Crime is going down, fear is going up

[Bootstrap]

Another source shows violent crime in cities. It clearly went up during the COVID years, then went down again:

https://counciloncj.org/crime-trends-in ... 24-update/

Carjackings are way up. Aggravated assault is still up 4% compared to 2019. Gun assault is up 5% compared to 2019. But none of these crimes is skyrocketing.

[Bootstrap]

Another view of data - does immigration correlate with higher violent crime?

https://www.americanimmigrationcouncil. ... _crime.pdf

In 1980, immigrants made up 6.2% of the U.S. population, and the total crime rate was 5,900 crimes per 100,000 people.

By 2022, the share of immigrants had more than doubled, to 13.9%, while the total crime rate had dropped by 60.4%.

[Bootstrap]

I keep hearing about violent crime in Texas, so I created a plot to see if it looks different there. This was created with numPy and GPT. And this is not a peer reviewed article or anything - if I made a mistake or got anything wrong, please let me know so I can fix it.

Do you see a correlation between percent foreign-born and violent crime in this plot? I don't. Well, actually I do, there is a negative correlation.

Sources:

1. Migration Policy Institute – State Immigration Data Profiles: Texas

2. Texas Department of Public Safety – Crime in Texas Reports (Annual)

3. DisasterCenter.com – Texas Crime Rates 1960–2019

[mike]

Crime rates continue to go down.

But people think crime rates are going up. Not so much where they live, where they have direct experience, but especially in the places they have no direct experience.

Why? How should we think of this as Christians?

Why do you think fear is going up?

[JohnH]

Are they counting juveniles? They are most of the property crime and half the assaults, at least where I am from. Since they cannot be held accountable below a certain age, no crime has been committed.

Yes, both the FBI and BJS data include crimes committed by juveniles. These are the two main sources for this kind of statistics.

FBI Uniform Crime Reporting (UCR) data is based on arrests, and it includes juveniles (under 18). So if a juvenile is arrested for a crime, it's counted in the stats.

BJS National Crime Victimization Survey (NCVS) is based on surveys of victims, not arrests. It includes crimes committed by juveniles (or anyone else), even if no one was caught or prosecuted.

So yes, juveniles are counted. In both systems.

Does it include data from LAPD?

[JohnH]

Another view of data - does immigration correlate with higher violent crime?

https://www.americanimmigrationcouncil. ... _crime.pdf

In 1980, immigrants made up 6.2% of the U.S. population, and the total crime rate was 5,900 crimes per 100,000 people.

By 2022, the share of immigrants had more than doubled, to 13.9%, while the total crime rate had dropped by 60.4%.

immigrationcrime.jpg

This is not the correct way to do this analysis.

If you really want to analyze this, you need to look at a place that has had a big influx of immigrants that formerly had very few, and see if crime levels change.

And then compare it against places that haven't had an influx of immigrants.

Does that make sense?

[Bootstrap]

Are they counting juveniles? They are most of the property crime and half the assaults, at least where I am from. Since they cannot be held accountable below a certain age, no crime has been committed.

Yes, both the FBI and BJS data include crimes committed by juveniles. These are the two main sources for this kind of statistics.

FBI Uniform Crime Reporting (UCR) data is based on arrests, and it includes juveniles (under 18). So if a juvenile is arrested for a crime, it's counted in the stats.

BJS National Crime Victimization Survey (NCVS) is based on surveys of victims, not arrests. It includes crimes committed by juveniles (or anyone else), even if no one was caught or prosecuted.

So yes, juveniles are counted. In both systems.

Does it include data from LAPD?

The BJS statistics are based on surveys that identify victims, not on police reports. So no, police departments are irrelevant, they ask large numbers of people if they have been victims of a crime, and if so, what kind of crime. You can be the victim of a crime even if nobody was arrested or convicted. Even if the police department did not report to the feds.

The FBI statistics include LAPD for most years, but not for 2022. I'm not sure if some other years are missing. Anything based on arrests and convictions is always sensitive to reporting from police departments, which is why it's less reliable than the BJS statistics for some things. But if you want to see who the perpetrators are, you have to rely on a dataset that identifies the actual perpetrators. There's no way around that. And that's the value of the FBI statistics.

[Bootstrap]

This is not the correct way to do this analysis.

Feel free to provide a better analysis and explain why your analysis is better.

[barnhart]

Crime rates continue to go down.

But people think crime rates are going up. Not so much where they live, where they have direct experience, but especially in the places they have no direct experience.

Why? How should we think of this as Christians?

Why do you think fear is going up?

Good question.

[JohnH]

This is not the correct way to do this analysis.

Feel free to provide a better analysis and explain why your analysis is better.

Boot, this is just basic statistics. It doesn't make sense at all to look for any kind of "correlation" across a gigantic population sample, particularly when you could just look at the effect on crime rates when migrants move in to a community.

Let's look at one: Hazleton, PA.

In 2000, the Hispanic population was less than 5%; in 2010, the Hispanic population was over 37%, and by 2020 was 63%. (Source: U.S. Census.) I am using the Hispanic population as a proxy for migration; there are plenty of other sources indicating this was primarily due to immigration.

The overall population was relatively stable (around 25k-27k total).

In 2000, the FBI's reported violent crime rate was below 150. By 2018 it was over 450.

This is in sharp contrast to your reported overall drop in crime rates from 2000 to 2020.

Does an increase in migrants increase crime? I can't say definitively, but in Hazleton, as the number of immigrants went up, crime went up. The existing population generally started to vacate the city as crime went up. Do you blame them?