Rick Nevin writes in with the latest data on juvenile arrests. It's pretty spectacular:
I don't know that I agree with Rick's trendlines—I doubt that juvenile crime is going to hit zero anytime soon—but his basic idea is sound. And it's remarkable that even as lead poisoning has flattened out, teen crime rates continue to plummet:
- Since 1990, the property crime rate among Black juveniles has gone down 90% and the violent crime rate has gone down 80%.
- Among all juveniles, the property crime rate has gone down 90% and the violent crime rate has gone down 75%.
The crazy thing about all this is that if you judge by the squawkings of police chiefs and elected officials, you'd think America was still trapped in the middle of a massive crime wave. But it ain't so. The numbers go up and down a bit from year to year and place to place, and the pandemic has obviously had an effect recently, but generally speaking kids just aren't involved in much crime these days. At the same time, 20-somethings are following right along. Their numbers will be similar to that for teens within a few more years.
And don't forget that we're at the start of the decade that will also see a reduction in violence in the Middle East. I'm dead serious about that.
Indeed. What might be the contributing factor?
(Shouldn’t those charts include the time shifted blood lead levels?)
These are arrest rates. Is juvenile crime really going down, or just arrests? (Are police departments just deciding to arrest fewer juveniles? Or investigate crimes in general?)
Possible with property crime but unlikely with violent crime.
Yeah, but the ones left are really the worst of the worst. Armed, violent, barbarians.
But gun violence is up:
https://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2022/02/03/what-the-data-says-about-gun-deaths-in-the-u-s/
Nothing wrong with that, guns are working precisely as intended.
Exactly. Lots of organizations pushing people to buy more, and more deadly, guns: NRA, GOP, manufacturers. More guns -> more gun deaths.
Cops and stats.
When the new chief rolled in, one of his first accomplishments list was taking the town from 5 murders to 1. I used to make the point that I arrived at the same time so maybe I did it, maybe, I'm Batman?
Anyways, my point was that he had no more effect on that statistic than I did, but I saw lots of people use it as a sign he was doing a great job. I happen to think he was probably a good chief, but he didn't prevent 4 murders in his first year, absent some happy accidents.
So, yes, crime is always rising, unless they have a reason for not wanting it to.
At the low end, that's true, but appropriate intervention in domestic situations can.
Hopefully that's one thing he did.
Interesting finding. My guess is that one reason crime continued to fall even after lead levels had flattened is peer pressure/example. If fewer of an adolescent's friends and peers are doing crime, they are themselves less likely to do crime because adolescents are strongly influenced by what their peers are doing.
There was probably also an efficiency effect with respect to policing. Years of increased police budgets and enlarged forces meant that, when crime finally began to decline because of better brain health in the population, in effect society enjoyed an improved "police officer to criminal" ratio. This strengthened the ability of law enforcement to solve/deter crimes and put criminals behind bars even beyond the beneficial impact of reduced environmental lead. Rinse and repeat. You'd expect to see the benefits of this secondary effect continue well beyond the "bottoming out" of the lead poisoning cycle, which is what happened (partly that's because voters and politicians had the "surging crime" narrative stuck in their minds well after crime peaked and had begun to decline, and so continued to push for larger budgets for a number of years).
Anyway, my guesstimate is that this second order effect bought us several more years of declining crime.
You mean two years ago it was down yet again. And it doesn't seem to be about lead anymore. Is it that technology both gives juveniles non-criminal ways to waste time? Or technology provides a lot better security against property crime?
When you can commit crime within the safety of a video game what attraction does the real world have?
I don't share Kevin's optimism about violence in the ME. That's a region already experiencing violence due to resource wars and is trending towards uninhabitable due to excessive temperatures. That it is so thinly populated means that other regions, like India, will created more headlines.
Syria's rebellion, and possibly the Arab Spring, has a strong climate change component. Droughts force farmers off the land, and they end up in cities un or under employed. Food prices go up. And it's hot. Unrest ensues.
Contrast this post with the view from Trumpworld:
We should always point out that nearly everything in that statement (aside homelessness) is fabricated. And they don't have a solution for any of it.
Not only that, but the surge in murder rates (which is real) began in the fourth year of the Trump administration, suggesting he contributed to the phenomenon.
Nationalist Christians know how to solve the problem. One part of that is kicking down doors in the middle of the night. Another part is killing their political opponents while they sleep.
It's fabricated and living in dialectical illusion. Which is a massive turn off. The only area of large crime is darkies with guns supplied by the Republican party and it's arms manufacturing globalist.
Even sex crime is at early 60's levels.
