Speaker 1: Welcome to Crash Course, a podcast about business, political, and
Speaker 1: social disruption and what we can learn from it. I'm
Speaker 1: Tim O'Brien. Today's crash Course crime trends versus statistics and reality.
Speaker 1: After many years of reassuring declines, some crime rates soared
Speaker 1: nationwide during the COVID nineteen pandemic. Homicides jumped about thirty
Speaker 1: percent in twenty twenty compared to the prior year, and
Speaker 1: violent assaults rose by more than ten percent. According to
Speaker 1: a number of different groups that track the data, these
Speaker 1: trends weren't geographically or politically specific. Residents in cities, suburbs,
Speaker 1: and rural areas all suffered through that shift, and it
Speaker 1: didn't matter if they lived in a city run by
Speaker 1: a Democrat or a Republican. More murders, the data showed,
Speaker 1: plagued every urban area. On the other hand, robberies, burglaries,
Speaker 1: and larcenies dropped during the pandemics onset. As the pandemic,
Speaker 1: war on murder rates andolent crime rates overall settled down,
Speaker 1: the numbers rose, but not nearly as sharply as they
Speaker 1: did early on. Another wrinkle, crime statistics are subject to
Speaker 1: spotty methodology and reporting gaps, making it hard to rely
Speaker 1: on the data with absolute certainty. Public safety isn't a
Speaker 1: trivial topic, and there's no question that many Americans say
Speaker 1: they feel less safe on some streets than they once did,
Speaker 1: despite the fact that violent crime rates are well below
Speaker 1: where they were during the nineteen nineties. So what was
Speaker 1: behind the pandemic surge and murders and assaults and what
Speaker 1: lessons can residents and public officials draw from what happened.
Speaker 1: Joining us today to chat about all of this is
Speaker 1: Ames Growert, a lawyer and expert on crime statistics at
Speaker 1: the Brennan Center for Justice at the NYU Law School.
Speaker 1: The Brennan Center is a nonprofit focused on a number
Speaker 1: of legal and public policy issues, including research into the
Speaker 1: sources of violent crime. Welcome, Ames, Thank.
Speaker 2: You so much for having me. It's a pleasure to
Speaker 2: be here.
Speaker 1: So set the stage alone a little bit for us. First,
Speaker 1: tell us a little bit about the work you do
Speaker 1: at the Brennan Center and how the Brennan Center intersects
Speaker 1: with crime research and crime statistics.
Speaker 2: Absolutely so. Our theory of criminal justice reform is that
Speaker 2: we can have a country that is both safer and fairer,
Speaker 2: that we can has common sense criminal justice reform policies
Speaker 2: that lead to a justice system that is fairer to
Speaker 2: all who are impacted by it. That's including people who
Speaker 2: are victims of crime as well as people accused of crime,
Speaker 2: and that while doing so, we can also have a
Speaker 2: safer country. As a whole. Part and parcel of that
Speaker 2: research is trying to understand what's actually happening when it
Speaker 2: comes to crime trends around the country. So around eight
Speaker 2: years ago, some colleagues before I joined the Brendan Center
Speaker 2: actually released a report called What Caused the Crime de Client.
Speaker 2: This is sort of the origin of this work, but
Speaker 2: it's also very much still relevant to the work we
Speaker 2: do today. They're thinking was, we need to understand the
Speaker 2: huge drop off and crime rates that happened between nineteen
Speaker 2: ninety one and roughly twenty fourteen. Over that course of time,
Speaker 2: murder rates in the United States the drops of half.
Speaker 2: Some sociologists call this the Great Crime Decline. It's a
Speaker 2: rarely remarked upon but incredibly important social phenomenon. So they
Speaker 2: set out to figure out, you know, why what happened.
Speaker 2: They came to a couple conclusions, one of which is
Speaker 2: it's very difficult to untact something that complicated, but a
Speaker 2: couple of their findings were that improving economic conditions partially
Speaker 2: helped explain drops in crime nationwide, and that incarceration was
Speaker 2: not as powerful an explanation as some had expected. So
Speaker 2: that was the genesis of this work, an idea that
Speaker 2: we need to you know, understand what's really happening with
Speaker 2: crime trends across the country, and that you know, we
Speaker 2: continue to this day to monitor what's happening around the country,
Speaker 2: keep abreast of the very best research, and contribute our
Speaker 2: own where we can well.
Speaker 1: And socioeconomic factors play into our understanding what happened during
Speaker 1: the pandemic too, So let's get into that a little bit.
Speaker 1: What happened in the early stages of the pandemic, particularly
Speaker 1: twenty twenty, that caused homicides and violent crimes to spike.
