If that were the case, we would then expect liberal DAs in liberal states to have an even higher murder rate. And I assure you, none of the policies you mentioned are being implemented in the Deep South states of SC, AL or MS.
> none of the policies you mentioned are being implemented in the Deep South states of SC, AL or MS.
These states may have started with extremely high murder rates. It's the growth in rates that would show whether OP is right or not, and those states with rapidly growing murders are not in the deep south.
(That said, none of the red states with high growth strike me as particularly likely to have liberal local DAs either, so I also question their argument.)
They are likely quoting DOJ arrest statistics [0]. Lots of interesting stuff there, and the overall conclusion one can draw from them is quite different than what the GP asserts.
Could you please share some examples of a very liberal DA in a very conservative state outside of major metropolitan areas? No offense but your response sounds very brainwashed, where the problems in a conservative area are obviously caused by the dirty local liberals mucking everything up.
Sounds like you are trying to justify the results to fit your existing narrative. You immediately assume there is a fault in the data instead of analyzing your own baseline assumptions. The idea that Alabama, Mississippi, Louisiana, etc. have higher murder rates because they are "very liberal" doesn't pass the smell test.
Your comment also seems to assume that the states which vote blue somehow don't have locally elected DA's? That doesn't explain why Missouri (with much less urbanization) has a higher murder than Illinois or Michigan (with "out--of-control" cities like Chicago and Detroit.
We have decades of evidence that prison sentences being long or short has no effect (or nearly so) on deterring crime. Likely the murder rate differences in these red vs blue areas has more to do with the economic well being of these areas that police sentiment or how tough on crime the police and DA are. Someone here should be able to whip up a script to correlate that in like an hour.
The article is just lazy journalism. There are a lot of possible alternatives variables to run a regression on that could have stronger explanatory power and they just chose the first that fit the narrative they wanted to present. Southern states and the legacy of racism looks like a viable explanation for the higher murder rates in 'Red' states that should have been explored as part of the article.
The difference is contextual, as with anything. The parent obviously disagrees that the data provided rebuts the article's content (I too disagree, and think it mostly only serves to spur hatred in this particular context, the same way the title of the article does).
Lots of propaganda and hate-bait is true. Context is what matters in those cases. I agree that the parent is making an incorrect implication though, but not for the reason you give.
While that is a common response, it doesn't address the problem or make any specfic claim. Are you saying there is no hate speech? We shouldn't do anything about hate speech? Make a claim here.
This is weak. Yes, these numbers can be (and usually are) used as emotion-targeting propaganda. However, assuming they are true in a reasonably non-cherry-picked context, the prevalence of dishonest usage then does not disqualify them from being used in a useful context, free from hatred. Your post implies otherwise, though (regardless of whether they are or are not being used that way in the particular case of the OP).
>Red states tend to have a much higher population of black residents
It sounds like you're taking the article to mean "voting Republican is causal to murder", and are rebutting with "being black is causal to murder" (but are using a corollary fact to imply it). However, the first statement isn't being made by the article, and your implied rebuttal is neither verifiable nor does it even rebut the first statement, were the article making it. It's also unnecessarily provocative (unnecessary due to its irrelevance as described above). Of course this is all assumption you've forced me to make. By itself, the sentence you wrote doesn't say anything directly - you haven't connected it to the article explicitly.
Your second paragraph has the same problem, but the implication is more obvious: You believe the properties you've listed cause high murder rates. That doesn't seem to be true, though - can you either elaborate subjectively, or provide some other writeup that points to that conclusion?
> Red states tend to have a much higher population of black residents, a group that is well established to have much higher crime rates. Black people are 13% of the national population but commit 52% of the murders.
Expanding this to causation - that black people cause more crime - is not only a complete misuse of statistics - nothing there shows correlation, much less causation - it is an old racist saw. For example, a society which relegates people based on their skin color to poverty, lack of access to jobs, education, and healthcare, and continual discrimination, might be the causal agent. It could be that people in poverty, with poor educations, and difficult employment, are correlated with crime (but we'd need to look that up).
> Many of those red states have very liberal DAs who are refusing to prosecute certain crimes, asking for extremely low bail, and pursuing very short prison sentences, while also aggressively prosecuting alleged police misconduct.
Those DA's seem less prevelant in red states - is there some correlation there? And do you have evidence that these things increase crime rates? Most of the research says otherwise, the opposite practices had little impact for many years, and the people most affected by crime vote for these DAs.
The correlation with race holds even when you control for poverty and other socioeconomic factors (such as urban/rural). But of course, you can't control for the unique historical experience of black Americans. So this remains an open question.
Does everything need to be politicised like this? There's a rural/urban divide in the US, and it's well known that this divide coincides with the political divide. It's an interesting data point that rural states have seen higher murder rates than urban ones, but it doesn't necessitate garbage rhetoric like
> A more accurate conclusion from the data is that Republicans do a far better job blaming others for high murder rates than actually reducing high murder rates.
no matter how much you prepare it by straw-manning that the other side blames Democratic leadership for the same thing.
If you want to link crime rates to political leadership in some kind of causal fashion, you need to at least try controlling for basic things like rural vs urban areas, or domestic violence vs street crime.
I think this is more of a counter-example of why politicizing murder and lawlessness is a stupid idea. The conservatives in the US constantly bash Democratic ran cities as murderous hell-holes and places no person in their right mind would want to go. But in reality, it's just more falsehoods; the issue is far more complex than just correlating your governor or mayor's political affiliation.
If this was actually a counter example, wouldn't they be looking at the cities within the state as well as distribution throughout the state? For example, rural PA is much different than Philly, Pittsburgh, and other cities in leadership and policy. Not sure about murder rate, but would guess it's mostly similar.
That said, it would be much better if they actually got into the causes or contributors, like the various socioeconomic factors that correlate with murder/crime.
No person in their right mind would want to go wandering around the south side of Chicago. That is not a falsehood. It is more complex than politics, but the murderous hell hole part is at least partially true.
> No person in their right mind would want to go wandering around the south side of Chicago.
Tell me you've never been on the Southside of Chicago without saying you've never been on the Southside of Chicago. Nobody ever walks around UofC campus, or to White Sox games, or the Museum of Science and Industry, or Beverly, or Mt. Greenwood, or Illinois Tech, or Chinatown, or Big Marsh, or Little Village, or Pilsen, or Promontory Point, or any of the many beaches, etc. Good point.
> That is not a falsehood.
Yes it is, you have no idea what you are talking about.
Right? I mean, I've never even been to Chicago myself, but one glance at Wikipedia[0]...
>South Side neighborhoods such as Armour Square, Back of the Yards, Bridgeport, and Pullman host more blue collar and middle-class residents, while Hyde Park, the Jackson Park Highlands District, Kenwood, Beverly, Mount Greenwood, and west Morgan Park feature affluent and upper-middle class residents.
... and I can't help but be incredibly confused as to why those "affluent and upper-middle class residents" would choose to live in an area where they wouldn't "in their right mind ... want to go wandering around" in.
No experience with Chicago here. I can say that the general sentiment that there are areas that you don't want to be in, especially after dark, is a valid one. Personal experiences validate this for areas like north Philly. But to your point, some areas within those general areas are not too bad, like Temple's campus.
> Can you explain what the thesis is and how this statement validates that?
Sure, it is the first sentence in the "Takeaways" section, at the very top of the article.
"The rate of murders in the US has gone up at an alarming rate. But, despite a media narrative to the contrary, this is a problem that afflicts Republican-run cities and states as much or more than the Democratic bastions."
The comment you are referring to ("No person in their right mind would want to go wandering around the south side of Chicago. That is not a falsehood.") is evidence that the "media narrative" mentioned and referenced in the article has indeed taken hold. Chicago was even one of the examples the article used. Any form of research would quickly identify that the entire South Side of Chicago is not a wasteland where nobody willingly walks around (let alone live). That the commenter felt it was so obviously true speaks to the level of validation.
It seems that many people would move out of high crime neighborhoods if it was feasible. We did see a large exodus from the cities in general around this time frame, although it's hard to say how much was this or covid as it's likely a combination of many factors.
It appears the commenter's statement was simply not granular enough since they grouped the whole Southside together (as the article groups entire cities together, then maybe the article was not granular enough?). They still have a valid point. A rate of 28 is substantially higher to most places in the US. Even the article mentions Chicago as having a real and persistent homicide problem and describes the murder rate as alarming. The commenter didn't say the issue only exists there and admits that it's not just politics, and it would be hard to argue that it's not a blatantly one of the highest rates in the country. If it's a good example of a general area where people wouldn't want to walk around because of a high murder rate, then why not use it?
You've leapt into another argument, ignoring the whole thesis trap you tried to set earlier. Now, it's about "granularity" and "moving out of neighborhoods" and "large exodus from cities" and anything else you can pivot towards.
It's ok to admit that you were never interested in discussing the actual analysis in the report because you refuse to accept it's validity. Instead of going around-and-around, we can just agree on that.
< (as the article groups entire cities together, then maybe the article was not granular enough?)
The article wasn't making a point about a specific city or a specific part of a city, like the commenter (incorrectly) was, so they wouldn't have that burden. I'm not sure why it is so hard to accept what the report is rather than argue about what it isn't.
> Even the article mentions Chicago as having a real and persistent homicide problem and describes the murder rate as alarming.
As I said in my comment. Nobody has ever disputed that, to say otherwise is yet another strawman. I live in Chicago, which is why I tune into opinions on the city built entirely on assumptions (like the one the article mentions and that commenter displayed).
"You've leapt into another argument, ignoring the whole thesis trap you tried to set earlier."
What trap? I was genuinely confused as to how you thought my comment reinforced the thesis, or that you were using a different thesis than I was (there is a slight difference, but minor). What argument did leap from, and to what new one?
"Even the article mentions Chicago as having a real and persistent homicide problem and describes the murder rate as alarming.
As I said in my comment. Nobody has ever disputed that, to say otherwise is yet another strawman."
Ok, then what was the point of your argument attacking the commenter for saying (not so nicely, but you didn't take issue with that part) that Southside has a lot of murders?
"It's ok to admit that you were never interested in discussing the actual analysis in the report because you refuse to accept it's validity."
I am interested in discussing the actual analysis. You can look at my other comments relating to the analysis (like why Trump vs governors, why are we looking at party and not policies, etc). Not sure why you're attacking me like this. I am interested in the actual subject of how policies and socioeconomic factors affect crime.
> I am interested in the actual subject of how policies and socioeconomic factors affect crime.
Nobody attacked you, no need for that performance.
Again, this is article about the prevailing political and media narrative of murder in Democratic-led locations being (at least partially) incorrect. If you want a study about how specific policies impact murder rates, this is not that study. No amount of complaining about this actual study will make it that hypothetical study.
In fact, I tried to find those studies for you in another thread and provided 3 examples of studies that connect actual policies to crime/murder. You refused to accept that information and your response was another string of questions and challenges. That leads me to believe (again) that you aren't interested in an actual discussion, but merely searching for more data to support your existing conclusion.
