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Author Topic: Crimes Rates and other Trends  (Read 6508 times)

oggsmash

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Re: Crimes Rates and other Trends
« Reply #30 on: December 15, 2021, 11:15:57 AM »
   When many US cities have higher homicide rates than Rio, I think anyone attempting to paint a picture of "Crime is not that bad, here is the data" is intentionally missing the serious problem areas.  I would also say, decriminalizing a shit load of crimes also does wonders to lower crime rates.   How many televised flash mob robberies to people need to see to understand something is broken in the USA?

I'm not saying that crime isn't bad. U.S. crime is quite bad - especially our murder rate, which is far worse than other First World countries. What I would say is:

1) U.S. crime was even worse back in the 1980s-1990s. Going earlier - it was better back in the 1950s than today, but worse in the 1930s.
2) One shouldn't judge crime rates (or lots of other things) based on watching television.


  Anyone here ever watch that show "The Wire"  It was great from what I remember, but much like robocop and detroit, it actually got WORSE than depicted in the show.  Anyway, one thing the police brass and politicians always are talking about is "massaging the stats" and making it look as if crime has not increased, or in some areas decreased.  I think that was probably a reflection of harsh reality instead of creative writing.  I would also say, things like a homicide stat to compare to the 90's or the 70's are not as meaningful, since if there is one thing doctors in cities can do these days, it is treat trauma and gunshots.  I think lots of dudes who would have been dead in 1994 get shot and recover these days.

I love The Wire. It's an amazing show, and yes, there is at least some reality to it. It's based on David Simon's non-fiction book "Homicide: A Year on the Killing Streets" from when he spent 1988 with the Baltimore homicide unit. That book was adapted to television twice: in Homicide: Life on the Street (1993–99) and in The Wire (2002–08). So note that when Simon was writing about police massaging the stats - he was talking about doing so back in 1988. Massaging the stats is something that has always happened - it doesn't explain the huge drop in crime rates from 1990 to the early 2000s. Also, the national NCVS was established decades earlier under Nixon to address local police manipulation of stats.

Sadly, while many other U.S. cities like New York and L.A. have seen decrease in crime, Baltimore homicides have only gotten worse since 1988.

As for improved treatment of gunshots... If that were the primary factor, then I'd expect to see a downward trend in homicide but none in other crimes. But the national trend went down dramatically in most crimes from 1990 to the mid-2000s - including robbery, burglary, assault, and arson.

  The USA has a high murder rate for first world countries because we have MANY more criminal gangs than any other first world nation.  There is a VERY clear explanation for the crime dropping in the 90's and you know it.  That much maligned crime bill everyone says was enormously racist took a massive bite out of crime.    I think there is a great deal more unreported crime now as well, but even if there is not, and even if there is a downward trend now, in 2021 (not the mid 2000's, but now), so what?  The reality is you say not to judge crime by TV...when people can be so brazen as to rob a store en masse on camera, I am going to judge that behavior from TV.  I can also say, that is a flat out break down of society.  People are separating out via regions and states now instead of simply fleeing to the suburbs, many are going to whole new states.   Baltimore having triple the homicide rates of Rio is a really, really bad sign.

oggsmash

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Re: Crimes Rates and other Trends
« Reply #31 on: December 15, 2021, 11:25:51 AM »
  I would also say, mentioning New York having decreased crime, and leaving out why.... the Guilianni and Bloomburg implementing measures that, much like the 90's crime bill, are considered racist and terrible brought crime WAY down.   Who knows what the new mayor will do, but the shit stain leaving right now did not do NYC any favors at all.  I do not know about LA, but I do know LA was a take no prisoners level of law enforcement around the same time the crime bill hit... so I am sure they also took some heavy handed (and likely to be labeled racist measures) towards dropping those crime rates. 

    Many cities have for only a couple years, have been taking a considerably softer touch towards crime, decriminalizing crime so to speak, and putting criminals right back on the street with low cash bail.  That has had a fairly immediate effect, and honestly constantly making actuarial arguments over crime stats from the 90's while ignoring something as simple as extremely low bail on a violent felon in Wisconsin lead DIRECTLY to killing many people and wounding scores of people is missing the forest for the trees. 