Speaker 2: Yeah, just to give you a bit of context, I
Speaker 2: know you touched on at the top of the show,
Speaker 2: but the key statistics are we saw the national murder
Speaker 2: rate increase by about thirty percent year every year from
Speaker 2: twenty nineteen to twenty twenty. We saw assault increase by
Speaker 2: around ten percent or so, you know, that's a significant
Speaker 2: increase in violence. And I think, much like we don't
Speaker 2: have a complete answer as to, you know, why crime
Speaker 2: dropped so precipitously between you know, the early nineteen nineties
Speaker 2: and today. We don't yet have and may not have
Speaker 2: for a long time, a full accounting of what happened
Speaker 2: during the COVID nineteen pandemic. When my colleagues and I
Speaker 2: investigated this to try to figure out, you know, what
Speaker 2: could explain such a dramatic increase in violence concentrated in
Speaker 2: such a short period of time. We can do a
Speaker 2: couple explanations, but we've always been careful, and I just
Speaker 2: want to re emphasize to your listeners too, that this
Speaker 2: isn't the full accounting. We're not saying, you know, these
Speaker 2: are the factors that one hundred percent explained everything that
Speaker 2: happened since twenty nineteen. I don't know who'll ever get there,
Speaker 2: but a couple of those factors were Number one, increasing
Speaker 2: access to firearms and increasing carrying and use of them.
Speaker 2: And I can go into that at greater length. It's
Speaker 2: really interesting.
Speaker 1: So, surprise, surprise, more guns on the street produce more
Speaker 1: violence against other people. That's about right, I'm shocked to
Speaker 1: discover that.
Speaker 2: You know, so often we look for counterintuitive findings, but
Speaker 2: this just feels very intuitive. It's sometimes these sort of
Speaker 2: explanations that resonate with us. It's just common sense. There
Speaker 2: actually is research back into it, and people can push
Speaker 2: back and say, you know, well, it's true that more
Speaker 2: guns is an mulos equal more crime. A lot of
Speaker 2: second and third guns are bought by collectors, but in
Speaker 2: the pandemic, we actually did see a sort of closer
Speaker 2: link at least between more guns more crime.
Speaker 1: There had been years of a surge on guns on
Speaker 1: the streets that also corresponded with a drop in homicides
Speaker 1: and violent crimes. So even there, the link is not
Speaker 1: entirely direct, right, It's.
Speaker 2: Very complicated yet. So one of the pandemic ara statistics
Speaker 2: we look at is something that the ATF refers to
Speaker 2: as time to crime. What that means is when a
Speaker 2: gun is recovered from a crime scene, how long ago
Speaker 2: was it lawfully purchased. So it's sort of the time
Speaker 2: between when a gun enters the market legally and when
Speaker 2: it turns up at a crime scene. Time to crime
Speaker 2: actually dropped during the first two years of the COVID
Speaker 2: nineteen pandemic that suggests there's sort of a closer link
Speaker 2: between gun purchases and guns being used unlawfully. But frankly,
Speaker 2: this is an area where we need more research to
Speaker 2: understand better the link between gun purchases and gun violence.
Speaker 1: Were there other factors in addition to availability to firearms?
Speaker 1: Access to firearms?
Speaker 2: Yes, So this is a tough one. I think. You know,
Speaker 2: when you talk to some people, they will give you
Speaker 2: a very strong case of this argument, and I'm going
Speaker 2: to give you the sort of middle way case of
Speaker 2: the argument, that is that the social disruption caused by
Speaker 2: the COVID nineteen pandemic had some effect on crime trends,
Speaker 2: and especially violent crime. This is a tough one because
Speaker 2: I don't know if we'll ever be able to fully
Speaker 2: quantify exactly how this relationship played out, What happened, What's
Speaker 2: the mechanism that explains the link between the onset of
Speaker 2: the pandemic and violent crime. We might not ever have
Speaker 2: a full understanding of that, but a couple of mechanisms
Speaker 2: that we're sort of thinking through are this. When we
Speaker 2: saw the pandemic begin, the government response was not immediately
Speaker 2: adequate and not immediately encouraging. So a lot of people
Speaker 2: and people that we talked to in communities affected by
Speaker 2: violence said that members of their community lost faith in
Speaker 2: the government, didn't believe that their institutions were there to
Speaker 2: keep them safe. At the same time, a lot of
Speaker 2: basic parts of the community fabric, like libraries, third places
Speaker 2: so called where people can congregate after work or on
Speaker 2: the weekends, those shut down or inaccessible programs like community
Speaker 2: violence intervention initiatives, which are programs run by people at
Speaker 2: street level to help stop violence, support starts. Those sor
Speaker 2: programs often have to be run face to face, and
Speaker 2: you can't do that during a respiratory pandemic. That's just
Speaker 2: not how it works. So all these factors that sort
Speaker 2: of work together in the background almost to keep communities safe,
Speaker 2: all of them sort of fell apart at once, And
Speaker 2: it would almost be surprising if that had no effects.