The quibble is with the narrative that the south side of Chicago is a bad place to go wandering around because of the political party affiliated with the leaders of Chicago or Illinois would be. Similarly, the narrative that crime went up in 2020 because of local governance choices predominantly made by a political party is similarly flawed.
On the flip side, you can better understand why Republicans might be more perceptive about a significant increase in crime in 2020...
Did you read the article? Or even my comment? Or you just wanted to add your opinion about a specific area to a discussion of facts about a whole country?
It would be good to do a study that looks at "what are the causal factors behind crime" and many people do this.
When existing political talking points include "liberal ideas are causing crime to rise" then an article like this one is also a valid thing to look at.
True, but it would be more convincing if they did provide the actual factors behind the murders. Without showing the real answers, this article is more about validating people who hold an existing position rather than trying to spread knowledge to, or convince, people holding a neutral or contrary position.
> Without showing the real answers, this article is more about validating people who hold an existing position rather than trying to spread knowledge to, or convince, people holding a neutral or contrary position.
I think this is exactly the opposite of the takeaway. Republicans have been promoting the idea that Democrats are weak on crime and their city's are overrun with murders. They have been running on this message since at least Reagan in the 80s. This challenges that existing position with actual data about states.
It might not be as deep as you like, but it certainly challenges the existing narrative (that's why you see so many people upset in the comments).
But are those upset people actually questioning their position, or defending it? Will this lead to change or better understanding? I don't think it will. Even the basic premise of the article has been essentially strawmaned - comparing states to cities. Let's look at the distribution throughout the states, look at the socioeconomic factors at play in the various locations, etc.
So yeah, it's not as deep as I'd like. It seems like there's not much actual information in the article other than 80% of the top 10 states for murder rate voted for Trump, which I don't find useful or actionable.
> But are those upset people actually questioning their position, or defending it?
If they aren't questioning their assumptions, then they are engaging on the wrin
> Even the basic premise of the article has been essentially strawmaned - comparing states to cities
It doesn't really compare cities to states. It mentions how cities are in states, which we know. It is about how Republicans use crime in cities as a hammer to hit Democratic policies and this data shows that narrative might not reflect reality.
> look at the socioeconomic factors at play in the various locations, etc.
These are also a function of government in some way, so it's hard to add this to the analysis without biasing the data.
"It is about how Republicans use crime in cities as a hammer to hit Democratic policies and this data shows that narrative might not reflect reality."
If it's not looking at cities, then how can it refute that claim?
Is it not possible that city murder rates drag up the murder rate for an entire state? Just looking at the top state for murder rate we see the state level is about 12, while the first 3 cities in murder rate are all over 30 and run by Democrats. I'm not saying that this validates Republicans positions, but it certainly doesn't provide evidence against it.
> I'm not saying that this validates Republicans positions, but it certainly doesn't provide evidence against it.
But it does. It shows that Democratic run states (California, New York, Illinois, Washington, etc.) have lower murder rates than Republican run states (Alabama, Mississippi, Missouri, etc.) REGARDLESS of what the murder rate is in cities (of which Democratic-run states states tend to have more of).
None of the most urbanized states (NJ, CA, MA, NV, etc.) are in the top-10 murder for states [1].
"It shows that Democratic run states (California, New York, Illinois, Washington, etc.) have lower murder rates than Republican run states (Alabama, Mississippi, Missouri, etc.)"
It's only showing the top ten. If it's actually claiming that, then we would need to see the comparison of all states, because some of the Republican run states have lower rates than some some of the Democrat run states. So it seems that we can't make that absolute statement.
We can see things like how New England is split between party and yet the rates are similarly low regardless of party running the state (still not addressing the city level claims). The article makes no mention of this. It simply picks the top ten, as Republicans could do for the cities with the highest murder rate. Neither address policies or the true underlying issues.
On top of that, it's looking at states that voted for Trump. Why did they choose this instead of looking at the governor's party? If they did that, the top state would flip categories.
Again, this article feel like a distraction that is highly politicized, mismatches counter argument to argument, and offers very little actual substance. Not to mention, the article is not presented in a way that would do anything other than validate one side's already held belief rather than dig into the topic.
> Not to mention, the article is not presented in a way that would do anything other than validate one side's already held belief rather than dig into the topic.
This is how you see it. Your first response being "How is this study wrong?" rather than "How might my assumptions be wrong?" kind of proves the point.
"Your first response being "How is this study wrong?" rather than "How might my assumptions be wrong?" kind of proves the point."
Not at all. My first question was which of my assumptions are wrong, then double check that my facts were right. Those didn't line up with the article, which is when I stated to see interesting unexplained choices, like using Trump instead of governor or a matrix of policies.
> like using Trump instead of governor or a matrix of policies.
And if they used Governor, you might complain that they didn't use Statehouse. And if they used that, you might come up with another reason.
My guess is that they used Trump AND Biden because they were the only politicians on the ballot in each of the states they studied. Many states didn't even have a Governor race in 2020 (the year they studied for election and murder).
Why would the election, that happened in Nov and was only effective the following year, matter for that year's data? If we're trying to disprove polices, then the governor has final veto power even if the legislature outnumbers them, plus they are the ones who set regulations (although city level regulations can vary wildly). Using the election is like using a future tangentially related event (because inauguration happens the following year and doesn't even have power at the state level) to predict a past outcome. It doesn't make sense. So yeah, I'll complain about something being illogical especially if it skews the numbers - I'm not just making up reasons.
The best thing would likely be to look at a matrix of policies for each state to identify potential impact from a specific policy over time and in combination with the other factors.
> Why would the election, that happened in Nov and was only effective the following year, matter for that year's data?
As I mentioned, likely because it was a data point that crossed city, county, and state lines. I can't think of another data point that provides that type of insight across such a broad swath of the population at a specific point in time. If you have some, please provide, it would make for a richer data set.
> The best thing would likely be to look at a matrix of policies for each state to identify potential impact from a specific policy over time and in combination with the other factors.
Plenty of that analysis is available, unfortunately the results don't penetrate the echo chamber. Here are a few [1] [2] [3].
"As I mentioned, likely because it was a data point that crossed city, county, and state lines."
That's largely not what we want when looking at policy that is typically enacted at the local level.
I asked for a matrix analysis with how various policies interact and perform over time, not a single subtopic. Those seem to be on a subtopic, and generally not related to the policies typically cited for being soft on crime (topic at hand). They could be part of the matrix as they are indirectly connected.
Are you aware that two of your sources contradict each other? One claims that stand your ground laws have no impact and another claims they increase violent crime and firearm homicide. Also interesting is that Rand omits some studies entirely. I would have liked to see what flaws they would have found in them rather than just leave them out (and leave us wondering if it was overlooked or due to a flaw).
> If we're trying to disprove polices, then the governor has final veto power even if the legislature outnumbers them
The power of the governor varies substantially from state to state.
> plus they are the ones who set regulations (although city level regulations can vary wildly)
At least in most states, the laws are crafted by the legislature, and implemented by the Governors. Either way, I think it's very reasonable to assume that the in states that voted for a particular President, the local regulations within that state are more likely to be in line with that President and their party than if they voted the other way.
> The best thing would likely be to look at a matrix of policies for each state to identify potential impact from a specific policy over time and in combination with the other factors.
Yes. I would imagine if such a matrix showed that the policies of the Democratic party, normalized for other factors, were correlated with higher murder rates, the prevailing narrative would be well founded.
The point is, absent that, there's no reason to accept or speak to that narrative, other than to mislead and disseminate disinformation for political gain.
"The point is, absent that, there's no reason to accept or speak to that narrative, other than to mislead and disseminate disinformation for political gain."
I think this is our main issue - which interpretation of the narrative are we discussing. A lot of times each side takes the worst interpretation or intention of the other. In the HN charitable spirit, I interpret the Republican narrative as questioning if policies like doing away with pretextual stops or sanctuary cities contribute to increases in crime. Likewise I interpret this article as trying to support those policies by showing there's little difference between the states. The part I take issue with, is that just analyzing based on partisan status and not on policies missed the debate around policies and doesn't control for socioeconomic factors. If they had focused on those, then it could provide much stronger evidence that the policies in question aren't contributing.
Now maybe I have it all wrong and this article is simply bashing Republicans (some of the text suggests that)
"Either way, I think it's very reasonable to assume that the in states that voted for a particular President, the local regulations within that state are more likely to be in line with that President and their party than if they voted the other way."
Potentially. In my state the legislature frequently passes things that are vetoed by the governor. The majority of the population is also in cities aligned to the governor's party (eg policies that start in the cities are requested by and sometimes passed on their request). I'm sure it's different in other states too. One big factor too, is that there was a lot of hate for Trump that could have nudged some middle of the road states away from their typical voting or the governor party(NH, VT, RI etc) which would affect the averages by party.
But you are sort of right - local policy tends to be the ones discussed. So even in "red" states, some of the large cities could be implementing "blue" policies. Although the same can be true the other direction - not all cities in "blue" states are implementing the policies in question.
"I interpret the Republican narrative as questioning if policies like doing away with pretextual stops or sanctuary cities contribute to increases in crime."
So, for starters "sanctuary cities" is not a policy, but a narrative. There is no legal definition for "sanctuary city", and it was a term that was crafted for the narrative about seven years ago, long after some cities made choices to limit the sharing of information between their local law enforcement and the federal government's immigration enforcement in order to establish trust with those communities, and terms like "City of Refuge" that had historically been adopted, but the term implies an entirely different context. The policies weren't really partisan when they were enacted. They were more about law enforcement and community relations, and were primarily advocated for by religious, rather than political, groups. The practical challenges they were responding too are just disproportionately likely presenting in cities that broadly vote Democrat, so the narrative that they are partisan has itself has been constructed. Also worth noting: the broader Republican narrative is for local government to be independent and not work closely with national government or law enforcement, so this peculiar exception is noteworthy and hard not to attribute to deliberate propaganda rather than specific policies.
So just with that statement there's a lot of partisan context you're bringing to the table there that isn't in the article.
> Likewise I interpret this article as trying to support those policies by showing there's little difference between the states.
I totally agree it makes no substantive claims about those policies one way or the other. As you've pointed out it cites no data tied to policies whatsoever. It looks at changes in 2020, and as far as I know, there were no cities that changed their policies around immigration in 2020. It doesn't actually reference immigration or sanctuary cities. It references "liberal cities" in its conclusion, and only in reference to the unsupported narrative. The closest it comes to referencing policy at all is pointing out that the high-murder rates are states that haven't "even flirted with ideas like defund the police", a claim which doesn't even imply that "flirting with", let alone implementing, a policy would have any kind of impact.
Interpreting it as supporting "sanctuary cities" seems as reasonable as claiming it is supporting policies of higher taxes, abortion, or really any policy prescription at all. The one policy it references, "defund the police", which at least sort of fits the comparative timeline of the data it is looking at, is referenced in the article in passing in the conclusion, not anywhere in the establishing argument, and even the reference is about the lack of evidence of a link, rather than there being a positive association. Even concluding the article is supporting the idea that simply voting Democrat would help seems like a huge stretch. I would suggest that seeing it as being about "sanctuary cities" is bringing a lot of your own context to the article that isn't from the article itself.