   Soft ball treatment of criminals will not reduce crime.  I guess decriminalizing more and more crime will, but if we are not going to look at where and why serious crime areas have the problems they do, it will never, ever be fixed.   

jhkim

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Re: Crimes Rates and other Trends
« Reply #32 on: December 17, 2021, 01:37:53 PM »
  The USA has a high murder rate for first world countries because we have MANY more criminal gangs than any other first world nation.  There is a VERY clear explanation for the crime dropping in the 90's and you know it.  That much maligned crime bill everyone says was enormously racist took a massive bite out of crime.    I think there is a great deal more unreported crime now as well, but even if there is not, and even if there is a downward trend now, in 2021 (not the mid 2000's, but now), so what?

As for why it's important - I think in order to understand causes, the first thing is to understand the data. Especially, I want to push against the narrative expounded by SHARK that you can just look at the TV and see how terrible things are now - and that we should go back to how we handled things in the 1980s, ignoring the data because it is bullshit.

As for the causes -- just in this thread, a lot of people here have expressed different opinions. It's not just me. Reckall cited abortion access; Ghostmaker cited poverty levels and gun control; Pat said it was disputed and was skeptical about broken windows policing. You say it's clearly the crime bill.

To be clear - by crime bill, are you talking about the 1994 federal crime bill written by then-senator Joe Biden and signed by Bill Clinton? cf. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Violent_Crime_Control_and_Law_Enforcement_Act  That included the Federal Assault Weapons Ban and the Violence Against Women Act, among other provisions.

I think it's possible - but I also think it's very difficult to sort out causes from sociological data, especially that crime is affected by all sorts of other factors besides policing. I suspect that the trend is from multiple causes that have to do with society at large. Especially, I think to have a better idea, one would need local data especially on comparison of how the crime rates changes in different localities, compared with how things went in those areas.


  The reality is you say not to judge crime by TV...when people can be so brazen as to rob a store en masse on camera, I am going to judge that behavior from TV.  I can also say, that is a flat out break down of society.  People are separating out via regions and states now instead of simply fleeing to the suburbs, many are going to whole new states.   Baltimore having triple the homicide rates of Rio is a really, really bad sign.

I think going by television is still a terrible idea. You're evidently moved by brazen smash-and-grab robberies. Other people are moved by brazen school shootings - and also claim how terrible things are, but with a different slant. I think the broader reality of crime is very different than television news, just as reality is different than television news in general.

Kyle Aaron

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Re: Crimes Rates and other Trends
« Reply #33 on: December 17, 2021, 07:34:03 PM »
As for improved treatment of gunshots...
I researched this a lot for Conflict, and my personal social circle has a lot of doctors, nurses, and paramedics. They say there have certainly been some improvements over the decades, but the biggest factor is time from injury to treatment.

Now, either the gunshot potentially kills you, or it just fucks you up for some years afterwards. For homicide rates and RPGs we're not really interested in the poor bastard who gets shot and survives but needs years of operations and rehab to be able to function even badly. So just consider deaths and treatment to avoid them.

In terms of the gunshot killing you, either it hits your brain or spinal cord, or it strikes a major blood vessel. There's not really anything anyone can do about a piece of your brain being pulped, it is what it is. It's the blood vessels where there was room for improvement.

For example, when someone loses a lot of blood, they go into shock and may die. Often they had to take time to blood type the person, and a transfusion wasn't always available - paramedics can't carry all the different blood types in their vehicle, rural hospitals won't have them all, etc. It turned out that a lot of the shock response was actually due to a drop in blood pressure - so you could just give the casualty saline, that'd keep the overall blood volume up. You can't replace their entire blood volume with saline, they do need some red blood cells carrying oxygen around. But the saline vs doing nothing would buy you some time to get them to hospital, or clamp the bleeding artery, and put in a proper transfusion. So that's one example of an improvement in techniques over the decades.

However, what they all say is that time is the primary factor, by far. If you're losing a unit of blood every 5 minutes then you're in more trouble after 15 minutes than 5. The gunshot victims with the best survival rates don't get paramedics at all - their buddies on the scene bundle them up in the back of a car, speed off and then dump them at the front door of the local hospital - then speed off again. And that's because it's 5-15' quicker. An ambulance has to be called, driven to the scene, the paramedics get out and assess, and so on. But the buddies on scene don't have to drive there, they don't assess, they just take the casualty straight over.

(That's not telling you not to call ambulances when injured, by the way, there are all sorts of injuries where moving you around quickly isn't going to help.)