Speaker 2: The question that we ask, and I think researchers need
Speaker 2: to continue to ask, is what sort of effect did
Speaker 2: it have? What was the magnitude of that effect?
Speaker 1: So it would all be under the umbrella of people
Speaker 1: freaked out, it.
Speaker 2: Would be more into the umbrella of once in a
Speaker 2: generation pandemic having untold, difficult to quantify, difficult to really
Speaker 2: fully appreciate, effects on the social fabric and the sort
Speaker 2: of informal ties that keep the communities safe.
Speaker 1: Yeah, people certainly had existential dread. People were reaching out
Speaker 1: to connect to one another more, and it was uncertain
Speaker 1: what the pandemic's effects would be. It's interesting to me
Speaker 1: to contemplate that. Then another stage and thinking was lashing
Speaker 1: out against other people, you know, either with guns or hands.
Speaker 1: Yet another statistic in all of that, though, is interesting
Speaker 1: to me, is that auto thefts also jumped. So in
Speaker 1: addition to, you know, you had certain kinds of crime
Speaker 1: to decline, and then you had homicides and assaults jump,
Speaker 1: but auto thefts jumped too. What are you thinking about that?
Speaker 1: That's a category to me that's sort of intriguing.
Speaker 2: Yeah, this is a really interesting one. One way to
Speaker 2: think about what happened during the COVID nineteen pandemic is
Speaker 2: how does the onset of a major respiratory virus affect
Speaker 2: someone's opportunity to commit a type of crime. So retail
Speaker 2: thefts tended to drop during the COVID nineteen pandemics. People
Speaker 2: simply weren't going to stores but at the same time,
Speaker 2: you know, you might not have eyes on your car
Speaker 2: that you parked up the street a couple of weeks
Speaker 2: ago because you haven't left your house. That's one factor
Speaker 2: that might partially explain increasing motor vehicle thefts. But there
Speaker 2: are a couple others too. One and this comes from
Speaker 2: a conversation I had with Jeff Asher, who's a fantastic
Speaker 2: analyst of crime trends. He pointed out that motor vehicle
Speaker 2: thefts tend to go hand in hand with more serious
Speaker 2: forms of violence. So, you know, a car is stolen
Speaker 2: and then used in a drive by shooting, so it's
Speaker 2: possible that, you know, you would see that type of
Speaker 2: offense increase alongside murder, which is what we in fact
Speaker 2: saw during the COVID nineteen pandemic. More recently, there have
Speaker 2: been security vulnerabilities discovered and a couple of vehicle brands,
Speaker 2: and there have been videos and stuff.
Speaker 1: So glad you're bringing this up. You're getting to the
Speaker 1: TikTok video. Yeah, part of the argument. Excellent.
Speaker 2: Yeah, there's a social media video explaining how easy it
Speaker 2: is to short circuit the security defenses of some vehicles.
Speaker 1: And specifically kias and Hyundais.
Speaker 2: I believe, Yeah, I believe that's right. And I can't
Speaker 2: tell you that that explains, you know, fifty percent or
Speaker 2: whatever percent of the increase in motor vehicle thefts, but
Speaker 2: it's not trivial. I think that that sort of effect
Speaker 2: of not just opportunity but means becoming more available might
Speaker 2: help explain the increase in those offenses as well.
Speaker 1: So all of the reasons you're giving for why the
Speaker 1: numbers jumped, both in these separate categories which can be
Speaker 1: caused by unrelated factors, and then some of the ones
Speaker 1: that are caused by related factors, none of these are
Speaker 1: necessarily the reasons that captured the public's imagination as to
Speaker 1: why homicides and violent crime were rising in year one
Speaker 1: of COVID nineteen. Tell me about that. What were the
Speaker 1: reasons that many people latched onto for why this was happening.
Speaker 2: Yeah, that's the key question. One of the frustrating things
Speaker 2: about working on crime research and trying to understand the
Speaker 2: way the criminal justice system works is it's easier to
Speaker 2: disprove some theories than it is to proved them. That's
Speaker 2: because the data are very hard to come by sometimes,
Speaker 2: But when you have a concrete idea. Sometimes you can
Speaker 2: gather the data you need to actually test the theory,
Speaker 2: and that's what my colleagues and I have done in
Speaker 2: some cases, and researchers around the country have done in others.
