One solution that would reduce many problems is for the Federal government to accept all who ask for a job with a National Service Corps. They would get starting salaries of some 80% of the lowest US Army salary. They would do locally decided upon jobs, including possible part time payment for additional study.
There is a lot of talk about UBI (universal basic income), which is a mistake. Because giving people cash to do nothing makes it less likely, for many people, to do more. But "getting a job" is not always so easy. The gov't should make it easy, and tell people what work to do.
This is also the main way for folks to earn <b>Self-Respect </b>. Working for and achieving something, so they gain value in their own eyes.
Lots of loose echo-chambery talk here. If one subscribes to Andrew Sullivan's passion for rational response to risk, it behooves one to not just write 'crime is up 200% in X!', but to provide the baseline number. After all, $3 is a 200% increase over $1. It doesn't mean you got rich. Moreover, the claim that "the sense of unease in NYC, for example, is palpable if you talk to everyday New Yorkers" is an anecdote, not a fact. I talk to everyday New Yorkers every day, and *my* anecdote is: there is no palpable fear of crime particularly -- there's still the low-level anxiety that has come with Covid Time. New York is a big , and overall still quite historically safe, City. It would take good polling and surveying of New Yorkers to document widespread 'palpable fear', and one also has to account for the effect of the 'if it bleeds, it leads' ethos of the tabloids and local news.
Reporting from Saint Louis here. The rise in crime here is palatable and undeniable. I’m a life long city dweller and while my family and I have accepted a certain risk of city life (I’ve been jumped, friends businesses shot at with semi-automatic weapons, family members shot at, car theft) these used to be rare. But in recent years they are not. In just the first half of this year, my parents experienced 4 such incidents including a friend who was tied up by an armed home invader and robbed.
While I support the idea of releasing non-violent criminals serving disproportionately long sentences, I also know the many violent offenders are never charged with those crimes because they are difficult to prosecute. Instead they prosecute on drug offenses; it’s easier to prove. I would love to see an analysis of this if anyone knows of one.
There is also a question of reporting crime. I have gotten the answering machine when calling 911. I have other friends who waited 3 hours for the police to show up. Others who were told an officer cannot come to a car jacking and they needed to make their report over the phone. So I’m asking myself, how many crimes are going unreported?
I’m glad she talked about the real choices young black men face, given society has failed them. But I’m increasingly frustrated that no one is willing to touch the roots of that failure or even considers there might be a limit to what government actually has the power to do about it. It’s all systemic racism all the time.
The major difference between this crime spike and the one in the 1960s and 70s is that people know this one didn't have to happen. In the 60s and 70s people thought crime was a force of nature that was just emerging from the social tumult.
The reforms starting with Giuliani in NY in the 90s, and spreading across the country proved this wasn't true. Crime could be controlled in the Gov't acted properly, and people's lives (especially poor people's) could be made dramatically better by drastically lowering crime.
This current spike in crime was chosen. The political elites of most of our large cities chose to end the police and criminal justice practices that brought crime under control. That's why people are pissed. Our government chose to allow a crime wave,
Crime started to grow from historic lows in the 1960's and 70's, but the previous peak in urban violent street crime in America was the early 1990's, not the 60's and 70's.
Two great letters. I hope they represent a thus-far silent majority that is preparing to speak up. Loudly. Here are a couple of highlights that jumped out at me.
"I find the extant crime statistics to be misleading, as they conflate what I think are three distinct types of violence with differently-weighted causes and possible interventions: domestic/intimate-partner, transactional/acquaintance, and stranger. Public fear in a city like New York is about stranger violence; people know how to avoid the other forms by taking adequate precautions."
Exactly! Asians in San Francisco are being attacked and robbed by complete strangers not only on downtown streets but while working in their own yards and garages. Even inside their homes.
They feel safe nowhere.
"To many progressives, the state does the victim a favor by taking account of his grievance, for they perceive the purpose of the state to be a well-ordered society that grants rights to the individual. The libertarian individualist, on the other hand, believes that we grant (outsource, really) a legal monopoly on force/violence to the state (except in the case of self-defense) with the expectation that the state acts in a just and timely manner."
Exactly, again! That's not a way I would normally think about it, but the e-mail writer is right on target. I have definitely been feeling frustration that we as a society have decided on laws and funded the enforcement of those laws, and yet the enforcement seems to be overridden by the media political propaganda. We tell the state what we want and think is best, not the other way around.