I would agree that if the aim is to support such policies, and in fact the only reference it makes to any policy at all is a passing reference in the conclusion where it asserts the policy is NOT associated with the data, it does indeed do a disastrous job what with the not mentioning them or providing any data tied to them. It's hard to imagine that someone intending to support such policies with an article would craft such a thing.
Interestingly, I do think it supports a perfectly rational reason why Republicans might be disproportionately concerned about an increase in murder rates, because they are disproportionately increasing in the areas where they live. ;-)
Let's look at the claims in the conclusion: "But the data c...
I think you're reading into the sanctuary cities thing too much. That's just an example of a policy (yeah, there's no legal Def, but that's how they're colloquially known now, plus sanctuary and refuge are synonymous anyways) that Republicans complain about and Democrats complain about them complaning about. It seems the term is widely used by both sides now, although that's not a policy I follow very much.
"It makes exactly zero statements about Democrat policies. It does speak to Republican support and the dearth of Democrat policies, but that is what you'd expect if the intent is to dispute a claim that the Democrat policies are causal or at least correlated with murder rates."
I would agree, except you need to look at the mitigating and confounding factors to draw that conclusion - something this article doesn't do. This is the big point in my positions (just that the article is lacking, engaging in similar foul play, and doesn't present the level of evidence that most people are claiming). There can be disproportionate rates of various socioeconomic factors that's are not controlled for here which could skew the data. Basic things like not accounting for the other variables responsible make it impossible to assign any value to the one being scrutinized, not looking for random errors (eg Gaussian distribution). Along this same vein, there's no explaination of the outliers. This is a political article, not a well formed study.
It seems that we aren't making any progress here, and my comments are becoming more and more misinterpreted. I guess I'm out.
> I think you're reading into the sanctuary cities thing too much. That's just an example of a policy (yeah, there's no legal Def, but that's how they're colloquially known now, plus sanctuary and refuge are synonymous anyways) that Republicans complain about and Democrats complain about them complaning about. It seems the term is widely used by both sides now, although that's not a policy I follow very much.
You interpreted the article as "trying to support those policies, by showing there's little difference between the states". Except it is pointing out that there are significant differences between the states, and they don't align at all with the narrative.
I am pointing out that your interpretation has imbued the article with an objective that by your own description does not correlate with the contents of the article. You've effectively dismissed the article by establishing new goals and goalposts and declaring it a failure.
"I would agree, except you need to look at the mitigating and confounding factors to draw that conclusion"
You are presuming that the conclusion is "these policies are not causing increased murder rates", despite me pointing out that wasn't the objective and both of us failing to finding any argument supporting that conclusion in the article.
> This is a political article, not a well formed study.
It's definitely not a study, and yes it is a political article. Where you lose me is saying this, seemingly acknowledging that the existing narrative is political and not a study... and then saying the article is a failure because it failed to provide what you'd want in a well formed study of the underlying cause.
> It seems like there's not much actual information in the article other than 80% of the top 10 states for murder rate voted for Trump, which I don't find useful or actionable.
I guess it depends on what you mean by actionable. If by actionable, you mean "changing my vote won't necessarily have an impact on the murder rate", I'd very much agree with you. However, I'd say it's actionable as in, "I should stop accepting and/or repeating a false narrative", I think that action is warranted.
Sure, if you could find data showing that when you look at the city level, that there was a distinct rise in the murder rate based on partisan leadership that differed from state-level trends, you could maybe make that case. However, it seems incredibly implausible that states with larger cities, cities more often lead by Democrats, and with a larger portion of their population in those cities, would have a lower murder rate and a lower increase in their murder rate, yet the larger trend of increased murders would be due to disproportionate increases in murder in cities lead by Democrats. At the very least, it would require that States that broadly vote Democrat would in aggregate have dramatically lower murders and increases in murders, which would also be in conflict with the partisan narrative.
Confirmation bias tends to manifest as a desire for more in-depth analysis for statements that violate one's expectations, but the rational case here is that the prevailing narrative needs far more in-depth analysis to deserve any kind of support.
What I mean is that if policies are are supposedly linked to increases in crime, then we should be evaluating them at a policy level, not a partisan level. The surface debate is just a bunch of partisan finger pointing and strawmanning (especially for the point of politicians getting their comments on the news), which covers up the real debate about underlying policy.
I don't know, but I feel like wanting to have articles that report meaningful information and analysis on the policies is not confirmation bias, but a desire to have informed debate about things that actually matter.
> What I mean is that if policies are are supposedly linked to increases in crime, then we should be evaluating them at a policy level, not a partisan level.
Yes, I would totally agree, but that isn't the nature of the prevailing narrative.
> The surface debate is just a bunch of partisan finger pointing and strawmanning (especially for the point of politicians getting their comments on the news), which covers up the real debate about underlying policy.
Bingo! You've hit the central point of the article.
> I don't know, but I feel like wanting to have articles that report meaningful information and analysis on the policies is not confirmation bias, but a desire to have informed debate about things that actually matter.
Agreed, wanting to have more meaningful information & analysis is not about confirmation bias. Wanting to have more meaningful information & analysis before accepting/repeating a narrative is confirmation bias.
The article isn't trying to suggest that Republicans or their policies are causing an increase in crime. It's trying to show that if you're looking at national trends in the data, it doesn't point to anything supporting the prevailing narrative. The natural next thought is, "what is the data supporting the prevailing narrative?", and the answer to that ought to raise at least as many questions about the prevailing narrative as it does this article.
"Bingo! You've hit the central point of the article."
I'm sorry, but it doesn't read like that for me. If it were really getting at the idea of there being underlying issues then I would expect there to be investigation of them to further support that point. If it's trying to call out the partisan finger pointing and use of "convenient" data, then I don't see why they would also engage in those actions (doesn't seem like satire to me).
"I'm sorry, but it doesn't read like that for me. If it were really getting at the idea of there being underlying issues then I would expect there to be investigation of them to further support that point."
Umm... the point of the article is about "the surface debate is just a bunchy of partisan finger pointing and strawmanning (especially for the point of politicians getting their comments on the news), which covers up the real debate about underlying policy", then the "problem" would be an investigation of the surface debate, which is what you see here.
One can erect a hundred strawmen with a fraction of the resources needed to identify and isolate, let alone communicate the complexity of the underlying issues. Heck, just demonstrating the lack of evidence supporting a strawman requires far more resources.
I would argue demanding a detailed investigation about the underlying issues in order to dismiss the partisan finger pointing and strawmanning is a really good way to ensure that the debate is dominated by partisan finger pointing and strawmanning. If you're wondering why the discourse is shaped this way, you're demonstrating the cause.
It should be enough to say, "You're right about something here. There is an increase in the murder rate, but it's broad national phenomenon whose underlying cause is not understood; your claims don't even fit the shape of the problem, let alone have credible supporting evidence about an underlying cause". That should be enough for the the narrative to be dismissed.
Unfortunately, it's not; thanks to confirmation bias people are much more likely to accept claims with weak or even no evidence that align with their expectations, and will insist on a far higher standard of evidence for anything that doesn't align with their expectations, even if it is simply pointing out that their expectations aren't well supported.
> Confirmation bias tends to manifest as a desire for more in-depth analysis for statements that violate one's expectations, but the rational case here is that the prevailing narrative needs far more in-depth analysis to deserve any kind of support.
I have been trying to say this exact thing, but couldn't put it as clearly.
No, the article is invalidating people who hold an existing position. "The increase in murders is not a liberal cities problem but a national problem."
It'd be even more convincing if they were able to solve all murder cases and prevent murder from ever happening again, but setting the bar there in order to recognize that a false narrative is not actually supported by the data is an unreasonable standard.
If that's what they are doing, then wouldn't the best thing for the article to do is show murder rates for the cities in a state, grouped by political leadership, as compared to each group as well as to the state rate?
I mean, I could play devils advocate here and say that the reason the 1# state (LA at 12) is so high is that the cities drag up the state rate (top three cities have rates over 30 with Democrat leadership). I'm not saying that validates Republican positions, but the article certainly doesn't refute this.
If that's the goal of the article, then it needs to provide the proper argument to invalidate that. Otherwise it seems like it's just obscuring the conversation through what is essentially a strawman argument (in the context of the liberal cities crime/murder argument that its targeting).
I'm not going to defend the quality of the analysis, but I'm not sure where the "LA as #1 at 12" is coming from. In the article LA's per capita murder rate is 15.79 per 100,000, and it's #2.
In general though, to support your devil's advocate thesis, you'd expect the states with the largest percentage of the population residing in urban areas would be the states with the highest murder rates. That would not be MS, LA, KY, AL and MO. So if the urban population is causal, you'd have to explain why the top states aren't NY, NJ, CA, MA, and NV.
Perhaps there's a case to be made that urban Democratic leadership mixed with Republican state and Federal leadership was the problem, but that seems like a pretty complex relationship to establish, and doesn't align with the narrative.
Hmm, did they change the link? The article looks different and more in-depth than the first time I read it. I got those numbers from a separate article because I didn't see those in the original.
Not necessarily the urban population, but the cities are the focus of the claim. HUD usually characterizes urban at the county level. This doesn't necessarily match with the cities themselves. This is especially true in suburbs. I live in an "urban" county and yet my county doesn't have a large city and I have corn fields around me. It's all because there are a lot of suburbs in the county with two small cities (and a bulk of the murders happen in the smaller, disadvantaged one).
I believe that socioeconomic factors, oversimplified and summarized in my mind as a loss of hope (hope for a decent job, hope for a better life, hope to be respected/valued) are the main drivers. The claim is not that party leadership is responsible for crime, but that the policies can exacerbate it. And I don't see policies looked at here (or anywhere really).
So I believe both sides are wrong. I think it's wrong that Fox is blaming it all on Democrat policies. I think this article is also wrong for implying that policies are not a factor, focusing on only murders and states (crime in general has been a complaint not just murders, and cities were called out not states), no explanation or investigation was performed into why anomalies exists, and some of the wording seems to be misleading (why use Trump instead of governor's who actually set policy, a 90ish% increase in WY... still at the low end under 4, etc). So I feel that both sides are disconnected from what the other side is actually saying, that everyone overpoliticizes stuff like this, and that we focus so much on trying to disprove the other side (which doesn't actually happen if we misunderstand the argument we attack) that we are distracting from proving our own.
> I think this article is also wrong for implying that policies are not a factor
I think that's a misread of the article. I think what it is showing is that partisan leadership, and the policies that flow with it, don't have the causal relationship that the narrative claims (which shows that the narrative is fictional/hypothetical). At the very least, the narrative does not explain the national trend, which one would think ought to be our focus.
I don't think anyone, including the author of the article, thinks there is no connection between policies and aggregate crime outcomes. It's hard to imagine there wouldn't be. There's mostly disagreement about the size of the impact and which policies have which impact.