Speaker 2: And I'll get to exactly what the data show in
Speaker 2: a minute. But one of the most popular theories about,
Speaker 2: you know, why crime rose, especially in New York City,
Speaker 2: was bail reform. This was a major initiative enacted in
Speaker 2: twenty twenty that changed the way the state's pre trailer
Speaker 2: released laws worked, so detension bail were largely taken off
Speaker 2: the table for our misdemeanors in some lower level felonies.
Speaker 2: People jumped to the conclusion very quickly that bail reform
Speaker 2: might explain rising crime in New York City. But when
Speaker 2: you really kick the tires of that data, it just
Speaker 2: doesn't add up. For one, as you know, as we've
Speaker 2: been discussing folent crime and murders rose around the country,
Speaker 2: it would be very odd, indeed, if bail reform in
Speaker 2: New York somehow powered a nationwide increase in violent crime.
Speaker 2: It just doesn't compute. Really. Subsequent researchers backed that up
Speaker 2: as well, and I'm happy to go into that too.
Speaker 2: Another point that people argued was that this might be
Speaker 2: a quote city phenomenon, that this is something that originates
Speaker 2: in nebulously defined, quote blue city governance. I think this
Speaker 2: idea is sort of a holdover of the way crime
Speaker 2: used to look in this country. You know, if you
Speaker 2: go back to the nineteen nineties, there were multiple thousands
Speaker 2: of murders in New York every year. Amasite raid in
Speaker 2: a city like New York was well about the national average,
Speaker 2: And I think people sort of came to expect that
Speaker 2: violent crime is a city problem. But fast forward thirty
Speaker 2: years down the line, that's not quite so true. New
Speaker 2: York City is one of the safest big cities in
Speaker 2: the country. It's murder rate is below the national average.
Speaker 2: So this idea that violent crime was caused by and
Speaker 2: primarily a problem of cities, it's also simply not true,
Speaker 2: but became a very prevalent narrative, especially during the early
Speaker 2: days of the COVID nineteen pandemic. One of the other
Speaker 2: theories that we've looked into, and others have really taken
Speaker 2: a lot of time to try to research, is whether
Speaker 2: the inauguration of district attorneys who believe in criminal justice
Speaker 2: reform policies. The label you here as quote progressive prosecutors,
Speaker 2: But I've talked to these people. They don't all subscribe
Speaker 2: to that label. They subscribe to the idea that they
Speaker 2: are elected district attorneys who believe in criminal justice reform policies.
Speaker 2: But one of the arguments against them has been that.
Speaker 1: We'll still wanting to enforce the law.
Speaker 2: Indeed, yes, they're elected district attorneys who believe in criminal
Speaker 2: justice reform as a means of making their community safer,
Speaker 2: not as a political point. So one of the arguments
Speaker 2: has done that these so called progressive prosecutors have presided
Speaker 2: over a rise at crime and helped kick it off
Speaker 2: in their cities, and the data just don't support that.
Speaker 2: There's a really good study that was co authored by
Speaker 2: Anna Harvey at NYU's Public Safety Lab that tried to
Speaker 2: revide a relationship between progressive prosecuters and rise and crime,
Speaker 2: and she couldn't do it. She just couldn't find any
Speaker 2: sort of relationship. More researchers coming out on this. Now,
Speaker 2: that was a popular narrative, but it just hasn't held up.
Speaker 1: And then moreover in successive years, in twenty twenty one
Speaker 1: and twenty twenty two, the homicide rate drop, the rate
Speaker 1: of violent crimes dropped. What changed? Do you have a
Speaker 1: handle on what was behind that phenomenon.
Speaker 2: That's a question we're sitting with too. I actually think
Speaker 2: it does suggest one point. So if you were as
Speaker 2: we were sitting in the beginning of the COVID nineteen
Speaker 2: pandemic and wondering, you know, what's happening in the country,
Speaker 2: why are we seeing crime rates increase so much? If
Speaker 2: you had a theory that part of this might be
Speaker 2: due to factors related to the COVID nineteen pandemic, like
Speaker 2: social disorder, like the shuddering of key institutions that help
Speaker 2: keep communities safe, you might hypothesize that as the pandemic recedes,
Speaker 2: we might start to see murder rates go down, and
Speaker 2: that is in fact what we're now seeing. So I
Speaker 2: think it's a point of evidence that suggests, but doesn't
Speaker 2: conclusively prove, that much of the reason that we sew
Speaker 2: violence spike so much in the early years of the
Speaker 2: pandemic might be due to these factors related to the pandemic,
Speaker 2: And as the world sort of returns to normal, as
Speaker 2: businesses reopen, as people get back to their daily life.