Glenn published some of the responses to this discussion that he found notable; The first responder wrote:
"The sense of unease in NYC, for example, is palpable if you talk to everyday New Yorkers. Middle-aged and older New Yorkers have gotten accustomed to “safe NYC” and don't want to go back to the way things were before Giuliani began to get crime under control and Bloomberg finished the job. New Yorkers in their 20s and younger have never known anything other than “safe NYC. Eric Adams' candidacy resonated with New Yorkers of all stripes because he was the most credible candidate when it came to addressing concerns about the violent crime spike"
BUT DO NOTE: Yes, the sense of unease is VERY palpable. However, white Manhattanites did not vote for Eric Addams in the primary. So they can't be as afraid as this states. That said, I am was an Upper West Side NYers of 35 years but have left for Connecticut primarily because I am alarmed by the violence. Just recently, a 26-year old black man was arrested for mowing down a 65-year-old white actress with his motorized scooter causing her death; He never stopped to help her, he left the crime scene and was apprehended weeks later. Just before COVID struck, a group of young black girls were marauding West End Avenue, shaking down white elderly people. They would surround the victim and then attack.
Even though, this has been happening with increasing frequency under DeBlasio - whites on the Upper East and West sides did not put their support behind Adams, the candidate who promised to be tough on crime. White liberals supported the white candidate that offered nothing in the way of protection, whereas black and Latino communities are looking for more safety. It's nuts out there.
As a 74-year-old lifelong New Yorker, I once believed, as does the writer of the second letter, that crime is a "symptom of deeper problems." I remember being an undergraduate in Sociology 101 when a man was shot in the head on the subway and then-mayor Robert Wagner responded by ordering all police to be in uniform traveling to and from their posts. He essentially "flooded" the subways with police. I remember that my instructor at the time remarked that Wagner's response was an understandable political and practical one but presumably did not get to the "root" of the problem.
I have long ago stopped believing in "roots" and believe that the cause of crime is essentially criminality. This is less of a tautology than it might at first seem. Criminal behavior for most is a choice and most people make a conscious choice not to use criminal means. And this applies to people of all classes, races, and social backgrounds. Criminal behavior involves making choices as to means of obtaining societally valued objects or symbols and people are generally free to make other choices unless they have guns to their heads in the choice process.
This is why I have come to the conclusion that the proper response to violent crime is some sort of repression. I have lived through crime-filled and relatively crime-free periods in New York City and am clear as to what I prefer.
While economic factors can never be fully ruled out, most poor people do not engage in criminal behavior and most poor people do not engage in violent crime. Economic factors are always present but still, most people do not choose to be criminals.
You raise an interesting point. I am not certain how this could be studied directly. You ask, "What of it?" I have no answer to that. If you can ask that question, we are operating on different wavelengths. If you do not believe that people are free to choose between alternatives, then we are making fundamentally different assumptions about homo sapiens.
Completely disagree. If all impoverished people or even the majority engaged in crime (especially violent crime), I think that you would have a point. I am not saying that all choices are the same, but only that they are there for almost everyone. Unless we agree that people are capable of making choices and understanding the implications of those choices, one of the fundamental functional prerequisites of living in any society is rendered moot.
Nor did I. I think Substack allows writers to choose for each post whether to send out emails. I also track my Substack subscriptions in Feedly for this reason.
When RG took office (1994) there were 2016 murders in NYC. Every year previous in that decade had seen several hundred more. When he stepped down in 2001 there were 960. Seven years before he took office there were 2016 (same as when he took office). Seven years before that there were 2228. I don't know about other crimes, but the worst of crimes, murder, was not dropping before RG.
You are cherry picking (we all do) and you did not respond to my data concerning the years before, during, and after RG's term in office. You have chosen a few years that work well for you. I could do the same. From 2008 - 2013 unemployment rates in NYC were as "low" as 6.7 percent and as high as 9.9 percent, with three of those years at 8.5 percent or higher. These rates are significantly higher than anything in the previous decade plus or anything in the years since. And yet homicide rates fell from 2008 - 2013. Furthermore, moving to national figures, one might expect, based on your reasoning, that homicide rates. would have reached their high in the 20th century during the years of the great depression. But they didn't. The homicide rates in the "boom years" of the 1950s following WWII were significantly higher than in the 1930s.