Of course, none of this is happening or observed where the listeners live. It's always out there somewhere in Librul Country. And "crme statistics"? Hey, that's the gummint lyin' to us, like it always does.
Believing in things unseen, trusting no source but The Holy Word of Trump. Part of the United States is thinking medieval. Here we are, in the 21st century, and some 40% of the population think it's the year 800 or something.
" We are living in such a different country for one primary reason. There is no longer respect for the law and there certainly is no order. Our country['s politics] is now a cesspool of crime."
They got one thing right - and they should, because they're intimately familiar with the cause: Trump's new authoritarian Right is lawless and disordered.
Parents are worried sick that their kids will get shot on the way to school or on the way back home.
Hmmm, one point seems missing on this timeline.
What do the juvenile homicide victimization rates look like? I don't trust arrest rates as evidence of anything.
I’m curious; what leads you to think that it’s easier for juveniles to avoid getting arrested today, than it was 10 or 20 or 30 years ago?
I’m curious; what leads you to think that it’s easier for juveniles to avoid getting arrested today, than it was 10 or 20 or 30 years ago?"
Stories like this.
"New York City’s district attorneys should go back to prosecuting people who commit subway fare evasion, Mayor Eric Adams said on Monday."
Obviously if you tell the police to stop arresting people for things like turnstile jumping this will lower the arrest stats but crime isn't actually going down. Dead people are harder to ignore.
“Dead people are harder to ignore”
okay, then a reduction in prosecution for turnstile jumping is immaterial to your point anyway
So your argument is that the 3 decade reduction in arrests (with data on the chart ending 2 years ago) is caused by the new district attorney not wanting to prosecute people for jumping turn styles. Obviously you've thought this through. You've convinced me.
"So your argument .."
My argument is that raw arrest stats are meaningless because what things people are arrested for changes over time. Turnstile jumping is an example.
Yes. I was making fun of your argument. It would indicate that you've literally paid no attention to the issue and then blurted out something just to be contrarian. The idea that, for 30 years police in NY have steadily added to a list of crimes that are now off limits for arresting juveniles, goes against every piece of data I've ever seen.
Even your example doesn't follow your argument. Police can arrest people for jumping turn styles today just as they always could. It would be a big deterrent to the practice and if the DA didn't charge them that would probably be a good use of limited resources. Of course, many police fight against any attempts to hold them accountable, so they probably wouldn't arrest someone just because it makes the subways better - all so that they can try and make the DA look bad. But for all you know, people are still arrested for it everyday.
That's a pretty bold prediction about the middle east.
Hekmatullah, the rogue Afghan soldier who killed three unarmed Australian diggers in Afghanistan a decade ago, is living in a luxury home in the capital Kabul, treated as a “returning hero” by the Taliban who released him from prison. He has said he does not regret killing Australian soldiers, and has vowed he would again kill Australians, or anyone who opposes the Taliban. “If I am released I will continue killing foreigners,” Hekmatullah told an official of the former Afghan government when his release was being negotiated. “I will continue killing Australians and I will kill you as well because you are a puppet of foreigners,” he said. “I am among my brothers, we will be free, Afghanistan will be free. We will kill you.”
https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2022/aug/08/i-will-continue-killing-foreigners-soldier-who-shot-dead-unarmed-australians-treated-as-returning-hero-by-taliban
This is their version of a hero. I'm not sure lead exposure has anything to do with it, although, there is a poisonous ideology affecting millions.
Leaving afghanistan to starve and rot in this stew of violence and hatred is just fine with me.
I wish the data went past 2020. It isn’t that I think the number of arrests have suddenly gone back to 1990 levels. It’s that there are a lot of crime related right wing talking points claiming everything is going to hell. I know some of their statements are lies, but others I’m not sure. Or at least I don’t know what the truth is.
I do hope Kevin creates more charts about who is getting bail now that wasn’t, who is getting released without paying cash now that wasn't, and who is committing crimes while out on bail. A topic related to this post would be how many people (in absolute numbers) are out on bail now versus the past several decades. Every Republican is trying to claim Dems are responsible for more crime and I suspect bail reform has nothing to do with it, but it is so hard to tell. The regular press either ignores it or repeats right wing talking points. Nothing in between. I know a lot of lies were told about the reform DA in Philadelphia, so I assume everything else I hear about reform DAs is a lie, but who knows? Are there really DAs who won’t prosecute porch pirates?
Kevin did talk about bail reform when he posted on the big increase in NYC crime statistics that he strongly suspected was made up. I know Kevin isn’t magic, but it would be good to know what is and isn’t true with crime and bail reform. The world needs charts!