Speaker 2: As community rhythm's return, that sort of network of safety
Speaker 2: and invisible bonds that keep us safe sort of re
Speaker 2: establishes itself. I don't have a complete answer for this question,
Speaker 2: but I think that's at least one theory worth thinking over.
Speaker 1: So the lesson to be drawn from that is state
Speaker 1: away from guns during year one of any lockdown, because
Speaker 1: that's when people are most likely to fire them.
Speaker 2: A question we think about too is sort of how
Speaker 2: to build resilience into communities and how do you build
Speaker 2: resilience into society as a whole? And trust absolutely and
Speaker 2: trust I think that's a really good way of putting it.
Speaker 2: There were some surprising things that we found when we
Speaker 2: looked into, you know, not just what caused crime to
Speaker 2: increase in twenty twenty, but you know what solutions people
Speaker 2: were talking about. There's actually some research these days that
Speaker 2: medicaid expansion, which we just saw go into place, and
Speaker 2: I believe it was North Carolina, is actually associated with
Speaker 2: lower arrest rates and lower rates of priscidivism in some cases.
Speaker 2: This suggests to me that as you build a society
Speaker 2: that has a stronger safety net and is more focused
Speaker 2: on taking care of people. You might help firm up
Speaker 2: that sort of invisible network that keeps us all safer.
Speaker 1: On that note, Ames, I'm going to take a quick
Speaker 1: break so we can hear from a sponsor, and then
Speaker 1: we will come back in to chat further about all
Speaker 1: of this. We're back with Ames GROWERDT and we're discussing
Speaker 1: murder and other crimes during the pandemic and after Ames
Speaker 1: we talked a little bit earlier about people citing the
Speaker 1: wrong factors for this spike and murder and viol and
Speaker 1: assaults during the pandemic and what some of the real
Speaker 1: factors might have been. You know, we're having this conversation
Speaker 1: and the context of the data is still recently fresh.
Speaker 1: The events are still relatively recent, and no one knows
Speaker 1: for certain, but our goal is to try to really
Speaker 1: get it real cause and effect so we can get
Speaker 1: better solutions. How was the narrative around the crime spike
Speaker 1: during the COVID pandemic and after construct it. I'm interested
Speaker 1: in that from your perspective. How did that narrative come
Speaker 1: into the public consciousness, because it's certainly different than some
Speaker 1: of what we just talked about earlier in terms of
Speaker 1: the factors that actually informed the spike.
Speaker 2: Yeah, that's a really good question and something I spend
Speaker 2: a lot of time thinking about. I'll do my best
Speaker 2: to give you as clear of an answer as I can,
Speaker 2: but it's a complicated subject. On the one hand. You know,
Speaker 2: I think when people see something like the covidanteen pandemic
Speaker 2: and they see, you know, hard data showing what they're
Speaker 2: feeling that violence is increasing, people naturally feel afraid and
Speaker 2: feel concerned for their states, see in the safety their
Speaker 2: loved ones, and those feelings are valid and important, and
Speaker 2: we should respect that. Number one one temptation when these
Speaker 2: very reasonable fears arise, I think it's tempting for some
Speaker 2: to look for sort of easy explanations. It's tempting to
Speaker 2: say this is a problem, and here's the solution, and
Speaker 2: that solution will work tomorrow. When people gravitate to those
Speaker 2: easy answers, those answers feel good, they might sound attractive,
Speaker 2: but they might be wrong, and more than that, they
Speaker 2: might actually end up doing more harm than good. So
Speaker 2: I think that's one factor, and telling the narrative onward
Speaker 2: is know, when crime rose, people looked for sort of
Speaker 2: a single factor answer, you know, crime rose by thirty
Speaker 2: percent in twenty twenty because of X, and insert into X,
Speaker 2: you know, bail reform, quote, blue city, something like that.
Speaker 2: That answer might have a certain narrative and intuitive appeal,
Speaker 2: it just happens to be wrong. Another factor I think
Speaker 2: we've seen, and I touched on this a little bit earlier,
Speaker 2: is I think because of the way that crime trends
Speaker 2: in the country used to look, people are sort of
Speaker 2: primed to think of crime as a city issue rather
Speaker 2: than an American issue, and people are primed to believe
Speaker 2: that cities like New York are uniquely dangerous, when actually
Speaker 2: almost the opposite is true. Representative Jim Jordan hosted a
Speaker 2: field hearing in New York City designed to highlight how
Speaker 2: crime in the city was increasing. It just happened to
Speaker 2: be at a time when murder trends in the city
Speaker 2: were actually declining sharply, and the evidence for rising crime
Speaker 2: in New York City was simply nowhere to be found.