I have to run and don't have time now to look at the article you cited from NBER, but I don't have a big problem with it's upshot as you quoted it. From my own reading I would lean toward deterrence as having the greater impact, but I wouldn't bet a lot on it.
I have seen Levitt's work in Freakonomics, but would note that he also gives significant weight to added police and higher incarceration rates. Of course, all the data on abortion only makes sense if one doesn't think of the killing of an unborn child as a homicide in its own right (except in exceptional cases).
Will have to get back to you tomorrow at the earliest about the Brookings study. All the best.
I could be crazy, but it almost seems that each time we increase the "safety net" and "nanny state" and weaken the work/school requirements the worse things get. I'm not a stats person, but has anyone ever written about this beside Thomas Sowell, et al.?
No, I don't think you're crazy. It's just that things like that are very difficult to prove... to the extent that anything can be "proven" in the social sciences. As you can see from what I wrote, it's very difficult to prove that economic well-being, at least as measured by unemployment, is hard to correlate with homicide rates. I think there's a case to be made for what you say. And in Sowell you've found a good place to start! You might want to check out Jason Riley and the late Walter Williams as well. Good luck to you! One counter argument you will have to deal with is why haven't the nanny states in Europe seen rises in crime as well. Of course, those homogenous nations are hard to compare to the much more diverse U.S. I happen to think that diversity is a good thing, but I don't think there is much dispute that it does create problems.
Thanks for the suggestions. I’ll check them out. Am near the end of “Closing of the American Mind “” and he’s discussing the rise of the social sciences vs ‘natural’ which your comment made me think of. More philosophy than I can handle but I’m ploughing thru. I know what you mean by the European nannies, but if you've noticed they are running into problems with the influx of immigrants from the Middle East & Africa who aren't willing to assimilate to an Anglo-Protestant ethic. Yeah, the one that's "systemically racist".
One solution that would reduce many problems is for the Federal government to accept all who ask for a job with a National Service Corps. They would get starting salaries of some 80% of the lowest US Army salary. They would do locally decided upon jobs, including possible part time payment for additional study.
There is a lot of talk about UBI (universal basic income), which is a mistake. Because giving people cash to do nothing makes it less likely, for many people, to do more. But "getting a job" is not always so easy. The gov't should make it easy, and tell people what work to do.
This is also the main way for folks to earn <b>Self-Respect </b>. Working for and achieving something, so they gain value in their own eyes.
Lots of loose echo-chambery talk here. If one subscribes to Andrew Sullivan's passion for rational response to risk, it behooves one to not just write 'crime is up 200% in X!', but to provide the baseline number. After all, $3 is a 200% increase over $1. It doesn't mean you got rich. Moreover, the claim that "the sense of unease in NYC, for example, is palpable if you talk to everyday New Yorkers" is an anecdote, not a fact. I talk to everyday New Yorkers every day, and *my* anecdote is: there is no palpable fear of crime particularly -- there's still the low-level anxiety that has come with Covid Time. New York is a big , and overall still quite historically safe, City. It would take good polling and surveying of New Yorkers to document widespread 'palpable fear', and one also has to account for the effect of the 'if it bleeds, it leads' ethos of the tabloids and local news.
Reporting from Saint Louis here. The rise in crime here is palatable and undeniable. I’m a life long city dweller and while my family and I have accepted a certain risk of city life (I’ve been jumped, friends businesses shot at with semi-automatic weapons, family members shot at, car theft) these used to be rare. But in recent years they are not. In just the first half of this year, my parents experienced 4 such incidents including a friend who was tied up by an armed home invader and robbed.
While I support the idea of releasing non-violent criminals serving disproportionately long sentences, I also know the many violent offenders are never charged with those crimes because they are difficult to prosecute. Instead they prosecute on drug offenses; it’s easier to prove. I would love to see an analysis of this if anyone knows of one.
There is also a question of reporting crime. I have gotten the answering machine when calling 911. I have other friends who waited 3 hours for the police to show up. Others who were told an officer cannot come to a car jacking and they needed to make their report over the phone. So I’m asking myself, how many crimes are going unreported?
I’m glad she talked about the real choices young black men face, given society has failed them. But I’m increasingly frustrated that no one is willing to touch the roots of that failure or even considers there might be a limit to what government actually has the power to do about it. It’s all systemic racism all the time.
