Via Tyler Cowen, a new study attempts to estimate if crime goes up when a county elects a progressive chief prosecutor. Here's the key chart:
As you can see, crime was on a generally downward path everywhere. So the question is whether it went down less when a progressive prosecutor was elected. The authors conclude that this was the case for property crime but not for violent crime. Thanks to a divergence between traditional and progressive counties in 2018-20, the end result was 6.98% higher property crime due to electing a progressive prosecutor.
It's a little hard to make much of this. The property crime figures converge for ten years and then diverge slightly in the following ten years. Do they continue diverging after that? We'll have to wait and see. Crime figures are noisy, and they routinely jump up and down by well more than 6.98%. The current figures might be a blip or they might be something real.
I'd venture to guess that progressive prosecutors pile up in urban areas. And the time you see a difference between progressive and traditional does seem to correspond to the rise of flash mob robberies--which has died down.
...which also have never been turned into a misdemeanor.
Their whole 'traditional' is BS, too.
"The property crime figures converge for ten years and then diverge slightly in the following ten years."
Respectfully, I think the data needed to create this chart is potentially misleading.
I live in a major California city. Ten years ago, if someone broke into my car, I would likely report the event, in the hopes of getting a police report for my car insurance. Today, the same car break in, generates no police report: the local police refuse to come out, or write up car break ins. Basically, my theoretical car break crime, for accounting purposes, never happened.
While I lack data, I SUSPECT, the same car break in say Boise, Idaho does, more likely, generate a police report. Thus, the core data in some locations, with progressive prosecutors, probably undercounts some crimes, such as property crimes. This accounting difference is likely most acute for events such as shop lifting...
looks like people still report car break ins, even in LA
https://xtown.la/2023/04/26/los-angeles-car-break-ins-december-january-new-highs/
That can't count systemic blue flu, though. If cops are less likely to take reports, that means there's a larger error bar on the results.
In a progressive area, people are more likely to believe in institutions helping them personally, while in a conservative area, people are less likely to believe institutions helping them personally.
Well this is bullshit. I got my car stolen in the 1990s under Daryll Gates. I reported it stolen and then found it. They made ME come out to "unreport" it, then refused to take any of the crap the thieves left in the car (fingerprints, etc) because the "case was closed"
Cops are useless for stolen cars. They could not care less about your shit.
Ten years ago you had to call or go to the station and talk to a uniform. Now you can fill a form online and have to for insurance.
this comment from the paper makes me suspicious:
In contrast, violent crime rates were not statistically higher in jurisdictions switching to progressive prosecutors over the entire study period but did experience statistically higher violent crime rates from 2014 to 2016.
so they call out this narrow 2 year period of bad news for progressives, but they don't mention the years where crime fell faster in progressive counties
i also suspect that there's a correlation between electing a progressive and high-population counties, in which case the trends may be more about crime in the largest counties in general as opposed to new policies being put in place
so i'd also like to see stats broken out for populous counties that went from progressive to conservative
the other part of this is that there are places where progressive policies were banned by state legislatures, so just because a progressive was elected doesn't mean progressive policies were put into effect
Here is the list of the 15 fastest growing cities in the US. Few, probably none, of these locations have a progressive chief prosecutor.
https://www.rocketmortgage.com/learn/fastest-growing-cities-in-the-us
LA county has 10,000,000 people
#1 on your growth list is Fort Myers, Florida with 100,000
Fort Myers (zip 33901) violent crime is 53.9. (The US average is 22.7)
Fort Myers (zip 33901) property crime is 56.0. (The US average is 35.4)
New York City violent crime is 28.2. (The US average is 22.7)
New York City property crime is 24.9. (The US average is 35.4)
https://www.bestplaces.net/crime/zip-code/florida/fort_myers/33901
https://www.bestplaces.net/crime/city/new_york/new_york
Los Angeles violent crime is 29.1. (The US average is 22.7)
Los Angeles property crime is 35.1. (The US average is 35.4)
1) It's Tyler Cowen. He's demonstrated his agenda countless times over the years.
2) Is there a supposed hypothesis for when "progressive-oriented prosecutorial reforms" (what they called it in the summary of the paper) are said to occur? Without that, they've just got lines on a chart.
3) Given that a difference was already there at the start of their time series, and there is one at the end, it sure doesn't look like there's much difference and that the true factors in crime have nothing to do with prosecutorial decisions at this point.
4) They took the 100 most populous counties only. Here's that list. Boy, does that look like a shitty list to limit yourself to. Yes, it covers many of the large cities in the US but certainly not all of them. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_the_most_populous_counties_in_the_United_States
5) Did they define "progressive counties" just once and use that subset of counties for the entire time period in that chart? Reading the article, I didn't see anything that said they did otherwise - which would be a problem for that chart since it's measuring overall levels, not a change in levels.
6) I'm sure there are more problems here.
Without a hypothesis, there is just a correlation, e.g., "Nationwide, crime started its decline at the same time that disco became popular".
"It's Tyler Cowen."
That's all that needs to be said. Also, aren't most of the progressive prosecutors in the cities, not counties?
How do they control for urban versus rural and blue flu versus not?
And how do you control for 'incumbents get credit for national trends' but never noticing if it's a reversion to the mean?
There are two large flaws in this study:
1. They looked only at cases where the prosecutor changed from traditional to progressive, but not the reverse. This is vital to control for extraneous factors, such as:
2. Their data was only for 2020. Gee, let me think...did anything unusual happen in 2020? Seems like there might have been.
I’m sure it’s just an unhappy coincidence, but every time Drum writes that crime is down there is a mass murder.
8 Officers Are Shot, 3 Fatally, While Serving Warrant in Charlotte
The three killed were part of a U.S. Marshals task force. The felon they sought was also killed.
Crime may be down, but placees that are run by Republicans have a shit ton more gun crime. Maybe it's not just "bad people" but "bad people who can get a gun no matter who they are and how nuts they've been acting"