You have probably heard that the murder rate spiked massively in 2020, and according to preliminary FBI data this is true. But take a look at this chart:
Generally speaking, homicide and violent crime move in sync. The two exceptions are 2015 and 2020. Does this give us any clues about what the cause of the increased murder rate is?
The 2015 spike coincided with the aftermath of Ferguson. The 2020 spike coincided with both the aftermath of George Floyd and the start of the COVID-19 pandemic. If I had to guess, I'd say that anger over police brutality was the primary cause of the murder spike, with the pandemic providing an extra push.
And there's (maybe) more bad news. The 2015 spike lasted two years, so again, if I had to guess, I'd say that our current spike will last through 2021.
And yet more bad news: The 2015 spike started to ebb in 2017, but it ebbed slowly. It probably would have been five years before it reverted to its past level. If the same is true this time, it will be 2026 or so before the murder rate goes back down to its pre-Ferguson level.
These are all just guesses, however. The mystery here is that, in general, crime hasn't increased over the past year. Violent crime is basically flat and property crime continues to go down. We are as safe as we've ever been. It's only murder that's up, but it's up a lot. What's going on?
NOTE: The effect of lead poisoning on crime was strong only from ~1965-2010, so none of this has anything to do with lead.
Compared with 2016, sure, but not compared with 2019.
I can't find it now, but I saw an intriguing explanation for at least some of the murder surge.
It went as such: Most cash generated by crime still relies on laundering through cash-heavy retail fronts, such as restaurants, bars, entertainment venues, massage parlors, etc, the very things that were most thoroughly shut down during the pandemic.
Because of this, and because vice operations didn't stop, crime entities became loaded with cash. And everyone in the world was aware of it, leading to raids, counter-raids, reprisals, and so on. This would track with general crime and particularly property crime being flat or down, i.e. the murder surge is from generalized economic desperation in hard-hit communities.
Dang, can't edit, I meant:
the murder surge _isn't_ from generalized economic desperation in hard-hit communities.
I would tend to discount this as an explanation for an increase in murders. Most of the businesses that are fortunate enough to be able to launder their criminal proceeds through high-cash venues such as you describe are also on the exempt list—meaning that they don't have to file CTRs. They always deposit their cash as quickly as possible because that's how they launder it—through the banks and by giving Uncle Sam a taste.
"Most cash generated by crime still relies on laundering through cash-heavy retail fronts, such as restaurants, bars, entertainment venues, massage parlors, etc, the very things that were most thoroughly shut down during the pandemic."
I'm about 30% convinced that NFTs are there to launder crime money.
Now, now, NFTs also exist so that people can pay untraceable ransoms, as Colonial Pipeline just did.
The missing context is whether these are murders related to gang violence or not. In Chicago I believe it is gang related. That is mostly about drugs, not massage parlors or gambling. Drug overdoses have soared in San Francisco during Covid. Perhaps drug dealing has been doing well in the pandemic, with murder as spill over. Sheer speculation but worth checking out.
More guns, more problems.
It's that simple.
Yep!
Did the number of guns decline from 2000 through 2015?
Did the number of guns decline from 2000 through 2015?
Pretty sure the percentage of households that own guns has, indeed, been declining over the long term (although no doubt there are year-to-year fluctuations).
https://news.gallup.com/poll/264932/percentage-americans-own-guns.aspx
https://news.gallup.com/poll/1645/guns.aspx
Well, you'd be wrong (for the relevant time frame)
But don't let that stop everyone from engaging in data-free ranting. As we all know, the important thing here is to
(a) establish moral superiority over the outgroup and
(b) tell other people what to do
Efficacy and consequences don't even make the list of considerations.
I'm most certainly not wrong that gun ownership in the United States has declined over the long term, which what I wrote.
https://www.vpc.org/studies/ownership.pdf
Angry black people with guns.
Insane white people with assault weapons.
Not remotely true and you know it.
Account for a tiny percentage of homicides in this country.
Dylann Roof libel.
Seung-Hui Cho libel.
Kori Allen Muhammad libel.
For us Gen Xers, Colin Ferguson libel.
Uh, if it's the same amount of crime but more of it is murder that seems like it would be less safe.
Murder is a small percentage of total crime. A big jump in murder is still a small jump in overall crime.
