Important facts:

[conuly]

Last week in NYC, there were 5 murders. I know, because I looked it up during a rather heated discussion with a Lyft driver. (He may think the discussion affected his tip. It did not. The only thing that affected his tip was the fact that the trip from the Island into the city is over $80 one way, and we were of course going both ways. My mother's the one who got us onto that discussion in the first place, and she was enjoying herself, so....)

A bit of quick googling and some rapid calculations suggest that the weekly murder average in 1990 was ~45 per week.

When I gave that first stat, he suggested I meant to say 5 murders per day last week, and expressed disbelief that, no, this was the week's number. I wish to note that even if 5 people were killed every single day in NYC last week, that still would be less than the number killed weekly in 1990, when the population was somewhat lower than it is now.

In a nuanced discussion, which this very much was not, I would of course point out that it doesn't count into the murder rate unless you actually die, and that while crime is overall at MUCH lower levels than in the 70s and 80s, part of the lower murder rate specifically is better emergency medical care.

Comments

[rose_griffes]

Yeah, my sister-in-law was absolutely certain in late 2020 that crime was on a major upswing and had been for two decades, instead of on a long-term downward slide for 3+ decades with a bit of an uptick just recently in a few categories.

And anytime I mention traveling to France (I have a trip scheduled for summer 2023), there's a small subset of people who are desperately concerned for my safety there, even though it's safer in France than in the US.

People are weird.

[conuly]

I just don't know why so many people want to think that things are scary and dangerous, and have been getting worse. You'd think they'd be relieved to have the actual facts at hand to show them they're wrong, but they always get weirdly defensive and angry when you point it out.

[bibliofile]

I think it's because thinking that crime is high is an essential part of their worldview. Especially crime in crime-ridden areas, such as where they don't live. The world is a scary place, and if it's not configured the way you thought it was, well that unknown configuration is a lot scarier.

It sounds to me like your typical middle class assumptions about other people. Like poor people have no money, and no credit cards, so they must be stealing, right? (Don't get me started.)

[marahmarie]

Because it's not about the facts, it's about how they can't openly act superior, it might be viewed as arrogance so instead they play victim to highlight and eliminate those they consider inferior (ie, watch Tucker Carlson sometime and know people like him all think, talk and act the same. Also, don't.). At heart they're all simply (in some cases somewhat self-stifled) bullies.

[jesuswasbatman]

"You're in danger in France" is almost certainly coming from heavy consumers of islamophobic right-wing news sources that claim that Western Europe is becoming a Muslim-ruled hellhole because of political correctness and socialism.

[rose_griffes]

Well, that and the "Taken" movies. Not even kidding about that; I've had more than one person refer to them. (The movies themselves may build on Islamophobia as well. Haven't watched them myself.)

[thekumquat]

Or simply that Official Terrorism (the Bataclan massacre in France, the Manchester Arena and London Bridge and Fishmonger's Hall attacks in the UK) gets bigged up in the news abroad way more than unofficial terrorism (American mass shootings, drunk-drivers, domestic family murder).

If it's not Official Terrorism then you don't need to be scared of it, so obviously USA is way safer than France or the UK...

Around 2008 I went to NI for work and a guy asked me if tourists were still avoiding NI because of terrorists. I had to tell him that I would t know, because anyone avoiding NI for that reason would also be avoiding London, thanks to 7/7 and all the IRA bombs previously.

[mount_oregano]

I live in Chicago, where the murder rate is scary high ... only for a specific population and for specific reasons that can be explained and even prevented ... if enough people cared, rather than blamed.

[conuly]

Gosh, I wonder why they don't care....

Non-sarcastically, that specific population is still primarily being murdered by the same people who murder the rest of us, that is to say, people known to the victims. Because most violent crime is done by people known to the victims.

[bibliofile]

> better emergency medical care

So perhaps your driver would have been more comforted by comparing rates of attempted murder? (And is that something that's tracked?)