Likewise, gunshots have a 71-72% survival rate in the US, but had a ~90% survival rate in Afghanistan. The difference isn't body armour because the guy who had a round go dink on his plate doesn't show up in military hospital as having a gunshot wound. The civilian-military difference is the guy getting basic first aid on scene, dumped in the back of a Hummer and driven back to base, or choppered off, etc. In other words: time.
« Last Edit: December 17, 2021, 07:37:22 PM by Kyle Aaron »
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HappyDaze

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Re: Crimes Rates and other Trends
« Reply #34 on: December 18, 2021, 12:10:06 AM »
However, what they all say is that time is the primary factor, by far. If you're losing a unit of blood every 5 minutes then you're in more trouble after 15 minutes than 5. The gunshot victims with the best survival rates don't get paramedics at all - their buddies on the scene bundle them up in the back of a car, speed off and then dump them at the front door of the local hospital - then speed off again. And that's because it's 5-15' quicker. An ambulance has to be called, driven to the scene, the paramedics get out and assess, and so on. But the buddies on scene don't have to drive there, they don't assess, they just take the casualty straight over.
Consider that the "buddies" are hghly unlikely to call ahead to have a trauma bay (or an OR) prepped for the moment of arrival, but the ambulance most certainly can (and usually does), and there are some meaningful tradeoffs that might make  the ambulance a better use of time.

Kyle Aaron

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Re: Crimes Rates and other Trends
« Reply #35 on: December 18, 2021, 07:27:45 PM »
Agreed. Nonetheless, this is what I'm told.

I know of no statistics collected on the topic of bystander dropoffs vs ambulance callouts given the same injury or conditions. All we have is anecdotal, and those I've spoken to are agreed that the dropoffs work out quicker. However, as in my parenthetical comment, they're agreed that it's still not recommended because of all the other things which could be wrong with a person and could be made worse with moving them sloppily.

I had an unseatbelted speeding woman crash her car into the tree in front of my house. She ended up lying between the seats with her head resting on the back seat. There was a fair chance of pneumothorax and cervical spine injury, and of course airway blockage. I held her neck and trunk steady for about forty-five minutes (wicked bicep pump!) and monitored her until they took her out. Moving her by myself into my car and taking her up the road would definitely have made her worse.

And of course, many jurisdictions now are quite good at giving first aid instructions over the phone. I had to do CPR on a guy on the street, and though I'm trained and somewhat practiced in it, it still helped to have a calm person on the other end of the phone talk me through it.

But anyway: time is important. This doesn't mean that nothing else matters.
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oggsmash

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Re: Crimes Rates and other Trends
« Reply #36 on: December 20, 2021, 10:04:12 AM »
  The USA has a high murder rate for first world countries because we have MANY more criminal gangs than any other first world nation.  There is a VERY clear explanation for the crime dropping in the 90's and you know it.  That much maligned crime bill everyone says was enormously racist took a massive bite out of crime.    I think there is a great deal more unreported crime now as well, but even if there is not, and even if there is a downward trend now, in 2021 (not the mid 2000's, but now), so what?

As for why it's important - I think in order to understand causes, the first thing is to understand the data. Especially, I want to push against the narrative expounded by SHARK that you can just look at the TV and see how terrible things are now - and that we should go back to how we handled things in the 1980s, ignoring the data because it is bullshit.

As for the causes -- just in this thread, a lot of people here have expressed different opinions. It's not just me. Reckall cited abortion access; Ghostmaker cited poverty levels and gun control; Pat said it was disputed and was skeptical about broken windows policing. You say it's clearly the crime bill.

To be clear - by crime bill, are you talking about the 1994 federal crime bill written by then-senator Joe Biden and signed by Bill Clinton? cf. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Violent_Crime_Control_and_Law_Enforcement_Act  That included the Federal Assault Weapons Ban and the Violence Against Women Act, among other provisions.

I think it's possible - but I also think it's very difficult to sort out causes from sociological data, especially that crime is affected by all sorts of other factors besides policing. I suspect that the trend is from multiple causes that have to do with society at large. Especially, I think to have a better idea, one would need local data especially on comparison of how the crime rates changes in different localities, compared with how things went in those areas.


  The reality is you say not to judge crime by TV...when people can be so brazen as to rob a store en masse on camera, I am going to judge that behavior from TV.  I can also say, that is a flat out break down of society.  People are separating out via regions and states now instead of simply fleeing to the suburbs, many are going to whole new states.   Baltimore having triple the homicide rates of Rio is a really, really bad sign.

I think going by television is still a terrible idea. You're evidently moved by brazen smash-and-grab robberies. Other people are moved by brazen school shootings - and also claim how terrible things are, but with a different slant. I think the broader reality of crime is very different than television news, just as reality is different than television news in general.