You're right, there's been no explanation or investigation by the author about anomalies. That's a rather higher bar than the false narrative.
> If you want to link crime rates to political leadership in some kind of causal fashion, you need to at least try controlling for basic things like rural vs urban areas, or domestic violence vs street crime.
Why would they control for domestic violence or street crime at all? This piece is strictly talking about the rate of murders. Your proposal is not relevant to this discussion.
If anything, because urban areas have a higher population density, one would expect them to have a higher rate of murder per capita, but shockingly, they don't.
Dismissing this entire argument simply because "rural/urban" is quite frankly, deceitful and serves to help no one.
> If anything, because urban areas have a higher population density, one would expect them to have a higher rate of murder per capita, but shockingly, they don't.
I think this is the part that is causing the malfunction. None of the traditional arguments work against this simple data set.
"If anything, because urban areas have a higher population density, one would expect them to have a higher rate of murder per capita, but shockingly, they don't."
Why would this be shocking? The measure is per capita. I can see why it could lead to higher numbers within a small geographic area. But Why would density lead to higher murder rate?
"But Why would density lead to higher murder rate?"
It's about opportunity. A kleptomaniac is going to find they steal left often when they're in the middle of a 100 acre property that they own than in a dense apartment complex.
One of the most significant criteria for committing murder (as opposed to suicide) is other people. You can have all the murderous intent in the world, but if there is no one else around, you're unlikely to pull it off. On the other hand, even if you don't generally have murderous intent, if a place is packed with other people, that increases the chances that for one reason or another you'll develop murderous intent towards one of them.
Hmm, I'd like to see more data around that. For example, it's not like there aren't other people around in rural areas, so you certainly could perform a murder. The idea of developing murderous intent just does being exposed to more people seems far fetched to me. Murder isn't really like a crime of opportunity where you pick up some item as you walk by.
Murder can absolutely be a crime of opportunity. I think you're limiting your thinking of murder to premeditated cases where someone selects a target and then does whatever they need to do to get that target, and it didn't matter where that target was.
Let's assume for a moment that that was actually the case... wouldn't an area with a high murder rate be indicative of a lot of murder victims in the area, rather than murderers? I mean, if someone is murdered in New York City, and proximity to other people doesn't matter, it would follow that the murderer is just as likely to be in Cheyenne, WY as NYC. ;-)
"Murder can absolutely be a crime of opportunity."
Can, but not usually. It's more likely to be a crime of passion.
80% of murder victims knew their attackers.
"I mean, if someone is murdered in New York City, and proximity to other people doesn't matter, it would follow that the murderer is just as likely to be in Cheyenne, WY as NYC. ;-)"
You're conflating necessary means to commit a single occurrence with population level causes. I'm questioning whether population density is a cause of murder. Which I don't see why it would be.
I'm not sure about the 80% number, but I know the number is certainly high.
> Can, but not usually. It's more likely to be a crime of passion.
Crimes of passion require opportunity for that passion. They tend to not occur with people you've not been in the vicinity of. If you're in a more densely populated area, you're more likely to be in the vicinity of more people and know more people. It's not necessarily causal, but it is an emergent statistical phenomenon.
> You're conflating necessary means to commit a single occurrence with population level causes. I'm questioning whether population density is a cause of murder. Which I don't see why it would be.
The narrative is that the political leadership is encouraging/enabling/whatever criminals, not victims, who reside in the area. If you are arguing that geography doesn't impact the distribution crime, then the victims would be spread throughout the country.
It's not that population density causes murder, but it affords more opportunity.
I think we all understand that murderers are much more likely to know and live near their victims. It should not be surprising that more densely populated areas would have a higher murder rate. What is surprising is when the less densely populated areas have the higher rate.
"It's not that population density causes murder, but it affords more opportunity."
I still don't think this opportunity explains the higher rate, at least not a 3-5x difference. Opportunity is only one small part. I would think that socioeconomic factors are the bigger issue, and that some predictors or correlated metrics might be more common in cities.
I get that someone in a denser area is going to come into contact with potential situations more often. But when we're talking about decades of opportunity to be exposed to such a scenario, I would expect the difference to be negligible as the exposure becomes an eventual given.
The claim that someone in the city knows more people is a little suspect. You can live in a small town and know hundreds or thousands of the people in the small town(s) near you. Everyone knows everyone, being in your neighbor's business,
and can lead to a lot of gossip, opportunity/drama.
> I still don't think this opportunity explains the higher rate, at least not a 3-5x difference.
I didn't say that it explains the data at all. I'm just saying it's the statistical outcome one would expect given no other factors.
> I would think that socioeconomic factors are the bigger issue, and that some predictors or correlated metrics might be more common in cities.
Yes. That's entirely the point.
> I would expect the difference to be negligible as the exposure becomes an eventual given.
I wouldn't expect it to be negligible at all. You're more likely to have more frequent contact and with a much broader selection of people the over a long period of time, creating something akin to a network effect. On a given day, someone in rural Wyoming might come in contact with far more people than I'd come in contact with in my day. However, over longer periods of time, the average number of interactions and the aggregate number of people they interact with is far more likely to be dwarfed by mine. That significantly increases the chance for interpersonal crimes of all sorts, including murder.
> You can live in a small town and know hundreds or thousands of the people in the small town(s) near you. Everyone knows everyone, being in your neighbor's business, and can lead to a lot of gossip, opportunity/drama.
I've lived in small town settings, so I don't deny you can't end up knowing a lot of people. One might easily have more close friends or family than someone in a larger urban settings (the opposite might also be true). However, it is unlikely (though not impossible) that you'd come in to contact with more people, and come in contact with them more regularly, than someone in a denser urban environment.
Keep in mind there's a difference between specific traits and circumstances an aggregate statistical data. You might have more people you interact with in a small town setting, what's the aggregate set of interactions for the community? Does the community as a whole have a broader population and more frequent set of interactions than in a more densely populated community? Particularly when you eliminate interactions that don't afford much opportunity for murder (like interactions online), those numbers start to drop off much more rapidly, and it becomes all numerically impossible for them to be comparable.
"That significantly increases the chance for interpersonal crimes of all sorts, including murder."
Well usually once you commit murder (and are caught/convicted) you're incarcerated. So in theory once you hit a certain number of interactions, the people prone to snapping would have snapped. So I think the threshold is low enough that people who would commit a murder have sufficient opportunity in either environment.
"One might easily have more close friends or family"
In theory, if murder is something that generally involves strong passions, wouldn't the closer relationships result in the violence when someone snaps from a betrayal or habitual disrespect?
"becomes all numerically impossible for them to be comparable."
I think that's only true if we are weighting those interactions linearly and not including mitigating factors that could be more prevalent in one population or the other.
> So in theory once you hit a certain number of interactions, the people prone to snapping would have snapped.
That statement is presuming there's some fixed threshold of interactions or fixed set of people to interact with that most people achieve, before someone "snaps", at which point they are immediately incarcerated. I don't think there's anything resembling evidence, or even a theoretical model for criminal behaviour, suggesting that is the case --certainly not for crimes of passion, which are often not committed by people of all ages who hadn't previously murdered at any point in their lifetime.
> In theory, if murder is something that generally involves strong passions, wouldn't the closer relationships result in the violence when someone snaps from a betrayal or habitual disrespect?
Strong passions might erupt from interactions between a third person that one might have a mere acquaintance with, having an interaction with someone one had a closer relationship, no?
Let's assume that's true though. Let's say 80% of murders are crimes of passion, and 90% of crimes of passion are entirely derived from interactions within people one is so close to that regardless of population density you'd have more than enough interactions to hit some threshold. That still leaves 28% of murders that are far more likely to occur in more a densely populated environment... and if the rest of the murders are uniformly distributed, that would mean the divergences due to population density for those remaining murders would be far more significantly concentrated in denser populations.
Now, what the data actually shows is that there is one specific murder victim that is disproportionately likely to be murdered by someone they have a close relationship with: wives (sons are also disproportionately likely, but to a significantly lesser degree). In most cases the relationship between victim and offender is either unknown or a more casual "acquaintance": https://ucr.fbi.gov/crime-in-the-u.s/2011/crime-in-the-u.s.-...
> I think that's only true if we are weighting those interactions linearly and not including mitigating factors that could be more prevalent in one population or the other.
No. Over a decade long period, in a densely populated urban environment, if you look at the acquaintance-of-acquaintance or even acquaintance-of-friend populations, you could easily have a larger population than a small town or even a state. Even if you limit it to just "passionate", romantic relationships, the adage of, "I've dated eligible person in this town" is just something that is far more likely to occur in less densely populated areas.
I think this is getting long and no longer really productive. So this will be my last.
"I don't think there's anything resembling evidence, or even a theoretical model for criminal behaviour, suggesting that is the case"
I haven't looked for any, nor do I know of any contrary. It's just my theory.
"I don't think there's anything resembling evidence, or even a theoretical model for criminal behaviour, suggesting that is the case"
That is the model for certain prohibitions. You can buy a handgun at 21, that's assuming you didn't commit any crimes. I'd you have a juvenile offense you can buy a gun at 35 if you have no further offenses (in my state). You can have most convictions expunged after 10 years of good behavior. The idea is that if you are clear for that long, then you must be rehabilitated or no longer a threat.
"--certainly not for crimes of passion, which are often not committed by people of all ages who hadn't previously murdered at any point in their lifetime."
The distribution seems to show otherwise. It's much more common from 18-40 than in other age groups.
> The idea is that if you are clear for that long, then you must be rehabilitated or no longer a threat.
No, it does not mean that you are no longer a threat. It means that you are no longer more a significantly greater threat than the general population. Again, particularly with crimes of passion, someone who has never been a threat their entire life becomes a threat in a heart beat.
> The distribution seems to show otherwise. It's much more common from 18-40 than in other age groups.
That is not the age distribution of murders that were crimes of passion. That's the distribution of murders. The cluster with younger folks are no doubt those with a disproportionate propensity for murder/violence in general.
But hey, that's an age distribution that one would expect if there was some base probability for murder based on interpersonal interactions! ;-)
There are studies with rats that show a link between population density and violence. Not that people are rats but they are mammals sometimes animal studies can shed light on human behavior.
It’s authored by a centrist Democratic think tank and it has a political agenda: to spur new messaging from Dem officials to counter the soft-on-crime narratives in the media, a perennial issue for Democratic politicians in the United States.
correlation != causation, people do not choose to murder more because the majority of their community votes red. There are many variables to this problem.
> people do not choose to murder more because the majority votes red.
I'm glad nobody claimed this, because it wouldn't make any sense. Back in reality, do you have any ideas on the variables or just want to throw cold water on the entire discussion because it challenges your assumptions?
The framing of this issue by party, political candidate, or support for recent political movements—as media narratives are wont to do—obscures the fact that red states are poorer, less educated, and score lower on most quality of life measures than blue states. Given that murders occur where there are more people (cities), I don't find these findings that surprising.