The major difference between this crime spike and the one in the 1960s and 70s is that people know this one didn't have to happen. In the 60s and 70s people thought crime was a force of nature that was just emerging from the social tumult.
The reforms starting with Giuliani in NY in the 90s, and spreading across the country proved this wasn't true. Crime could be controlled in the Gov't acted properly, and people's lives (especially poor people's) could be made dramatically better by drastically lowering crime.
This current spike in crime was chosen. The political elites of most of our large cities chose to end the police and criminal justice practices that brought crime under control. That's why people are pissed. Our government chose to allow a crime wave,
Crime started to grow from historic lows in the 1960's and 70's, but the previous peak in urban violent street crime in America was the early 1990's, not the 60's and 70's.
Correct. The increase started in the 60's and the high level of crime persisted until the 90s.
Two great letters. I hope they represent a thus-far silent majority that is preparing to speak up. Loudly. Here are a couple of highlights that jumped out at me.
"I find the extant crime statistics to be misleading, as they conflate what I think are three distinct types of violence with differently-weighted causes and possible interventions: domestic/intimate-partner, transactional/acquaintance, and stranger. Public fear in a city like New York is about stranger violence; people know how to avoid the other forms by taking adequate precautions."
Exactly! Asians in San Francisco are being attacked and robbed by complete strangers not only on downtown streets but while working in their own yards and garages. Even inside their homes.
They feel safe nowhere.
"To many progressives, the state does the victim a favor by taking account of his grievance, for they perceive the purpose of the state to be a well-ordered society that grants rights to the individual. The libertarian individualist, on the other hand, believes that we grant (outsource, really) a legal monopoly on force/violence to the state (except in the case of self-defense) with the expectation that the state acts in a just and timely manner."
Exactly, again! That's not a way I would normally think about it, but the e-mail writer is right on target. I have definitely been feeling frustration that we as a society have decided on laws and funded the enforcement of those laws, and yet the enforcement seems to be overridden by the media political propaganda. We tell the state what we want and think is best, not the other way around.
Glenn published some of the responses to this discussion that he found notable; The first responder wrote:
"The sense of unease in NYC, for example, is palpable if you talk to everyday New Yorkers. Middle-aged and older New Yorkers have gotten accustomed to “safe NYC” and don't want to go back to the way things were before Giuliani began to get crime under control and Bloomberg finished the job. New Yorkers in their 20s and younger have never known anything other than “safe NYC. Eric Adams' candidacy resonated with New Yorkers of all stripes because he was the most credible candidate when it came to addressing concerns about the violent crime spike"
BUT DO NOTE: Yes, the sense of unease is VERY palpable. However, white Manhattanites did not vote for Eric Addams in the primary. So they can't be as afraid as this states. That said, I am was an Upper West Side NYers of 35 years but have left for Connecticut primarily because I am alarmed by the violence. Just recently, a 26-year old black man was arrested for mowing down a 65-year-old white actress with his motorized scooter causing her death; He never stopped to help her, he left the crime scene and was apprehended weeks later. Just before COVID struck, a group of young black girls were marauding West End Avenue, shaking down white elderly people. They would surround the victim and then attack.
Even though, this has been happening with increasing frequency under DeBlasio - whites on the Upper East and West sides did not put their support behind Adams, the candidate who promised to be tough on crime. White liberals supported the white candidate that offered nothing in the way of protection, whereas black and Latino communities are looking for more safety. It's nuts out there.
Whatever's happening in places like the Upper West Side it's just spillover from far more extreme things happening elsewhere.
As a 74-year-old lifelong New Yorker, I once believed, as does the writer of the second letter, that crime is a "symptom of deeper problems." I remember being an undergraduate in Sociology 101 when a man was shot in the head on the subway and then-mayor Robert Wagner responded by ordering all police to be in uniform traveling to and from their posts. He essentially "flooded" the subways with police. I remember that my instructor at the time remarked that Wagner's response was an understandable political and practical one but presumably did not get to the "root" of the problem.
I have long ago stopped believing in "roots" and believe that the cause of crime is essentially criminality. This is less of a tautology than it might at first seem. Criminal behavior for most is a choice and most people make a conscious choice not to use criminal means. And this applies to people of all classes, races, and social backgrounds. Criminal behavior involves making choices as to means of obtaining societally valued objects or symbols and people are generally free to make other choices unless they have guns to their heads in the choice process.