Yeah, but it's one of the few crimes that really county. The most common 'violent' crime is simple assault, which can just be two drunk dudes at a bar.
Mitchell Young meets Midgard.
One gets the feeling Mitchell Young is speaking from experience when he talks about “two drunk dudes in a bar”. Perhaps that’s where he and Midgard became acquainted.
Snerk. Good observation. Yeah, I can see those two in a creepy bar meet-cute. If this was 'Cheers', they'd start out at opposite ends of the bar and end up sitting next to each other. A sort of depraved Peterson/Clavin team-up, if you will.
My guess:
Criminal police shootings tend to make people less likely to cooperate with police investigations, meaning the only way to get justice for a murder is to become a vigilante. This creates a very vicious cycle of deadly retribution.
The pandemic made a lot of law-abiding people stay home, which meant there were fewer people in the streets to see the criminal activity. That reduces the risk of committing murder in the street - and a lot of these murders are committed in public.
Meanwhile, with people home, the normal burglaries and thefts are harder to commit.
Everybody had to stay home in 2020, so they found out just how intolerable their family members were and started murdering them left and right. They couldn't kill the strangers they used to kill, so it was Bye Bye to those who were available.
Yeah, sarcastic. But I would want to know who the victims are before I tried to make a decision about causes. And don't forget, Americans in 2020 were not in the best possible mood because their human rights were being violated by mask and other mandates. Who wouldn't want to kill people when such horrendous abuses were taking place? You know, mask mandates = slavery = genocide, etc. (Muscle-straining eye roll.)
If people were staying home, it's not surprising that some crime rates would decrease. I wouldn't be shocked, if, once the pandemic is over we see property crimes increase and violent crimes either stay the same or decrease.
On the other hand, lots of Americans suffered economically in 2020. Would that make people who would otherwise not commit property crimes resort to criminal ways of supplementing their hard hit income? Apparently, not.
Most murders are committed by people who know one another, which, here,
https://ucr.fbi.gov/crime-in-the-u.s/2011/crime-in-the-u.s.-2011/offenses-known-to-law-enforcement/expanded/expanded-homicide-data
is 54.3%, so how much has that risen this year?
For your own safety avoid speaking to the people you know!
Hey Joe, where's ya goin with that gun in your hand?
If you constantly tell people that the state's monopoly on violence is illegitimate they will come to believe you and act accordingly.
Ages ago, I remember reading about this finding that the **homicide** rate had fallen because emergency medicine had gotten better:
https://www.nytimes.com/2002/12/15/magazine/the-year-in-ideas-ambulance-homicide-theory-the.html
I wonder if in 2020 the medical system, from first responders to ambulances to ERs to hospitals, was so overwhelmed by COVID that the reverse happened. I guess you'd want to look for whether "attempted murder" fell, if that is a statistic anyone keeps.
Very interesting idea, as was the idea that people murdered their family members when cooped up with them.
Seems to me you should be able to get data on either points and confirm/infirm.
Except that shootings are up in places like NYC. And, btw, the overwhelmed hospitals was a transient, short lived and localized phenomenon.
Keep this link handy to show right-wingers who sneer that of course the liberal lockdowns were resposible for the massive increase in violence.
https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-57070883
No. The right doesn’t think the increased murders are related to lockdowns. They believe they are related to a reduction in active policing due to BLM protests.
That's because all the knives on Knife Crime Island were requisitioned for medical use to treat COVID admissions in hospital.
Yea, surely if one wanted to figure this out one would first look for differences between classes of murder.
Is it domestics?
Is it gang stuff?
Is it everything evenly?
"Is it domestics?"
KD better watch out for Yessica and Giovanni.
I was thinking more rogue pelotones.
I saw the Rogue Pelotones on a surf Music, past and present Zoom concert. They opened for the last living Venture and his backup band. Great show.
Gee, it's almost like if you get the most homicide prone segment of our society riled up with a 'big lie' (tm) that the cops are out to get them and that their men folk are targeted by cops disproportionately, homicides will go up among that segment and therefore the polity as a whole. And yes, it is a big lie -- while black men are about twice as likely to be killed by cops as the general public, they are 4x as likely to commit homicide and robbery (a violent crime) and twice as likely to commit sexual assaults. Therefore they come into potentially violent encounters with cops more often.