This argument falls apart when you compare most major city areas to their surroundings. St. Louis, Baltimore, Detroit, etc. likely have the same socioeconomic levels and population as entire red states (e.g. Baltimore has a higher population than Wyoming).
"(e.g. Baltimore has a higher population than Wyoming)."
Maybe not a great example (not sure the exact argument you're going for) given the murder rate in Baltimore is about 55 and the rate in Wyoming is about 1. I also question if socioeconomic factors are really that similar between the two. A better comparison might be city rates vs the state rate for the stare they are in, like Baltimore at 55 vs MD at 9 (even better if you could exclude Baltimore from the MD stats).
> obscures the fact that red states are poorer, less educated, and score lower on most quality of life measures than blue states.
Does it obscure that fact? Maybe those facts are the underlying reason for some of the other ills.
> Given that murders occur where there are more people (cities), I don't find these findings that surprising.
This makes little sense as the places with more density are more likely to vote Democratic. Yet, this data shows us that (some) more rural states have higher murder rates.
All these states also have democrats in their state legislature. If we wanted to play this political game most the murders would be come from democrat areas which are the larger population centers aka cities.
I could flip this and point to more burglary per capita in rural areas which tend to be republican areas. Yet for this example its not because they are republicans, but in rural areas you tend have more unattended buildings.
Crime varies a lot based off location. Lets not try to politize these things.
Slippery how even their takeaway section switches from cities to states, and who the states voted for.
In the top 20 highest murder per capita cities in the US, 18 are democratic mayor, 1 is a former democrat turned independent (Las Vegas), and 1 is republican (Tulsa). It is disingenuous to switch between cities and states like this when trying to assign political causes.
> Slippery how even their takeaway section switches from cities to states, and who the states voted for.
Not really. Most of us understand the difference between states and cities. They were trying to head off the argument that you ended up making anyways.
> In the top 20 highest murder per capita cities in the US, 18 are democratic mayor, 1 is a former democrat turned independent (Las Vegas), and 1 is republican (Tulsa).
Jacksonville has a Republican mayor and a higher murder rate than Tulsa (according to this report), so it appears someone's data is off.
A good example of this is that Utah is highlighted on their map at the top of the article as one of the states with an increasing murder rate. Meanwhile it ignores that the larger cities in the state (like the SLC metro area and Ogden) are far more left-wing than the rest of the state (though probably far less left-wing than a place like San Francisco):
Also if you look at the list of cities in the bottom left of my link, a hilarious outlier is the town of Tremonton. Tremonton literally had its only murder in 50 years but since the population of the town is so small it works out to a homicide rate comparable to Costa Rica or Uruguay for the year.
How is this on the front page? There are just so many statistical methodology problems that you cannot draw any conclusions. First of all, they vast majority of the article is n=1 where they sampled one year. Then, they talk about increase over one year and come up with the mind blowing stat of "6 out of 10 Highest Murder Rate Increases are in Trump-Voting States". From a statistical view point, that is to be expected if there are no differences. Furthermore, the entire analysis is stupid because 2020 was the pandemic year. Finally, it doesn't take a genius to correlate these to wealth levels. Go to [1] and sort by median household income. What you will find is basically the same ranking as in this article. What do you believe - poverty or political preference leads to increases of crime?
> First of all, they vast majority of the article is n=1 where they sampled one year.
Wouldn't "n" be number of murders?
> Furthermore, the entire analysis is stupid because 2020 was the pandemic year.
It was a pandemic year in every one of these states.
> Go to [1] and sort by median household income. What you will find is basically the same ranking as in this article. What do you believe - poverty or political preference leads to increases of crime?
What if the two of them are linked? If a handful of states follow the same political ideology, and also share an outsized poverty and murder rate it is worth analyzing if those same policies have an impact.
No. I'm not disputing the murder rates. Those are probably very accurate for that year. I'm disputing the claim that red states have a murder problem based on one year of information.
> It was a pandemic year in every one of these states.
Not equally. Given the information they used, it is entirely plausible that the murder rate did not increase more in blue states because, in general, they weren't allowed to go outside unlike, say, Florida. To be clear, this is not "proof" that an ideology is better. This is a temporary measure that could lead to longer term issues.
> What if the two of them are linked?
That's what I'm saying. This article is claiming a link without actually analyzing the impact. You need a longitudinal study is my whole point.
> You need a longitudinal study is my whole point.
I agree. I think this report is just meant to provide a counter to the prevailing (accepted?) narrative. Maybe it's meant to inspire/fund the type of study you suggest?
>they vast majority of the article is n=1 where they sampled one year
For the sections on murder rates (not their change), n is the population. These sections make up the majority of the article. For the section on year-to-year changes, those are comparisons of two populations (each with n being that year's population count). There's no way sampling error would have a noticeable effect on the rates for states or major cities. Instead, those changes are caused by things a model should account for. TFA doesn't present a model, because that's not the point.
>"6 out of 10 Highest Murder Rate Increases are in Trump-Voting States". From a statistical view point, that is to be expected if there are no differences.
I think that's the point of TFA.
>What do you believe - poverty or political preference leads to increases of crime?
TFA's conclusion is the narrative of murder rates increasing because of Democratic political leaders doesn't jive with reality. The title is provocative, but and it takes an unnecessary jab with, "A more accurate conclusion from the data is that Republicans do a far better job blaming others for high murder rates than actually reducing high murder rates."
No, I'm not agreeing at all. The title and the first line of the article literally state that red states have a murder problem compared to blue states and use bogus stats. You don't know my stance on this issue because I have not stated it. I'm simply saying that you cannot take a stance from the information presented in this article.
Not sure I would use state borders for this. Murderer is up in most larger cities in the US. Alot of these states have 1 or 2 large cities and then it is going to be more rural.
This could easily skew the numbers per capita for a state that does not have population more broadly spread out in its borders.
Crime varies a lot based off location. For example burgarly per capita last I checked was more common in rural areas. This make sense since more unattended buildings and such.
State level is far to coarse, and also why the political spin.
Whenever I see such articles, I immediately switch to my favorite data collection ref Chicago, to see how crime looks like, lately, in that corner of the States: https://heyjackass.com/
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[ 32.2 ms ] story [ 2754 ms ] threadThese states may have started with extremely high murder rates. It's the growth in rates that would show whether OP is right or not, and those states with rapidly growing murders are not in the deep south.
(That said, none of the red states with high growth strike me as particularly likely to have liberal local DAs either, so I also question their argument.)
0 - https://www.ojjdp.gov/ojstatbb/crime/ucr.asp?table_in=2
then proceeds to tell OP that they're brainwashed. You were deliberately trying to offend, let's not mince words ok?
Your comment also seems to assume that the states which vote blue somehow don't have locally elected DA's? That doesn't explain why Missouri (with much less urbanization) has a higher murder than Illinois or Michigan (with "out--of-control" cities like Chicago and Detroit.
It sounds like you're taking the article to mean "voting Republican is causal to murder", and are rebutting with "being black is causal to murder" (but are using a corollary fact to imply it). However, the first statement isn't being made by the article, and your implied rebuttal is neither verifiable nor does it even rebut the first statement, were the article making it. It's also unnecessarily provocative (unnecessary due to its irrelevance as described above). Of course this is all assumption you've forced me to make. By itself, the sentence you wrote doesn't say anything directly - you haven't connected it to the article explicitly.
Your second paragraph has the same problem, but the implication is more obvious: You believe the properties you've listed cause high murder rates. That doesn't seem to be true, though - can you either elaborate subjectively, or provide some other writeup that points to that conclusion?
Expanding this to causation - that black people cause more crime - is not only a complete misuse of statistics - nothing there shows correlation, much less causation - it is an old racist saw. For example, a society which relegates people based on their skin color to poverty, lack of access to jobs, education, and healthcare, and continual discrimination, might be the causal agent. It could be that people in poverty, with poor educations, and difficult employment, are correlated with crime (but we'd need to look that up).
> Many of those red states have very liberal DAs who are refusing to prosecute certain crimes, asking for extremely low bail, and pursuing very short prison sentences, while also aggressively prosecuting alleged police misconduct.
Those DA's seem less prevelant in red states - is there some correlation there? And do you have evidence that these things increase crime rates? Most of the research says otherwise, the opposite practices had little impact for many years, and the people most affected by crime vote for these DAs.
> A more accurate conclusion from the data is that Republicans do a far better job blaming others for high murder rates than actually reducing high murder rates.
no matter how much you prepare it by straw-manning that the other side blames Democratic leadership for the same thing.
If you want to link crime rates to political leadership in some kind of causal fashion, you need to at least try controlling for basic things like rural vs urban areas, or domestic violence vs street crime.
That said, it would be much better if they actually got into the causes or contributors, like the various socioeconomic factors that correlate with murder/crime.
Tell me you've never been on the Southside of Chicago without saying you've never been on the Southside of Chicago. Nobody ever walks around UofC campus, or to White Sox games, or the Museum of Science and Industry, or Beverly, or Mt. Greenwood, or Illinois Tech, or Chinatown, or Big Marsh, or Little Village, or Pilsen, or Promontory Point, or any of the many beaches, etc. Good point.
> That is not a falsehood.
Yes it is, you have no idea what you are talking about.
>South Side neighborhoods such as Armour Square, Back of the Yards, Bridgeport, and Pullman host more blue collar and middle-class residents, while Hyde Park, the Jackson Park Highlands District, Kenwood, Beverly, Mount Greenwood, and west Morgan Park feature affluent and upper-middle class residents.
... and I can't help but be incredibly confused as to why those "affluent and upper-middle class residents" would choose to live in an area where they wouldn't "in their right mind ... want to go wandering around" in.
[0]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/South_Side,_Chicago
Sure, it is the first sentence in the "Takeaways" section, at the very top of the article.
"The rate of murders in the US has gone up at an alarming rate. But, despite a media narrative to the contrary, this is a problem that afflicts Republican-run cities and states as much or more than the Democratic bastions."
The comment you are referring to ("No person in their right mind would want to go wandering around the south side of Chicago. That is not a falsehood.") is evidence that the "media narrative" mentioned and referenced in the article has indeed taken hold. Chicago was even one of the examples the article used. Any form of research would quickly identify that the entire South Side of Chicago is not a wasteland where nobody willingly walks around (let alone live). That the commenter felt it was so obviously true speaks to the level of validation.
It seems that many people would move out of high crime neighborhoods if it was feasible. We did see a large exodus from the cities in general around this time frame, although it's hard to say how much was this or covid as it's likely a combination of many factors.
It appears the commenter's statement was simply not granular enough since they grouped the whole Southside together (as the article groups entire cities together, then maybe the article was not granular enough?). They still have a valid point. A rate of 28 is substantially higher to most places in the US. Even the article mentions Chicago as having a real and persistent homicide problem and describes the murder rate as alarming. The commenter didn't say the issue only exists there and admits that it's not just politics, and it would be hard to argue that it's not a blatantly one of the highest rates in the country. If it's a good example of a general area where people wouldn't want to walk around because of a high murder rate, then why not use it?