Speaker 2: You know, the city, like other places in the country,
Speaker 2: had experience of crime spike during the pandemic, but by
Speaker 2: all accounts that spike was in the process of reversing.
Speaker 2: These narratives, they have an intuitive appeal. It's up to
Speaker 2: you know, policymakers and other opinion leaders like us in fact,
Speaker 2: to talk through why those narratives might not actually be
Speaker 2: true and why there might be other solutions that can
Speaker 2: make us safer. A colleague of mine who I do
Speaker 2: some work with, in Hirahman at the Beer Institute. She
Speaker 2: has a really interesting saying, I think in something that
Speaker 2: I think about daily. She says, you know, if we
Speaker 2: focus on the wrong problems, we also focus on the
Speaker 2: wrong solutions. So if you yourself in a narrative where
Speaker 2: you think the reason that crime is up is because
Speaker 2: cities are doing something wrong and bail reform or progressive
Speaker 2: prosecutor or something like that, you might miss some other
Speaker 2: solution that has nothing to do with those quote problems
Speaker 2: and that could actually lead to safer communities down the line.
Speaker 1: And as I noted at the top of the show,
Speaker 1: suburbs and rural areas saw a very similar spike to
Speaker 1: what cities saw. So the idea again that cities themselves
Speaker 1: are unique kind of breeding grounds or Petrie dishes for
Speaker 1: violent crime is belied by reality in the data.
Speaker 2: That's exactly right.
Speaker 1: Having said that, aims about the similarities of suburbs and
Speaker 1: rural areas and cities. There is also reality at work here. However,
Speaker 1: there is no denying that city streets do for a
Speaker 1: lot of people feel less safe. A lot of small
Speaker 1: businesses have boarded up, there's less people walking around in
Speaker 1: the streets, particularly late at night. Homelessness has been on
Speaker 1: the rise in every big city I think, or at
Speaker 1: least most of the big ones, and I've visited a
Speaker 1: number of them since COVID began, and you just notice
Speaker 1: homeless people wandering in greater numbers in the past, and
Speaker 1: there is this perception that the streets aren't as safe,
Speaker 1: even if the data doesn't show us that. Let's talk
Speaker 1: about that a little bit, because that is a reality
Speaker 1: based conclusion for a lot of folks.
Speaker 2: Absolutely it is, yes, And when people have that impression,
Speaker 2: they were reacting to something real. I'm not one to
Speaker 2: discount people's experiences and fears about their community. I think
Speaker 2: one thing at work here is people see social disorder,
Speaker 2: People see hardship in their lives, such as an increasing
Speaker 2: number of people living on the streets, and they make
Speaker 2: a sort of intuitive connection between bad and crime. But
Speaker 2: social disorder and crime are not necessarily one of the same.
Speaker 2: They might in some cases go hand in hand, but
Speaker 2: that might be one reason why we see a sort
Speaker 2: of a gap between the perceptions and realities around the trends,
Speaker 2: especially in major offenses. These are real problems. They don't
Speaker 2: want to downplay it. Like I've seen the data on
Speaker 2: homelessness and Portland, I've seen the data on homelessness in
Speaker 2: California and New York, and you're right, it is up.
Speaker 2: But the solutions to those problems might lie outside the
Speaker 2: criminal justice system, where they might lie in other policy
Speaker 2: interventions disconnected from the problem of crime in the United.
Speaker 1: States, and the sense of menace that some people might
Speaker 1: feel from a homeless person doesn't necessarily translate into the
Speaker 1: homeless person whipping out a gun and shooting you or
Speaker 1: assaulting you.
Speaker 2: Right, But you know people's fears about their safety and
Speaker 2: about seeing disorder in their community. I want to make
Speaker 2: sure that we take that seriously, and policymakers should. They
Speaker 2: should just be careful about what solutions we can offer
Speaker 2: to try to build healthier communities for everyone.
Speaker 1: Two of the other sort of marquee incidents that have
Speaker 1: I think also make people worried about cities are shoplifting waves.
Speaker 1: As we know from the data, most shoplifting is carried
Speaker 1: out by a small cohort, often acting in conjunction with
Speaker 1: one another. They're repeat offenders. Again, that doesn't take away
Speaker 1: from the fact that the shoplifting is occurring and it
Speaker 1: appears to be unstopped. Storefronts are shattered, or people walk
Speaker 1: into a retail store and just sweep stuff off the shelves.
Speaker 1: Have you thought about shoplifting it's just a category of
Speaker 1: sort of urban blight, or maybe the data there I
Speaker 1: don't actually know. Is the data similar again across the
Speaker 1: board of shoplifting a problem also in suburbs and in
Speaker 1: rural areas as well.