THough in Chicago (the city proper), there used to be IIRC five trauma centers, which are excellent at dealing with things like gunshot wounds. Starting in the 1990s, hospitals started closing them down because (basically, I think) they weren't profitable enough. Now there's only one. And people are shocked, Shocked! to learn that there's only one in the city limits.

[conuly]

So perhaps your driver would have been more comforted by comparing rates of attempted murder? (And is that something that's tracked?)

I don't think so, actually.

[gwydion]

I often shock millennials with that stat and also that the school shooting rate is dramatically lower than in the seventies.

[conuly]

Is it really? Huh. I didn't know that. Is that all shootings, though, or specifically mass shooting events, do you know?

[adrian_turtle]

"Mass shooting" is not very well defined. Some states only count an event as a mass shooting if at least 4 people die, or if victims are chosen randomly. So if somebody goes into a school and shoots at their ex and the friends whose shoulders she was always crying on...it wouldn't be random, but it would obviously be a school shooting.

[gwydion]

All shootings vs all shootings. Seventies was waaay higher, but media didn't report brown and black kids being murdered. They'd do a few lines tucked away in the interior at most. They only started covering it when white kids were shot.

[kareina]

This made me curious, so we looked it up for Sweden. In the entire country 125 people died of "deadly violence" in all of 2020. So 2.4 people a week, for the country.

Sweden's population is ~10.35 million, compared to ~8.4 in New York City.

[conuly]

Bigots will claim this is because your population is more 'homogeneous' than that of the USA, homogeneous in this case being code for "white", of course.

However, I think your gun control laws have more to do with this differential.

[kareina]

Sweden is no where near as "homogeneous" as it was before the 1960's when growing needs of industry for workers meant that lots of imigrants from other countries started moving here, plus absorbing refugees from elsewhere for all of the small wars that have happened in the past 50 years. However, that could still be a factor.

However, I bet population density is a huge factor. We do have cities in Sweden, but none so densely packed as New York. Stockholm, the largest, doesn't have a million people (but well more than 900,000).

[conuly]

Sweden is no where near as "homogeneous" as it was before the 1960's

Well, I did say it was the argument of bigots. I don't credit them with knowledge or critical thinking. They will on one hand say that every bad thing they've ever heard of in Europe is the fault of increased immigration, and then on the other say that every good thing is because your population is soooooo "homogeneous". That's always the word, too.

[kareina]

Just to be clear, I didn't think you were buying into the biggot's mindset, just acknowledging the point. I do think that population density is a very important factor in things like violent crimes. Not that they don't happen other places, but they aren't likely to happen as often.

[sallymn]

I checked ours - Australia has 221 murders in 2021, which is more than Sweden but less than NYC. The per capita rate has been going down, with a flew blips, since 1990 but most people here would sweat that crime is worse than it was. On the other hand, even with my bad memory I am pretty sure they said the same thing when I was a kid way back then and earlier. It seems to be human nature to insist that, in spite of any evidence to the contrary, everything is getting worse and worse than it used to be.

And some things are.

But not everything, and not all the things people seem to think.

[conuly]

When I was a kid, the crime rate in the USA - and especially in big cities - really was much higher than it had been when my parents and grandparents were children.

When people said things were getting worse, it was true.

But then the enormous spike leveled off for reasons that weren't entirely clear.

I strongly believe that the lead hypothesis is correct, that a huge chunk of the puzzle is the removal of lead from gasoline. The lead hypothesis not only explains the enormous drop in the crime rate, but also the previous increase. It may not be the only explanation, but I would have to see a lot of evidence to shake my faith in it.

[silveradept]

That sounds suspiciously like someone complaining that the head injury rate has skyrocketed ever since the implementation of mandatory helmets, while paying no attention at all to the corresponding drop in the fatality rate since the introduction of mandatory helmets.

On the subject of crime specifically, though, every US person just saw how effectively one party continues to raise spectres of who is committing crime and who needs to be protected from that crime, such that even though the numbers are down, people are told to fear others and engage in confirmation bias about their criminality.