It's ok to admit that you were never interested in discussing the actual analysis in the report because you refuse to accept it's validity. Instead of going around-and-around, we can just agree on that.
< (as the article groups entire cities together, then maybe the article was not granular enough?)
The article wasn't making a point about a specific city or a specific part of a city, like the commenter (incorrectly) was, so they wouldn't have that burden. I'm not sure why it is so hard to accept what the report is rather than argue about what it isn't.
> Even the article mentions Chicago as having a real and persistent homicide problem and describes the murder rate as alarming.
As I said in my comment. Nobody has ever disputed that, to say otherwise is yet another strawman. I live in Chicago, which is why I tune into opinions on the city built entirely on assumptions (like the one the article mentions and that commenter displayed).
What trap? I was genuinely confused as to how you thought my comment reinforced the thesis, or that you were using a different thesis than I was (there is a slight difference, but minor). What argument did leap from, and to what new one?
"Even the article mentions Chicago as having a real and persistent homicide problem and describes the murder rate as alarming.
As I said in my comment. Nobody has ever disputed that, to say otherwise is yet another strawman."
Ok, then what was the point of your argument attacking the commenter for saying (not so nicely, but you didn't take issue with that part) that Southside has a lot of murders?
"It's ok to admit that you were never interested in discussing the actual analysis in the report because you refuse to accept it's validity."
I am interested in discussing the actual analysis. You can look at my other comments relating to the analysis (like why Trump vs governors, why are we looking at party and not policies, etc). Not sure why you're attacking me like this. I am interested in the actual subject of how policies and socioeconomic factors affect crime.
Nobody attacked you, no need for that performance.
Again, this is article about the prevailing political and media narrative of murder in Democratic-led locations being (at least partially) incorrect. If you want a study about how specific policies impact murder rates, this is not that study. No amount of complaining about this actual study will make it that hypothetical study.
In fact, I tried to find those studies for you in another thread and provided 3 examples of studies that connect actual policies to crime/murder. You refused to accept that information and your response was another string of questions and challenges. That leads me to believe (again) that you aren't interested in an actual discussion, but merely searching for more data to support your existing conclusion.
On the flip side, you can better understand why Republicans might be more perceptive about a significant increase in crime in 2020...
When existing political talking points include "liberal ideas are causing crime to rise" then an article like this one is also a valid thing to look at.
I think this is exactly the opposite of the takeaway. Republicans have been promoting the idea that Democrats are weak on crime and their city's are overrun with murders. They have been running on this message since at least Reagan in the 80s. This challenges that existing position with actual data about states.
It might not be as deep as you like, but it certainly challenges the existing narrative (that's why you see so many people upset in the comments).
So yeah, it's not as deep as I'd like. It seems like there's not much actual information in the article other than 80% of the top 10 states for murder rate voted for Trump, which I don't find useful or actionable.
If they aren't questioning their assumptions, then they are engaging on the wrin
> Even the basic premise of the article has been essentially strawmaned - comparing states to cities
It doesn't really compare cities to states. It mentions how cities are in states, which we know. It is about how Republicans use crime in cities as a hammer to hit Democratic policies and this data shows that narrative might not reflect reality.
> look at the socioeconomic factors at play in the various locations, etc.
These are also a function of government in some way, so it's hard to add this to the analysis without biasing the data.
If it's not looking at cities, then how can it refute that claim?
Is it not possible that city murder rates drag up the murder rate for an entire state? Just looking at the top state for murder rate we see the state level is about 12, while the first 3 cities in murder rate are all over 30 and run by Democrats. I'm not saying that this validates Republicans positions, but it certainly doesn't provide evidence against it.
My whole point is that this is a distraction.
But it does. It shows that Democratic run states (California, New York, Illinois, Washington, etc.) have lower murder rates than Republican run states (Alabama, Mississippi, Missouri, etc.) REGARDLESS of what the murder rate is in cities (of which Democratic-run states states tend to have more of).
None of the most urbanized states (NJ, CA, MA, NV, etc.) are in the top-10 murder for states [1].
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Urbanization_in_the_United_Sta...
It's only showing the top ten. If it's actually claiming that, then we would need to see the comparison of all states, because some of the Republican run states have lower rates than some some of the Democrat run states. So it seems that we can't make that absolute statement.
We can see things like how New England is split between party and yet the rates are similarly low regardless of party running the state (still not addressing the city level claims). The article makes no mention of this. It simply picks the top ten, as Republicans could do for the cities with the highest murder rate. Neither address policies or the true underlying issues.
On top of that, it's looking at states that voted for Trump. Why did they choose this instead of looking at the governor's party? If they did that, the top state would flip categories.
Again, this article feel like a distraction that is highly politicized, mismatches counter argument to argument, and offers very little actual substance. Not to mention, the article is not presented in a way that would do anything other than validate one side's already held belief rather than dig into the topic.
This is how you see it. Your first response being "How is this study wrong?" rather than "How might my assumptions be wrong?" kind of proves the point.
Not at all. My first question was which of my assumptions are wrong, then double check that my facts were right. Those didn't line up with the article, which is when I stated to see interesting unexplained choices, like using Trump instead of governor or a matrix of policies.
And if they used Governor, you might complain that they didn't use Statehouse. And if they used that, you might come up with another reason.
My guess is that they used Trump AND Biden because they were the only politicians on the ballot in each of the states they studied. Many states didn't even have a Governor race in 2020 (the year they studied for election and murder).
The best thing would likely be to look at a matrix of policies for each state to identify potential impact from a specific policy over time and in combination with the other factors.
As I mentioned, likely because it was a data point that crossed city, county, and state lines. I can't think of another data point that provides that type of insight across such a broad swath of the population at a specific point in time. If you have some, please provide, it would make for a richer data set.
> The best thing would likely be to look at a matrix of policies for each state to identify potential impact from a specific policy over time and in combination with the other factors.
Plenty of that analysis is available, unfortunately the results don't penetrate the echo chamber. Here are a few [1] [2] [3].
[1] https://www.ojp.gov/pdffiles1/nij/grants/254669.pdf
[2] https://www.rand.org/research/gun-policy/analysis/stand-your...
[3] https://www.bu.edu/articles/2019/state-gun-laws-that-reduce-...
That's largely not what we want when looking at policy that is typically enacted at the local level.
I asked for a matrix analysis with how various policies interact and perform over time, not a single subtopic. Those seem to be on a subtopic, and generally not related to the policies typically cited for being soft on crime (topic at hand). They could be part of the matrix as they are indirectly connected.
Are you aware that two of your sources contradict each other? One claims that stand your ground laws have no impact and another claims they increase violent crime and firearm homicide. Also interesting is that Rand omits some studies entirely. I would have liked to see what flaws they would have found in them rather than just leave them out (and leave us wondering if it was overlooked or due to a flaw).
The power of the governor varies substantially from state to state.
> plus they are the ones who set regulations (although city level regulations can vary wildly)
At least in most states, the laws are crafted by the legislature, and implemented by the Governors. Either way, I think it's very reasonable to assume that the in states that voted for a particular President, the local regulations within that state are more likely to be in line with that President and their party than if they voted the other way.
> The best thing would likely be to look at a matrix of policies for each state to identify potential impact from a specific policy over time and in combination with the other factors.
Yes. I would imagine if such a matrix showed that the policies of the Democratic party, normalized for other factors, were correlated with higher murder rates, the prevailing narrative would be well founded.
The point is, absent that, there's no reason to accept or speak to that narrative, other than to mislead and disseminate disinformation for political gain.
I think this is our main issue - which interpretation of the narrative are we discussing. A lot of times each side takes the worst interpretation or intention of the other. In the HN charitable spirit, I interpret the Republican narrative as questioning if policies like doing away with pretextual stops or sanctuary cities contribute to increases in crime. Likewise I interpret this article as trying to support those policies by showing there's little difference between the states. The part I take issue with, is that just analyzing based on partisan status and not on policies missed the debate around policies and doesn't control for socioeconomic factors. If they had focused on those, then it could provide much stronger evidence that the policies in question aren't contributing.
Now maybe I have it all wrong and this article is simply bashing Republicans (some of the text suggests that)
"Either way, I think it's very reasonable to assume that the in states that voted for a particular President, the local regulations within that state are more likely to be in line with that President and their party than if they voted the other way."
Potentially. In my state the legislature frequently passes things that are vetoed by the governor. The majority of the population is also in cities aligned to the governor's party (eg policies that start in the cities are requested by and sometimes passed on their request). I'm sure it's different in other states too. One big factor too, is that there was a lot of hate for Trump that could have nudged some middle of the road states away from their typical voting or the governor party(NH, VT, RI etc) which would affect the averages by party.
But you are sort of right - local policy tends to be the ones discussed. So even in "red" states, some of the large cities could be implementing "blue" policies. Although the same can be true the other direction - not all cities in "blue" states are implementing the policies in question.
So, for starters "sanctuary cities" is not a policy, but a narrative. There is no legal definition for "sanctuary city", and it was a term that was crafted for the narrative about seven years ago, long after some cities made choices to limit the sharing of information between their local law enforcement and the federal government's immigration enforcement in order to establish trust with those communities, and terms like "City of Refuge" that had historically been adopted, but the term implies an entirely different context. The policies weren't really partisan when they were enacted. They were more about law enforcement and community relations, and were primarily advocated for by religious, rather than political, groups. The practical challenges they were responding too are just disproportionately likely presenting in cities that broadly vote Democrat, so the narrative that they are partisan has itself has been constructed. Also worth noting: the broader Republican narrative is for local government to be independent and not work closely with national government or law enforcement, so this peculiar exception is noteworthy and hard not to attribute to deliberate propaganda rather than specific policies.
So just with that statement there's a lot of partisan context you're bringing to the table there that isn't in the article.
> Likewise I interpret this article as trying to support those policies by showing there's little difference between the states.
I totally agree it makes no substantive claims about those policies one way or the other. As you've pointed out it cites no data tied to policies whatsoever. It looks at changes in 2020, and as far as I know, there were no cities that changed their policies around immigration in 2020. It doesn't actually reference immigration or sanctuary cities. It references "liberal cities" in its conclusion, and only in reference to the unsupported narrative. The closest it comes to referencing policy at all is pointing out that the high-murder rates are states that haven't "even flirted with ideas like defund the police", a claim which doesn't even imply that "flirting with", let alone implementing, a policy would have any kind of impact.
Interpreting it as supporting "sanctuary cities" seems as reasonable as claiming it is supporting policies of higher taxes, abortion, or really any policy prescription at all. The one policy it references, "defund the police", which at least sort of fits the comparative timeline of the data it is looking at, is referenced in the article in passing in the conclusion, not anywhere in the establishing argument, and even the reference is about the lack of evidence of a link, rather than there being a positive association. Even concluding the article is supporting the idea that simply voting Democrat would help seems like a huge stretch. I would suggest that seeing it as being about "sanctuary cities" is bringing a lot of your own context to the article that isn't from the article itself.