Speaker 2: This is a challenging question too, because there are a
Speaker 2: number of things that can explain trends in shoplifting. Different
Speaker 2: stores have different strategies or protocols for reporting shoplifting to
Speaker 2: the police. For example, a colleague is a former prosecutor
Speaker 2: mentioned this to me. You know, if I go into
Speaker 2: a convenience store every day one week and steal you know,
Speaker 2: ten dollars worth of property, is it the store policy
Speaker 2: to report me the first time and every subsequent time?
Speaker 2: Is it the store policy to call the police only
Speaker 2: after the seventh and then report every incident. These sort
Speaker 2: of differences in how stores and store owners report shoplifting
Speaker 2: to police can sort of confound our understanding of the data,
Speaker 2: and it makes it very hard to understand precise trends
Speaker 2: in shoplifting around the country and individual cities. One thing
Speaker 2: does seem to be clear, though, and most data that
Speaker 2: we have does point to this, and that is that
Speaker 2: shoplifting has increased in some major cities. In New York City,
Speaker 2: the data seems very clear that shoplifting increased sharply in
Speaker 2: twenty twenty two, and that it actually increased year over
Speaker 2: year for I think going back more than a decade.
Speaker 2: So the problem is very real, even if we need
Speaker 2: better data to fully understand what's going on.
Speaker 1: And tell me. As a last category before we move
Speaker 1: on to other and grander things, or carjacking, that has
Speaker 1: also seemed to have been on the rise in urban areas,
Speaker 1: prekly in places like Chicago, in very stark ways. You know,
Speaker 1: drivers are pulled over by another car, or is they're
Speaker 1: getting out of a car or into a car, they're
Speaker 1: essentially held up and their car is stolen. And that
Speaker 1: seems to be a more frequent and visible crime than
Speaker 1: it was a few years ago.
Speaker 2: That's right, and this is actually a tough crime for
Speaker 2: us to study as well. I feel like I'm saying
Speaker 2: that a lot, but you can get an idea of
Speaker 2: how challenging the data can be. Sometimes. The reason is that,
Speaker 2: until very recently, and I know we'll talk about this
Speaker 2: in more detail, car jacking was not broken out as
Speaker 2: a separate fence studied by the FBI. It was sort
Speaker 2: of rolled into robbery. So in many places we don't
Speaker 2: really have an idea of year to year trends in carjacking.
Speaker 2: The data that we do have does show that it
Speaker 2: is increasing or increased in twenty twenty two. We also
Speaker 2: know from city reports. I think you mentioned Chicago. I'm
Speaker 2: not familiar with the data, but I'm sure you're right.
Speaker 2: But we know in Washington, DC carjackings definitely have increased.
Speaker 2: As to why it's a tough question, I go back
Speaker 2: to something I mentioned earlier. There might be some correlation
Speaker 2: between types of motor vehicle theft and other more serious crimes.
Speaker 2: As you steal a car, you carjack a car to
Speaker 2: be used in a more serious efense down the line.
Speaker 2: It could be that those types of defenses go hand
Speaker 2: in hand.
Speaker 1: And is there like a psychology of crime that when
Speaker 1: you see categories of crime as a resident spike, whether
Speaker 1: it's murders or assaults, it leads you to believe that
Speaker 1: every kind of crime that could take place might take
Speaker 1: place and will also increase. And that sort of feeds
Speaker 1: on itself, and people can get into that space without
Speaker 1: necessarily finding easy ways to reverse the fears they're feeling.
Speaker 2: I think that's true. It goes to a sort of
Speaker 2: broader concept. I think people of all types like to
Speaker 2: see accountability and like to see people, you know, face
Speaker 2: consequences for their actions. So if they see people committing
Speaker 2: crimes and facing no consequence for it, it leads them
Speaker 2: to draw broader conclusions about the health of society and
Speaker 2: the moral fabric of their communities. That might be one
Speaker 2: way that we see fears about one type of crime
Speaker 2: bleed over into another. Sort of an interesting thing if
Speaker 2: you ask people what types of crime they're most worried about,
Speaker 2: it really depends on the community. Number One, when we
Speaker 2: saw violence brise in twenty twenty, it was very very uneven.
Speaker 2: The violence spiked more in New York city, for example,
Speaker 2: in neighborhoods that have always been for have always struggled
Speaker 2: with violence, so that increase might not have been as
Speaker 2: visible to other people. But often you see people are
Speaker 2: more worried in some cases about what we in the
Speaker 2: policy field might call relatively lower level offenses, as in
Speaker 2: not the most serious offenses known to law enforcement, but
Speaker 2: crimes like shoplifting, crimes like turnstile jumping, things like that.
