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Comment by genman | Hacker News Reader

The problem with such data is always the reporting threshold. Crime level might be high but crime doesn't get reported.

There will always be unreported crimes. What matters more is changes to crime and reporting rates. Given all data sets show that crimes have dropped significantly

- If the reporting rate for crimes has been steady or increased, then we can conclude crime has indeed decreased

- Only if the reporting rate for crimes has decreased do we not know the effect. It would be dependent on the magnitudes of each

They get into some of this data in the piece

Like I told - there is problem with threshold changes. If the thresholds are manipulated then it will lower also reported crime rates but the apparent crime rate based on personal experiences circulating in the population will paint a different picture. For example if somebody gets mugged but the value of the loss is below the threshold then it will not get reported but the crime still happened and the fact is shared in the population and this affects the perceived crime rate within the population.

There is also the effect of decriminalization and depolicing which I did not see well addressed in the article. There are parts of the US where local government has the social leaning or at least their key donors have the social leaning to take a permissive attitude towards activity that was previously criminal. Effectively this makes activity like buying and selling drugs and shoplifting legal and, thereby, meaningless to report.

If anything the article may more likely be an indicator of the delta between crime as-is and as-reported or a cautionary tale of decision-driven-data

The types of crime covered in the article are not these types of crimes

> Using the FBI data, the violent crime rate fell 49% between 1993 and 2022, with large decreases in the rates of robbery (-74%), aggravated assault (-39%) and murder/nonnegligent manslaughter (-34%). It’s not possible to calculate the change in the rape rate during this period because the FBI revised its definition of the offense in 2013.

> The FBI data also shows a 59% reduction in the U.S. property crime rate between 1993 and 2022, with big declines in the rates of burglary (-75%), larceny/theft (-54%) and motor vehicle theft (-53%).

The problem also: major cities have simply stopped reporting crime at all. Further, crimes go unreported because police have stopped responding to many of them.

And then you have the other neat new thing of all races being listed as white.

> The problem also: major cities have simply stopped reporting crime at all.

I promise you, no major city has ceased to report and respond to homicides, where we continue to statistically enjoy one of the safest couple of decades in American history.

And what has it to do with wide spread blatant shoplifting affecting many US cities?

You mean the stat that is...

* Frequently inflated with claims that there's a whole bunch of them suddenly unreported?

* Likely blown out to some extent by statistical outliers? https://counciloncj.org/is-shoplifting-up-or-down/

* Overstated by companies to justify store closings? https://www.nytimes.com/2023/01/06/business/walgreens-shopli...

It's exceedingly difficult to determine the actual rate of shoplifting on a national scale.

The claim was "major cities have simply stopped reporting crime at all" which is just... laughable. As is the "everything's reported as white" follow-up.

And that was the main point of my comment - we really don't know what is the actual situation.

I thought it was "wide spread" and "affecting many US cities"?

Yes, this is one particular crime where crime level might (see my original comment) be higher than the official picture presents. Even when it is not reported then people still perceive it as crime.

I promise you that major cities have stopped reporting crime to the FBI. At least one major city hid lack of crime response under administrative labels.

The FBI data is based on voluntary reporting by individual law enforcement agencies, and last year, half of US police departments, including those in big cities such as Los Angeles and New York, failed to submit data for 2021.

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2023/oct/22/us-crime-sta...

Seven months after the May 2023, assault, Houston police classified the incident as “suspended – lack of personnel,” an internal label placed on tens of thousands of incidents over the past decade. The classification perplexed Hill, who felt the matter had been long settled.

https://houstonlanding.org/did-hpd-neglect-suspended-cases-w...

"to the FBI" is a much narrower claim, and assaults aren't homicides. It is not suprising to me that some assaults would not be followed-up on; that's why homicide rates are much more interesting.

Numbers for the missing NYC, for example, are hardly difficult to dig up. https://abc7ny.com/nypd-crime-shootings-murders/14259597/

> The NYPD released some statistics about safety in New York City during 2023. The number of murders and shootings in the city both decreased last year and are continuing to track downward following the pandemic. New York City had 386 homicides last year, according to new NYPD data, an 11.9% decrease from 2022.

> "to the FBI" is a much narrower claim

The context is Pew research using stats reported to the FBI and surveys by the DoJ.

https://www.pewresearch.org/short-reads/2024/04/24/what-the-...

No, that is literally what one of the two major studies mentioned, the National Crime Victimization Survey, gets around with its methodology.

They survey a quarter million Americans every year, and don't rely on what gets reported to the police/insurance companies/etc.

Did you not read the article?

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