I would agree that if the aim is to support such policies, and in fact the only reference it makes to any policy at all is a passing reference in the conclusion where it asserts the policy is NOT associated with the data, it does indeed do a disastrous job what with the not mentioning them or providing any data tied to them. It's hard to imagine that someone intending to support such policies with an article would craft such a thing.
Interestingly, I do think it supports a perfectly rational reason why Republicans might be disproportionately concerned about an increase in murder rates, because they are disproportionately increasing in the areas where they live. ;-)
Let's look at the claims in the conclusion: "But the data c...
"It makes exactly zero statements about Democrat policies. It does speak to Republican support and the dearth of Democrat policies, but that is what you'd expect if the intent is to dispute a claim that the Democrat policies are causal or at least correlated with murder rates."
I would agree, except you need to look at the mitigating and confounding factors to draw that conclusion - something this article doesn't do. This is the big point in my positions (just that the article is lacking, engaging in similar foul play, and doesn't present the level of evidence that most people are claiming). There can be disproportionate rates of various socioeconomic factors that's are not controlled for here which could skew the data. Basic things like not accounting for the other variables responsible make it impossible to assign any value to the one being scrutinized, not looking for random errors (eg Gaussian distribution). Along this same vein, there's no explaination of the outliers. This is a political article, not a well formed study.
It seems that we aren't making any progress here, and my comments are becoming more and more misinterpreted. I guess I'm out.
You interpreted the article as "trying to support those policies, by showing there's little difference between the states". Except it is pointing out that there are significant differences between the states, and they don't align at all with the narrative.
I am pointing out that your interpretation has imbued the article with an objective that by your own description does not correlate with the contents of the article. You've effectively dismissed the article by establishing new goals and goalposts and declaring it a failure.
"I would agree, except you need to look at the mitigating and confounding factors to draw that conclusion"
You are presuming that the conclusion is "these policies are not causing increased murder rates", despite me pointing out that wasn't the objective and both of us failing to finding any argument supporting that conclusion in the article.
> This is a political article, not a well formed study.
It's definitely not a study, and yes it is a political article. Where you lose me is saying this, seemingly acknowledging that the existing narrative is political and not a study... and then saying the article is a failure because it failed to provide what you'd want in a well formed study of the underlying cause.
I guess it depends on what you mean by actionable. If by actionable, you mean "changing my vote won't necessarily have an impact on the murder rate", I'd very much agree with you. However, I'd say it's actionable as in, "I should stop accepting and/or repeating a false narrative", I think that action is warranted.
Sure, if you could find data showing that when you look at the city level, that there was a distinct rise in the murder rate based on partisan leadership that differed from state-level trends, you could maybe make that case. However, it seems incredibly implausible that states with larger cities, cities more often lead by Democrats, and with a larger portion of their population in those cities, would have a lower murder rate and a lower increase in their murder rate, yet the larger trend of increased murders would be due to disproportionate increases in murder in cities lead by Democrats. At the very least, it would require that States that broadly vote Democrat would in aggregate have dramatically lower murders and increases in murders, which would also be in conflict with the partisan narrative.
Confirmation bias tends to manifest as a desire for more in-depth analysis for statements that violate one's expectations, but the rational case here is that the prevailing narrative needs far more in-depth analysis to deserve any kind of support.
I don't know, but I feel like wanting to have articles that report meaningful information and analysis on the policies is not confirmation bias, but a desire to have informed debate about things that actually matter.
Yes, I would totally agree, but that isn't the nature of the prevailing narrative.
> The surface debate is just a bunch of partisan finger pointing and strawmanning (especially for the point of politicians getting their comments on the news), which covers up the real debate about underlying policy.
Bingo! You've hit the central point of the article.
> I don't know, but I feel like wanting to have articles that report meaningful information and analysis on the policies is not confirmation bias, but a desire to have informed debate about things that actually matter.
Agreed, wanting to have more meaningful information & analysis is not about confirmation bias. Wanting to have more meaningful information & analysis before accepting/repeating a narrative is confirmation bias.
The article isn't trying to suggest that Republicans or their policies are causing an increase in crime. It's trying to show that if you're looking at national trends in the data, it doesn't point to anything supporting the prevailing narrative. The natural next thought is, "what is the data supporting the prevailing narrative?", and the answer to that ought to raise at least as many questions about the prevailing narrative as it does this article.
I'm sorry, but it doesn't read like that for me. If it were really getting at the idea of there being underlying issues then I would expect there to be investigation of them to further support that point. If it's trying to call out the partisan finger pointing and use of "convenient" data, then I don't see why they would also engage in those actions (doesn't seem like satire to me).
Umm... the point of the article is about "the surface debate is just a bunchy of partisan finger pointing and strawmanning (especially for the point of politicians getting their comments on the news), which covers up the real debate about underlying policy", then the "problem" would be an investigation of the surface debate, which is what you see here.
One can erect a hundred strawmen with a fraction of the resources needed to identify and isolate, let alone communicate the complexity of the underlying issues. Heck, just demonstrating the lack of evidence supporting a strawman requires far more resources.
I would argue demanding a detailed investigation about the underlying issues in order to dismiss the partisan finger pointing and strawmanning is a really good way to ensure that the debate is dominated by partisan finger pointing and strawmanning. If you're wondering why the discourse is shaped this way, you're demonstrating the cause.
It should be enough to say, "You're right about something here. There is an increase in the murder rate, but it's broad national phenomenon whose underlying cause is not understood; your claims don't even fit the shape of the problem, let alone have credible supporting evidence about an underlying cause". That should be enough for the the narrative to be dismissed.
Unfortunately, it's not; thanks to confirmation bias people are much more likely to accept claims with weak or even no evidence that align with their expectations, and will insist on a far higher standard of evidence for anything that doesn't align with their expectations, even if it is simply pointing out that their expectations aren't well supported.
I have been trying to say this exact thing, but couldn't put it as clearly.
It'd be even more convincing if they were able to solve all murder cases and prevent murder from ever happening again, but setting the bar there in order to recognize that a false narrative is not actually supported by the data is an unreasonable standard.
I mean, I could play devils advocate here and say that the reason the 1# state (LA at 12) is so high is that the cities drag up the state rate (top three cities have rates over 30 with Democrat leadership). I'm not saying that validates Republican positions, but the article certainly doesn't refute this.
If that's the goal of the article, then it needs to provide the proper argument to invalidate that. Otherwise it seems like it's just obscuring the conversation through what is essentially a strawman argument (in the context of the liberal cities crime/murder argument that its targeting).
In general though, to support your devil's advocate thesis, you'd expect the states with the largest percentage of the population residing in urban areas would be the states with the highest murder rates. That would not be MS, LA, KY, AL and MO. So if the urban population is causal, you'd have to explain why the top states aren't NY, NJ, CA, MA, and NV.
Perhaps there's a case to be made that urban Democratic leadership mixed with Republican state and Federal leadership was the problem, but that seems like a pretty complex relationship to establish, and doesn't align with the narrative.
Not necessarily the urban population, but the cities are the focus of the claim. HUD usually characterizes urban at the county level. This doesn't necessarily match with the cities themselves. This is especially true in suburbs. I live in an "urban" county and yet my county doesn't have a large city and I have corn fields around me. It's all because there are a lot of suburbs in the county with two small cities (and a bulk of the murders happen in the smaller, disadvantaged one).
I believe that socioeconomic factors, oversimplified and summarized in my mind as a loss of hope (hope for a decent job, hope for a better life, hope to be respected/valued) are the main drivers. The claim is not that party leadership is responsible for crime, but that the policies can exacerbate it. And I don't see policies looked at here (or anywhere really).
So I believe both sides are wrong. I think it's wrong that Fox is blaming it all on Democrat policies. I think this article is also wrong for implying that policies are not a factor, focusing on only murders and states (crime in general has been a complaint not just murders, and cities were called out not states), no explanation or investigation was performed into why anomalies exists, and some of the wording seems to be misleading (why use Trump instead of governor's who actually set policy, a 90ish% increase in WY... still at the low end under 4, etc). So I feel that both sides are disconnected from what the other side is actually saying, that everyone overpoliticizes stuff like this, and that we focus so much on trying to disprove the other side (which doesn't actually happen if we misunderstand the argument we attack) that we are distracting from proving our own.
I think that's a misread of the article. I think what it is showing is that partisan leadership, and the policies that flow with it, don't have the causal relationship that the narrative claims (which shows that the narrative is fictional/hypothetical). At the very least, the narrative does not explain the national trend, which one would think ought to be our focus.
I don't think anyone, including the author of the article, thinks there is no connection between policies and aggregate crime outcomes. It's hard to imagine there wouldn't be. There's mostly disagreement about the size of the impact and which policies have which impact.
You're right, there's been no explanation or investigation by the author about anomalies. That's a rather higher bar than the false narrative.
Why would they control for domestic violence or street crime at all? This piece is strictly talking about the rate of murders. Your proposal is not relevant to this discussion.
If anything, because urban areas have a higher population density, one would expect them to have a higher rate of murder per capita, but shockingly, they don't.
Dismissing this entire argument simply because "rural/urban" is quite frankly, deceitful and serves to help no one.
I think this is the part that is causing the malfunction. None of the traditional arguments work against this simple data set.
Why would this be shocking? The measure is per capita. I can see why it could lead to higher numbers within a small geographic area. But Why would density lead to higher murder rate?
It's about opportunity. A kleptomaniac is going to find they steal left often when they're in the middle of a 100 acre property that they own than in a dense apartment complex.
One of the most significant criteria for committing murder (as opposed to suicide) is other people. You can have all the murderous intent in the world, but if there is no one else around, you're unlikely to pull it off. On the other hand, even if you don't generally have murderous intent, if a place is packed with other people, that increases the chances that for one reason or another you'll develop murderous intent towards one of them.
Let's assume for a moment that that was actually the case... wouldn't an area with a high murder rate be indicative of a lot of murder victims in the area, rather than murderers? I mean, if someone is murdered in New York City, and proximity to other people doesn't matter, it would follow that the murderer is just as likely to be in Cheyenne, WY as NYC. ;-)
Can, but not usually. It's more likely to be a crime of passion.
80% of murder victims knew their attackers.
"I mean, if someone is murdered in New York City, and proximity to other people doesn't matter, it would follow that the murderer is just as likely to be in Cheyenne, WY as NYC. ;-)"
You're conflating necessary means to commit a single occurrence with population level causes. I'm questioning whether population density is a cause of murder. Which I don't see why it would be.
> Can, but not usually. It's more likely to be a crime of passion.
Crimes of passion require opportunity for that passion. They tend to not occur with people you've not been in the vicinity of. If you're in a more densely populated area, you're more likely to be in the vicinity of more people and know more people. It's not necessarily causal, but it is an emergent statistical phenomenon.
> You're conflating necessary means to commit a single occurrence with population level causes. I'm questioning whether population density is a cause of murder. Which I don't see why it would be.
