, so someone with better information can give a better answer. But it's basically the fair market value at the time of the theft.
How is that determined? Through evidence, which could include expert witnesses familiar with the market or some sort of sales data such as records of eBay sales of the same item at that time.
It is a question of fact for the "trier of fact" such as a jury or if there is no jury, the judge to decide. So both sides, the prosecution and defense, could present their evidence and then the trier decides. Much of the time it would not be a contested issue and the value is stipulated to.
It mostly doesn't matter what the victim paid, if anything, they could have received it as a gift and therefore paid nothing. On the other hand, if they paid $X that morning in an arm's length transaction that is at least evidence, not necessarily conclusive, that X is the market value.
What was described was larceny using force, i.e., robbery. Robbery is always a felony - the degree of seriousness depends not on the value of the property but on the level of force or threat used or available.
You know I’m relatively on the law and order side on these threads but Getting someone a life sentence for committing petty crime three times is a gross miscarriage of Justice. Life sentences should be reserved for killers.
Yeah, a snatch-and-run by someone with significant criminal history seems worthy of a few months in jail, but not decades.
Forceful robbery seems like more than a petty crime. I'll give it to you that Ken's description is a pretty light-touch use of force, and quite possibly DA's wouldn't charge it that way for just the reason you're saying. But still...maybe don't go out of your way to commit a felony if you've already been convicted of two previous one?
And it may be punished by prison! But even robbery at gun point shouldn’t merit a lifetime sentence ! The punishment should fit it’s crime! A pattern of criminal behavior is good consideration to give the felon a punishment towards the legal maximum but never beyond that!
Sure, life is probably too long even for a patter. But the pattern is probably more important than the particulars of the specific crime, simply because it's the single most predictive element.
The 3 strikes law aims to address that predictiveness: 3 time felons seldom reform, and statistically speaking, multiple felons are responsible for a hugely disproportionate share of all crime, bc/ the crimes they've been convicted of are usually the tip of the iceberg. Whether that's unjust has an element of subjectivity.
You can’t punish someone for a crime the didn’t yet commit!
Someone grabbing an ipad is probably primarily just trying to support a drug addiction. It would be more cost efficient both in financial and human costs to find a different solution than lock him up for life.
I recognize treating drug addiction is complex, but if we could do a better job of that we could reduce a lot of low level crimes and improve our stock of human capital at a much lower cost than long time imprisonment.
I think we could make some real headway in crime if we could figure out a way to make opioid addiction as cheap as alcohol addiction. Nobody snatches ipads to buy rotgut vodka.
No one really knows how to find another solution, and most drug addicts don't resort to strong-arm robbery and violent crime. I'm all for it if you know a good way.
From what I understand, the price of heroin and meth has plummeted 50-90% over just the past 5 years. Meth used to be cooked up in American labs, but now much more efficient, cheaper labor and larger Mexican labs produce it and ship it north. Heroin's way cheaper because fentanyl is basically a multiplier on heroin potency.
So I think we are much closer to them being as cheap as alcohol, if not actually there already.
“…probably primarily just trying to support a drug addiction”
Not in this brave new world:
https://newmoneyreview.com/index.php/2023/05/04/a-phone-grabber-could-drain-your-bank-account-in-minutes/
I have had my house broken into twice and called the police both times. They asked me a bunch of questions and took notes. Is that filing a police report? There was follow up in both cases. The second time involved dusting for fingerprints and showing both me and my daughter a photo line up. They came so close to arresting someone for the crime each time, but as far as I know never got there.
I did one when someone broke in to my car about 15 years ago and stole $200 I had received as Christmas present the night before at a family event (I had accidently left the money in the car).
Still very suspicious the only time in my entire life my car was broken into was the night I received the cash - literally have never had more than $20 in the car before or since and never been broken into (that night it was pillaged).
in NYC it was enough hassle that I'd probably not do it again unless I needed the insurance paperwork or something really serious had happened. But for basic stolen stuff, there's just no point.
I’ve been *in* them...
Say more.
It’s more fun if I don’t, though, isn’t it? 🤣
Crime really sucks.
I mean, without knowing about the longitudinal trend in your neighborhood the old people aren't self-evidently wrong here. Leaving your car doors unlocked and *not* having rotten teens ransack them for valuables at 4:42 AM is also a thing people do in various places.
Many years ago I moved from Atlanta to Boston with all my possessions in a Honda Accord. The night before I left on this drive, someone stole my car stereo. I’m normally against any kind of corporal punishment, but I may have fantasized about some things during that long drive.
No police report, though. Once filed a police report in New Orleans (lived Uptown, near Tulane) after a guy broke into my apartment while my girlfriend was asleep (I was already at work). Guy started robbing the place, realized she was there, thankfully took off.
Really confused by the crime reporting statistics. Do 25% of people whose car is stolen not call police? And I’m really surprised that domestic violence reporting is so high - I had always read victims may be reluctant/unable to report but it’s reported just as much as things like trespassing.
Unless you have insurance that will make good your loss, low level property and vandalism are likely not seen as worth your time in reporting, especially in a larger city where they're really not going to be able to do much about catching the perpetrator of getting your stuff back.
Yeah, but do 25% of people really have their car stolen and go "nah it's fine".
Coincidentally, I just saw a story about a woman who had just moved to my town and had all her earthly possessions in her car. It was stolen, and she didn’t report it!! Or she didn’t until after asking for advice on a Facebook group. It was stunning.
Trespassing sounds like a crime that would be underreported.
Maybe Democrats should do an everything bagel crime bill consisting of inter alia, a) a national Police Academy b) big money in NAS for crime, policing, prosecution, prison, social science research, c) money for police departments to report crimes according to a uniform methodology d) subsidies for technology like position trackers for people on parole/conditional release (useful for people awaiting hearing for asylum and irregular entry cases, too), surveillance and traffic control cameras, DNA database of everyone passing through the justice systems e) more prosecutors, court personnel, and police officers including para-police officers that handle administrative and most traffic and public order events.
I don't think that bill would qualify as an "everything bagel," because all those things are pretty closely related to crime and enforcement. The EB version would include a bunch of green policies, arcane rules about procurement (e.g., small and minority-owned business requirements, overwrought bidding processes), maybe some childcare stuff, etc.
Separately, if such a bill led to better (increased) reporting, you can just imagine the dumb attack ads: "...and Senator So-and-So championed the TK Crime Act, which led to a 30% increase in violent crime nationwide."