The QANON Shaman's Fake Autistic Ass liked this
LOL
That particular "big lie" is, in fact, entirely true.
When you look at rates of serious violent crime (robbery, sexual assault, homicide) and reckon that cops are more likely to come into confrontations with violent criminals, it turns about that blacks are *less* likely to be shot and killed by cops than would be expected.
Tell us again about how you're so much better at math than most everybody else. What did you say? "1.7 standard deviations above average for math" on your SAT scores? You were lying, of course. Which is why I can't resist using this one as a club to beat you with.
********************VERY OFF TOPIC***************
KD recently had a story of our failing infrastructure to include the recently closed I - 40 bridge linking Arkansas and Tenn.
Two days after that story broke a photographer produced a photo showing the crack existed 6 months PRIOR to when TENN DOT inspected the bridge.
Now comes word that a kayaker has a photo of the same bridge from 2016 that shows the crack was there way back then
This does 2 things of course
#1 - Absolutely embarrasses the Tenn DOT for failed semi annual bridge inspections. They shoulda coulda woulda known
#2 - If the crack had been there THAT long it shows the bridge is much safer than we thought as it has not fallen down yet even with a 5+ year old crack in it
They are affecting temp repairs to it to start getting traffic flowing again but a long term solution is still MONTHs away
Track violent crime/murder against gun availability and see what happens,
It’s all Trump’s fault. He was in charge in 2020.
(Snark, but Obama was blamed by many “news” outlets for the murder surge in 2015-16, so if it was fair game for him to be blamed for that, it’s fair game to blame the next guy for everything that happened on his watch too.)
Obama cheered on the Ferguson fraud. Heck, he started virtually the first day of his admin, the the HL Gates kerfuffle.
There's the tell!
Mitch just had to cape for Mr. Crowley.
Ooooh ... He shoots he scores!
The effect of lead poisoning on crime was strong only from ~1965-2010, so none of this has anything to do with lead.
Kevin: there's a meta study out of Scotland recently a lot of people have been talking/tweeting about . Anyway, it purports to cast doubt on the impact of lead poisoning on crime. Thoughts?
https://www.gla.ac.uk/media/Media_774797_smxx.pdf
The 2020 spike coincided with both the aftermath of George Floyd and the start of the COVID-19 pandemic. If I had to guess, I'd say that anger over police brutality was the primary cause of the murder spike, with the pandemic providing an extra push.
What's the causative mechanism flowing from "anger over police brutality?" People pissed off at the police decide to go out and kill people? That strikes me as doubtful. A more likely cause related to George Floyd's murder is: less vigorous crime fighting on the part of the police because they're feeling resentful or under excessive scrutiny (combined with criminals picking on this dynamic). But my own guesses are the spike is mainly a mixture of:
1) increased drug use (and therefore drug dealing, profits, violent conflicts over profits) generated by millions of stressed-out Americans, many of whom were locked down at home;
2) increase in domestic violence generated by forced togetherness;
3) increase in idleness in 15-22 year old males because of school closures, and the trouble (some of it violent) flowing from this situation.
Look into the "Ferguson effect."
Damn, and I thought the lead thing was one were I could make (partial) common cause with the Left.
Ferguson??? That started before that in 2014. Looks like angry negros fighting over turf with more nongang murders. Blacks commit 50% of murders despite only being 25% of the prime age population. They just went off.
How are you even still conscious? Say hi to the worm for me.
It's 13.4/56 as of 2019.
Nope, Which am talking prime age. Near 25%
While the magnitudes didn’t match, the both increased in those years. So, when one went up so did the other. When one went down so did the other.
"The 2015 spike coincided with the aftermath of Ferguson."
So doesn't this suggest a need to look at crime rate changes by race? I am too lazy today to dig through FBI crime stats.
https://ucr.fbi.gov/crime-in-the-u.s/2019/crime-in-the-u.s.-2019/tables/expanded-homicide-data-table-6.xls
With domestic violence rising dramatically (by about a third in countries where Covid led to lockdowns, work-from-home programs etc., just in March/April 2020), it would have been surprising if murder rates hadn't also sharply risen.
Then why didn't violent crime statistics also rise? My guess: because most domestic abuse, wife rape and so on is not reported. It's harder to hide a dead body.