

Steady Decline in Major Crime Baffles Experts - garbowza
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/05/24/us/24crime.html

======
leelin
I guess Netflix On-Demand, Facebook stalking, and FarmVille do their job in
cheaply entertaining us!

Seriously though, murders are a distant leap from idle teenage mischief, but I
have to believe people commit fewer crimes when they have more to lose. If
someone is reasonably happy with his day-to-day life, why risk disrupting it?

Now for a really big leap-of-faith: maybe social media opens our eyes to how
other people perceive their lives. As stated in Paul B's "open as in water"
blog post, Facebook and Twitter have shown more people that they aren't alone
in their miseries; and that there are lots of little joys in life!

Last wild theory: cyber bullying is on the rise, but at least that's less
deadly than physical confrontation.

~~~
msluyter
I know that's an off the cuff one-liner, but this idea has gotten some serious
consideration. Particularly vis a vis the availability of online porn and the
decline in rape. For example, the paper "Porn Up, Rape Down":

<http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=913013>

(Note, this idea is not uncontroversial.)

------
ajju
So the Freakonomics guys famously (and controversially) attributed the decline
in crime in the 90's to four factors, abortion being the most controversial
[1]:

– Increased reliance on prisons

– Increased number of police

– The bursting of the crack bubble

– The legalization of abortion

The NYT article says that incarceration rates have dropped, which would
eliminate the first factor. I wonder how the other 3 correlate with the recent
drop in crime. It's unlikely the number of police have increased, given the
recession. Instead of, or in addition to, crack, I am assuming you may have to
consider other drugs like Meth (?).

Levitt et al. also presented evidence that a strong economy does not cause a
drop in crime, so the challenge to that thesis, mentioned in the NYT article,
is not new.

[1] [http://www.freakonomics.com/2006/03/16/lets-do-the-crime-
dro...](http://www.freakonomics.com/2006/03/16/lets-do-the-crime-drop-again/)

~~~
rubashov
The abortion correlation has been thoroughly dismantled. There were even
straight-up mathematical errors in the initial claimed correlation.

<http://www.isteve.com/abortion.htm>

That this claim is still so often credulously repeated tells you something
about how tied to reality the chattering classes are.

The above referenced Steve Sailer also offers a decent unempirical hypothesis
about the decline of crime: Technology has made it way harder to do much bad
stuff without getting caught. Cell phones and surveillance cameras and better
police tech make crime much riskier than it was.

I also suspect everybody's fatter, older, and more couch-potato than they used
to be. Obese slobs with 200 channels are too lazy to go gang-banging.

~~~
chrismealy
That dude is a hardcore racist. Unless you want his rep rubbing off on you
might want to find another reference.

~~~
pragmatic
I don't know anything about this guy. However when you say "[t]hat dude is a
hardcore racist" you're making a very strong claim about his character.

Could you point us to some evidence of your claim?

~~~
ajju
I don't want to debate about whether some random Internet person I first heard
about today is racist, but I was curious enough to Google it and found this
wikipedia article describing the author of iSteve.com. It may help provide
some context to claims made by the parent.

<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Steve_Sailer>

------
carsongross
Demographics: most crime is committed by groups of young men. Fewer groups of
young men, less crime.

Also, eventually your civilization collapses.

So it's a tradeoff.

~~~
fourspace
So right before the end of civilization, there will be a brief period of
relative peace?

~~~
carsongross
Well, I'm just going by what I see, and that sounds about right for Japan.

------
vondur
Aren't we imprisoning more people than ever before? I know here in California,
the three strikes law put many violent criminals off the streets and into
prison for lengthy prison terms. Now that the Supreme court has ruled against
the state in a prison lawsuit, California has to release 30k prisoners. Let's
see what happens to the violent crime rate here in a few years.

------
rationalbeats
I thought it has to do with police departments setting up bonus incentive
programs tied to a reduction in certain crimes.

This then encourages the police department heads to not fully report serious
crimes, this way they receive their year end bonus.

Example, rape? No that was just simple assault.

------
chopsueyar
Perhaps because these crimes do not include non-prosecuted white collar
finance crimes?