The narrative is that the political leadership is encouraging/enabling/whatever criminals, not victims, who reside in the area. If you are arguing that geography doesn't impact the distribution crime, then the victims would be spread throughout the country.
It's not that population density causes murder, but it affords more opportunity.
I think we all understand that murderers are much more likely to know and live near their victims. It should not be surprising that more densely populated areas would have a higher murder rate. What is surprising is when the less densely populated areas have the higher rate.
I still don't think this opportunity explains the higher rate, at least not a 3-5x difference. Opportunity is only one small part. I would think that socioeconomic factors are the bigger issue, and that some predictors or correlated metrics might be more common in cities.
I get that someone in a denser area is going to come into contact with potential situations more often. But when we're talking about decades of opportunity to be exposed to such a scenario, I would expect the difference to be negligible as the exposure becomes an eventual given.
The claim that someone in the city knows more people is a little suspect. You can live in a small town and know hundreds or thousands of the people in the small town(s) near you. Everyone knows everyone, being in your neighbor's business, and can lead to a lot of gossip, opportunity/drama.
I didn't say that it explains the data at all. I'm just saying it's the statistical outcome one would expect given no other factors.
> I would think that socioeconomic factors are the bigger issue, and that some predictors or correlated metrics might be more common in cities.
Yes. That's entirely the point.
> I would expect the difference to be negligible as the exposure becomes an eventual given.
I wouldn't expect it to be negligible at all. You're more likely to have more frequent contact and with a much broader selection of people the over a long period of time, creating something akin to a network effect. On a given day, someone in rural Wyoming might come in contact with far more people than I'd come in contact with in my day. However, over longer periods of time, the average number of interactions and the aggregate number of people they interact with is far more likely to be dwarfed by mine. That significantly increases the chance for interpersonal crimes of all sorts, including murder.
> You can live in a small town and know hundreds or thousands of the people in the small town(s) near you. Everyone knows everyone, being in your neighbor's business, and can lead to a lot of gossip, opportunity/drama.
I've lived in small town settings, so I don't deny you can't end up knowing a lot of people. One might easily have more close friends or family than someone in a larger urban settings (the opposite might also be true). However, it is unlikely (though not impossible) that you'd come in to contact with more people, and come in contact with them more regularly, than someone in a denser urban environment.
Keep in mind there's a difference between specific traits and circumstances an aggregate statistical data. You might have more people you interact with in a small town setting, what's the aggregate set of interactions for the community? Does the community as a whole have a broader population and more frequent set of interactions than in a more densely populated community? Particularly when you eliminate interactions that don't afford much opportunity for murder (like interactions online), those numbers start to drop off much more rapidly, and it becomes all numerically impossible for them to be comparable.
Well usually once you commit murder (and are caught/convicted) you're incarcerated. So in theory once you hit a certain number of interactions, the people prone to snapping would have snapped. So I think the threshold is low enough that people who would commit a murder have sufficient opportunity in either environment.
"One might easily have more close friends or family"
In theory, if murder is something that generally involves strong passions, wouldn't the closer relationships result in the violence when someone snaps from a betrayal or habitual disrespect?
"becomes all numerically impossible for them to be comparable."
I think that's only true if we are weighting those interactions linearly and not including mitigating factors that could be more prevalent in one population or the other.
That statement is presuming there's some fixed threshold of interactions or fixed set of people to interact with that most people achieve, before someone "snaps", at which point they are immediately incarcerated. I don't think there's anything resembling evidence, or even a theoretical model for criminal behaviour, suggesting that is the case --certainly not for crimes of passion, which are often not committed by people of all ages who hadn't previously murdered at any point in their lifetime.
> In theory, if murder is something that generally involves strong passions, wouldn't the closer relationships result in the violence when someone snaps from a betrayal or habitual disrespect?
Strong passions might erupt from interactions between a third person that one might have a mere acquaintance with, having an interaction with someone one had a closer relationship, no?
Let's assume that's true though. Let's say 80% of murders are crimes of passion, and 90% of crimes of passion are entirely derived from interactions within people one is so close to that regardless of population density you'd have more than enough interactions to hit some threshold. That still leaves 28% of murders that are far more likely to occur in more a densely populated environment... and if the rest of the murders are uniformly distributed, that would mean the divergences due to population density for those remaining murders would be far more significantly concentrated in denser populations.
Now, what the data actually shows is that there is one specific murder victim that is disproportionately likely to be murdered by someone they have a close relationship with: wives (sons are also disproportionately likely, but to a significantly lesser degree). In most cases the relationship between victim and offender is either unknown or a more casual "acquaintance": https://ucr.fbi.gov/crime-in-the-u.s/2011/crime-in-the-u.s.-...
> I think that's only true if we are weighting those interactions linearly and not including mitigating factors that could be more prevalent in one population or the other.
No. Over a decade long period, in a densely populated urban environment, if you look at the acquaintance-of-acquaintance or even acquaintance-of-friend populations, you could easily have a larger population than a small town or even a state. Even if you limit it to just "passionate", romantic relationships, the adage of, "I've dated eligible person in this town" is just something that is far more likely to occur in less densely populated areas.
"I don't think there's anything resembling evidence, or even a theoretical model for criminal behaviour, suggesting that is the case"
I haven't looked for any, nor do I know of any contrary. It's just my theory.
"I don't think there's anything resembling evidence, or even a theoretical model for criminal behaviour, suggesting that is the case"
That is the model for certain prohibitions. You can buy a handgun at 21, that's assuming you didn't commit any crimes. I'd you have a juvenile offense you can buy a gun at 35 if you have no further offenses (in my state). You can have most convictions expunged after 10 years of good behavior. The idea is that if you are clear for that long, then you must be rehabilitated or no longer a threat.
"--certainly not for crimes of passion, which are often not committed by people of all ages who hadn't previously murdered at any point in their lifetime."
The distribution seems to show otherwise. It's much more common from 18-40 than in other age groups.
https://www.statista.com/statistics/251884/murder-offenders-...
No, it does not mean that you are no longer a threat. It means that you are no longer more a significantly greater threat than the general population. Again, particularly with crimes of passion, someone who has never been a threat their entire life becomes a threat in a heart beat.
> The distribution seems to show otherwise. It's much more common from 18-40 than in other age groups.
That is not the age distribution of murders that were crimes of passion. That's the distribution of murders. The cluster with younger folks are no doubt those with a disproportionate propensity for murder/violence in general.
But hey, that's an age distribution that one would expect if there was some base probability for murder based on interpersonal interactions! ;-)
It’s authored by a centrist Democratic think tank and it has a political agenda: to spur new messaging from Dem officials to counter the soft-on-crime narratives in the media, a perennial issue for Democratic politicians in the United States.
I'm glad nobody claimed this, because it wouldn't make any sense. Back in reality, do you have any ideas on the variables or just want to throw cold water on the entire discussion because it challenges your assumptions?
Maybe not a great example (not sure the exact argument you're going for) given the murder rate in Baltimore is about 55 and the rate in Wyoming is about 1. I also question if socioeconomic factors are really that similar between the two. A better comparison might be city rates vs the state rate for the stare they are in, like Baltimore at 55 vs MD at 9 (even better if you could exclude Baltimore from the MD stats).
Does it obscure that fact? Maybe those facts are the underlying reason for some of the other ills.
> Given that murders occur where there are more people (cities), I don't find these findings that surprising.
This makes little sense as the places with more density are more likely to vote Democratic. Yet, this data shows us that (some) more rural states have higher murder rates.
All these states also have democrats in their state legislature. If we wanted to play this political game most the murders would be come from democrat areas which are the larger population centers aka cities.
I could flip this and point to more burglary per capita in rural areas which tend to be republican areas. Yet for this example its not because they are republicans, but in rural areas you tend have more unattended buildings.
Crime varies a lot based off location. Lets not try to politize these things.
In the top 20 highest murder per capita cities in the US, 18 are democratic mayor, 1 is a former democrat turned independent (Las Vegas), and 1 is republican (Tulsa). It is disingenuous to switch between cities and states like this when trying to assign political causes.
Not really. Most of us understand the difference between states and cities. They were trying to head off the argument that you ended up making anyways.
> In the top 20 highest murder per capita cities in the US, 18 are democratic mayor, 1 is a former democrat turned independent (Las Vegas), and 1 is republican (Tulsa).
Jacksonville has a Republican mayor and a higher murder rate than Tulsa (according to this report), so it appears someone's data is off.
https://www.macrotrends.net/cities/us/ut/salt-lake-city/murd...
Also if you look at the list of cities in the bottom left of my link, a hilarious outlier is the town of Tremonton. Tremonton literally had its only murder in 50 years but since the population of the town is so small it works out to a homicide rate comparable to Costa Rica or Uruguay for the year.
[1] - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_U.S._states_and_territ...
Wouldn't "n" be number of murders?
> Furthermore, the entire analysis is stupid because 2020 was the pandemic year.
It was a pandemic year in every one of these states.
> Go to [1] and sort by median household income. What you will find is basically the same ranking as in this article. What do you believe - poverty or political preference leads to increases of crime?
What if the two of them are linked? If a handful of states follow the same political ideology, and also share an outsized poverty and murder rate it is worth analyzing if those same policies have an impact.
No. I'm not disputing the murder rates. Those are probably very accurate for that year. I'm disputing the claim that red states have a murder problem based on one year of information.
> It was a pandemic year in every one of these states.
Not equally. Given the information they used, it is entirely plausible that the murder rate did not increase more in blue states because, in general, they weren't allowed to go outside unlike, say, Florida. To be clear, this is not "proof" that an ideology is better. This is a temporary measure that could lead to longer term issues.
> What if the two of them are linked?
That's what I'm saying. This article is claiming a link without actually analyzing the impact. You need a longitudinal study is my whole point.
I agree. I think this report is just meant to provide a counter to the prevailing (accepted?) narrative. Maybe it's meant to inspire/fund the type of study you suggest?
For the sections on murder rates (not their change), n is the population. These sections make up the majority of the article. For the section on year-to-year changes, those are comparisons of two populations (each with n being that year's population count). There's no way sampling error would have a noticeable effect on the rates for states or major cities. Instead, those changes are caused by things a model should account for. TFA doesn't present a model, because that's not the point.
>"6 out of 10 Highest Murder Rate Increases are in Trump-Voting States". From a statistical view point, that is to be expected if there are no differences.
I think that's the point of TFA.
>What do you believe - poverty or political preference leads to increases of crime?
TFA's conclusion is the narrative of murder rates increasing because of Democratic political leaders doesn't jive with reality. The title is provocative, but and it takes an unnecessary jab with, "A more accurate conclusion from the data is that Republicans do a far better job blaming others for high murder rates than actually reducing high murder rates."
But you're really just agreeing with the article.
This could easily skew the numbers per capita for a state that does not have population more broadly spread out in its borders.
Crime varies a lot based off location. For example burgarly per capita last I checked was more common in rural areas. This make sense since more unattended buildings and such.
State level is far to coarse, and also why the political spin.