This is why I have come to the conclusion that the proper response to violent crime is some sort of repression. I have lived through crime-filled and relatively crime-free periods in New York City and am clear as to what I prefer.
While economic factors can never be fully ruled out, most poor people do not engage in criminal behavior and most poor people do not engage in violent crime. Economic factors are always present but still, most people do not choose to be criminals.
You raise an interesting point. I am not certain how this could be studied directly. You ask, "What of it?" I have no answer to that. If you can ask that question, we are operating on different wavelengths. If you do not believe that people are free to choose between alternatives, then we are making fundamentally different assumptions about homo sapiens.
Completely disagree. If all impoverished people or even the majority engaged in crime (especially violent crime), I think that you would have a point. I am not saying that all choices are the same, but only that they are there for almost everyone. Unless we agree that people are capable of making choices and understanding the implications of those choices, one of the fundamental functional prerequisites of living in any society is rendered moot.
FYI, I didn't receive an email notification of this post.
Nor did I. I think Substack allows writers to choose for each post whether to send out emails. I also track my Substack subscriptions in Feedly for this reason.
I finally got an email early this morning, some 12 hours after the post went up.
When RG took office (1994) there were 2016 murders in NYC. Every year previous in that decade had seen several hundred more. When he stepped down in 2001 there were 960. Seven years before he took office there were 2016 (same as when he took office). Seven years before that there were 2228. I don't know about other crimes, but the worst of crimes, murder, was not dropping before RG.
As for blaming crime on poverty, you might consider the following from the Brookings Institute: https://www.brookings.edu/opinions/income-growth-and-income-inequality-the-facts-may-surprise-you/
You are cherry picking (we all do) and you did not respond to my data concerning the years before, during, and after RG's term in office. You have chosen a few years that work well for you. I could do the same. From 2008 - 2013 unemployment rates in NYC were as "low" as 6.7 percent and as high as 9.9 percent, with three of those years at 8.5 percent or higher. These rates are significantly higher than anything in the previous decade plus or anything in the years since. And yet homicide rates fell from 2008 - 2013. Furthermore, moving to national figures, one might expect, based on your reasoning, that homicide rates. would have reached their high in the 20th century during the years of the great depression. But they didn't. The homicide rates in the "boom years" of the 1950s following WWII were significantly higher than in the 1930s.
I have to run and don't have time now to look at the article you cited from NBER, but I don't have a big problem with it's upshot as you quoted it. From my own reading I would lean toward deterrence as having the greater impact, but I wouldn't bet a lot on it.
I have seen Levitt's work in Freakonomics, but would note that he also gives significant weight to added police and higher incarceration rates. Of course, all the data on abortion only makes sense if one doesn't think of the killing of an unborn child as a homicide in its own right (except in exceptional cases).
Will have to get back to you tomorrow at the earliest about the Brookings study. All the best.
I could be crazy, but it almost seems that each time we increase the "safety net" and "nanny state" and weaken the work/school requirements the worse things get. I'm not a stats person, but has anyone ever written about this beside Thomas Sowell, et al.?
No, I don't think you're crazy. It's just that things like that are very difficult to prove... to the extent that anything can be "proven" in the social sciences. As you can see from what I wrote, it's very difficult to prove that economic well-being, at least as measured by unemployment, is hard to correlate with homicide rates. I think there's a case to be made for what you say. And in Sowell you've found a good place to start! You might want to check out Jason Riley and the late Walter Williams as well. Good luck to you! One counter argument you will have to deal with is why haven't the nanny states in Europe seen rises in crime as well. Of course, those homogenous nations are hard to compare to the much more diverse U.S. I happen to think that diversity is a good thing, but I don't think there is much dispute that it does create problems.
Thanks for the suggestions. I’ll check them out. Am near the end of “Closing of the American Mind “” and he’s discussing the rise of the social sciences vs ‘natural’ which your comment made me think of. More philosophy than I can handle but I’m ploughing thru. I know what you mean by the European nannies, but if you've noticed they are running into problems with the influx of immigrants from the Middle East & Africa who aren't willing to assimilate to an Anglo-Protestant ethic. Yeah, the one that's "systemically racist".