~~~
sorbus
Well, yes. The article is talking about the drop in _violent_ crime, not total
crime. On the other hand, I doubt that financial crimes made up for the 5.5%
drop in violent crime. There are probably no conclusive figures for non-
prosecuted white-collar crimes, though, so all we have is speculation.

~~~
chopsueyar
In terms of victims or perpetrators?

Unlike finance, rapists only have one victim at a time.

~~~
sorbus
I didn't even think of that - I was considering each crime as being a distinct
entity (eg, robbing a group of people counted as only a single crime). By
counting victims, which probably makes more sense, financial crimes would more
than make up for the decrease in violent crime.

------
PaintBucket
I blame video games.

~~~
nodata
I see you're getting downvotes, but it would be interesting if distractions do
lead to a decrease in crime.

~~~
PaintBucket
I guess I should have written more if I wanted to be taken seriously. Crime,
like everything else, takes time. If you play video games 4 hours a day,
that's 4 hours a day that you are neither able to shoot people, nor are you
outside to be shot. Given that the demos likely to commit crimes and play
video games overlap so strongly, this has to be considered.

~~~
jobu
Excellent point, but I think you could just say cheap electronic
entertainment. The Internet, torrents, Netflix, and video games in particular
could be a huge factor in the crime rate. They are (relatively) cheap,
ubiquitous, and huge time sinks.

------
3minus1
I wonder if anyone attributes this to the continued domestication of the human
race. Maybe it's just natural for humans living in modern society to become
less violent.

------
steve_b
"When crime rates go up, the police say it is because they are encouraging
more victims to come forward, Mr. Silverman said, 'but when crime goes down,
it’s the work of the police.'"

I find that sentence really confusing. Does Silverman believe that a decrease
in crime is the work of the police, or is he still quoting the police?

Also, I'm curious: did I quote the quote correctly?

~~~
hugh3
He is saying:

'When the crime rates go up, police say "we are encouraging more victims to
come forward', and when crime rates go down, police say "this is due to the
work of the police" '

~~~
ericb
Right, in other words, no matter what, they tell a story that is favorable to
themselves.

It's like asking a real estate agent about the right time to buy. If prices
are rising, it is a great time to buy and make a profit. If prices are
falling, it is a great time to buy at a discount and make a profit.

~~~
hugh3
With real estate agents it's even worse -- not only do they have to convince
buyers that it's always a good time to buy, they have to convince sellers that
it's always a good time to sell!

------
neworbit
I wonder what the Freakonomics guys will say about this - curious to see if
they can draw an unexpected correlation (like twenty year ago birth rate or
the like).

------
JoachimSchipper
How is this not politics?

~~~
hugh3
Well, you _could_ say it's statistics.

I dunno, I started a thread asking about what happened to the no-politics rule
yesterday, but it got [dead]-ed after collecting a few dozen comments. (In
fairness, by phrasing my complaint as an "Ask HN" I might have been abusing
the Ask HN system.)

The other trouble with politics threads, though, is that the _barriers to
entry_ are so low. If the subject is thermodynamics or erlang then there's a
certain amount of knowledge required to take part in the discussion, or even
to find it interesting. But if the subject is "why is crime down" or "hey,
what's up with people in the US not getting enough holidays" then anyone can
chime in with their own opinion on the matter... or at least to throw their
favourite political hobby horse into the mix (It's all about race! No wait,
it's all about police corruption! No wait, it's all about white collar crimes
going unprosecuted!)

A major point of the no-politics rule was to keep the site looking as _boring_
as possible to anyone not really interested in discussing the sort of stuff
that the site is really supposed to be about.

------
zwieback
It's the Dollar store. You can everything for a dollar now and we've
accumulated such an enormous amount of cheap stuff that nobody needs to resort
to crime anymore.