  LOL, I think as a to do list, you might want to get a friend who lived in a serious high crime area.  Talk with them, and see what they say.  I have a friend who grew up in the absolute worst part of Chicago.  He laughed about alarmist TV reporting on shootings, robbery, etc.  Because he said what people in the USA thought was horrible break downs in society was called Tuesday on South Prarie Trail.   TV DOES not show how severe the breakdowns are in some areas of the nation.  School shootings are IMO a definite signal of a breakdown of society, however they are 99 percent of the time seen coming from a mile away, and almost always with some kid who is medicated and should not be moving freely in society.  Mob break ins at random are not completely new, but they are more brazen and a definite signal the police are not so interested in actually stopping criminals in some places....it is a breakdown of society. 

  General acceptance of degenerate behavior is a massive signal for a breakdown in society.  It is what is going on.  I do not know if pendulum swings the other way or not... But of course the broader reality of crime is different than television news....just not in the ways you want to infer.  The bad places are MUCH worse than the TV likes to present, and the safe places are much safer than TV wants to present.  I do not understand how that makes it hard to fix the shit shows.

oggsmash

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Re: Crimes Rates and other Trends
« Reply #37 on: December 20, 2021, 10:12:25 AM »
The big thing that crime bill did, was come down like the hammer of thor on the drug crimes that were fueled on insane street violence, crack.  people in affected neighborhoods clamored to end the chaos, and big sentences and punishment rained down.   20 years later, it is called a racist law because of who was hammered by it...forgetting that meth gets the exact same hammer and has a very similar disproportion in the other direction.   Are you contending the minimum sentencing and so forth from that crime bill didnt slow crime down a great deal by locking up all the violent offenders for long sentences it could?  The fire arms bill didnt so shit, street crime is not fueled by magazine sizes over 10 rounds, and believe it or not, dudes doing drive by shootings with full auto weapons beefing over tons of crack cocaine do not give two fucks about magazine size laws.   They do start to pay attention when you get HAMMERED for having even a trace of crack and a gun, or any weight of crack at all though.

jhkim

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Re: Crimes Rates and other Trends
« Reply #38 on: December 20, 2021, 01:43:29 PM »
I think going by television is still a terrible idea. You're evidently moved by brazen smash-and-grab robberies. Other people are moved by brazen school shootings - and also claim how terrible things are, but with a different slant. I think the broader reality of crime is very different than television news, just as reality is different than television news in general.

  LOL, I think as a to do list, you might want to get a friend who lived in a serious high crime area.  Talk with them, and see what they say.  I have a friend who grew up in the absolute worst part of Chicago.  He laughed about alarmist TV reporting on shootings, robbery, etc.  Because he said what people in the USA thought was horrible break downs in society was called Tuesday on South Prarie Trail.   TV DOES not show how severe the breakdowns are in some areas of the nation.
But of course the broader reality of crime is different than television news....just not in the ways you want to infer.  The bad places are MUCH worse than the TV likes to present, and the safe places are much safer than TV wants to present.  I do not understand how that makes it hard to fix the shit shows.

I lived in Hyde Park (a pocket in Chicago's South Side) and at the south end of Harlem in the late 1980s and 1990s. I was mugged twice, and I knew many others who were victims of crime. I remember visiting a friend in the dorms who was on the phone with 911 as someone was stealing her car while she watched through the window.

As far as I can tell, you're agreeing with me that television news is not an accurate portrayal of the reality of crime. I wasn't trying to imply a particular slant. I'd agree that television underplays a lot of common crime like mugging or domestic violence - while playing up spectacular crimes like mass smash-and-grabs or school shootings. My point is just that television news isn't accurate evidence towards any conclusion about crime, in whichever direction - while you claimed that you could tell based on television news how bad things are compared to the 1980s.


School shootings are IMO a definite signal of a breakdown of society, however they are 99 percent of the time seen coming from a mile away, and almost always with some kid who is medicated and should not be moving freely in society.  Mob break ins at random are not completely new, but they are more brazen and a definite signal the police are not so interested in actually stopping criminals in some places....it is a breakdown of society. 

  General acceptance of degenerate behavior is a massive signal for a breakdown in society.  It is what is going on.

Can you clarify what you mean here? Your terms of "breakdown of society" or "degenerate behavior" seem vague to me, so I don't have any opinion on that. From my view, we are going through a divisive period in U.S. society - with some similarities but also many differences to the 1930s and the 1960s. Crime rates are lower than they were at their 1990 peak, but for several crimes (like murder and assault), rates have been going up since 2014 or so. As a society, we should try to focus especially on the trends that are getting worse including these as well as suicide, alcoholism, and drug overdose.