Speaker 2: Those sort of crimes can definitely affect people's perception of safety.
Speaker 1: And this is a good moment to point out that
Speaker 1: it is our neighbors and fellow Americans at the lowest
Speaker 1: part of the socioeconomic ladder who experience the brunt of
Speaker 1: violent crime increases, particularly homicides and violent assaults. So within
Speaker 1: those statistics, they don't apply in a blanket and uniform
Speaker 1: way across our society. They really affect usually the most
Speaker 1: vulnerable and disadvantaged people the hardest.
Speaker 2: That's absolutely right. There's a complicated relationship between poverty and crime,
Speaker 2: but if you look at cities around the country, you
Speaker 2: tend to see violence and rising crime in twenty twenty
Speaker 2: clustered in communities that have suffered from other disadvantages. Those
Speaker 2: sort of inequalities have always existed, you know, you go
Speaker 2: back years, you'll see the same sort of prends. They
Speaker 2: simply became more exaggerated or pronounced during the COVID nineteen ten.
Speaker 1: Dem let's take another break, games, then we'll come right back.
Speaker 1: We're back, and I'm having a conversation about crime and
Speaker 1: the COVID nineteen pandemic with Aames Groward. Ames, I think
Speaker 1: we have a data collection and data analysis problem around
Speaker 1: crime statistics that transcends politics and disagreements, and maybe it
Speaker 1: even makes them worse from my perspective, But I was
Speaker 1: wondering what you thought of that.
Speaker 2: That's absolutely right. Someone we've worked with before, a law
Speaker 2: professor John faff I'm going to borrow point that he makes,
Speaker 2: and that is we have up to the minute data
Speaker 2: on the economy, unemployment data, jobs created, et cetera. But
Speaker 2: when it comes to our data on crime, until very recently,
Speaker 2: we had to wait almost a year, nine to ten
Speaker 2: full months between the end of a year and the
Speaker 2: release of national crime data by the Federal Bureau of Investigation.
Speaker 2: So be give you an example. If you wanted to
Speaker 2: see national crime data on twenty nineteen. You had to
Speaker 2: wait until late September twenty twenty for that data to
Speaker 2: come out. That's nowhere close to the real time data
Speaker 2: that policymakers need to actually craft interventions and understand what's
Speaker 2: happening in their community relative to communities around the country now.
Speaker 2: To be sure, local data is much more up to date.
Speaker 2: I could pull up New York City's constant portal right
Speaker 2: now and it would have data that's probably less than
Speaker 2: a week old. Depending on the day of the week,
Speaker 2: it might be, you know, yesterday. But when we don't
Speaker 2: have national data, or when we have delayed national data,
Speaker 2: it also has an effect on the narrative. So to
Speaker 2: give you an example, you know you will hear policymakers
Speaker 2: talk about rising crime in major cities. Over the past month,
Speaker 2: I've heard many policymakers on the federal level talk about
Speaker 2: rising crime in major cities. In every case, they're citing
Speaker 2: data from twenty twenty. You know, that's three years ago.
Speaker 2: Why aren't they using more recent data? Why aren't they
Speaker 2: aware of more recent data? And the answer is not
Speaker 2: necessarily bad faith. The answer might be in part that
Speaker 2: we have such a delay between the year that we're
Speaker 2: interested in studying and when crime data actually come out
Speaker 2: that it sort of takes a while for the public
Speaker 2: to understand and adjust to what those data show. There's
Speaker 2: sort of a lag time between our reality of national
Speaker 2: crime trends and our perception of what those trends actually
Speaker 2: look like. And it's actually gotten worse in the past
Speaker 2: couple of years due to transition of the way the
Speaker 2: FBI calculates crime data, which I could talk to you
Speaker 2: about as well well.
Speaker 1: Since you mentioned the FBI, My Bloomberg Opinion colleague Justin Fox,
Speaker 1: who loves to crunch and examine numbers around all sorts
Speaker 1: of things, has been particularly frustrated by the FBI's methodology.
Speaker 1: He recently wrote this about how the FBI colates data
Speaker 1: around four major crimes to analyze violent crime rates, and
Speaker 1: I'm quoting Justin here. To calculate violent crime rates, the
Speaker 1: FBI simply adds together the incidents of the four violent crimes,
Speaker 1: meaning the rate ends up being determined by the most
Speaker 1: common ones, robbery and especially aggravated assault. That's not great.
Speaker 1: What do you think of Justin's thoughts on that?
Speaker 2: Your colleague is absolutely right to make the problem even
Speaker 2: more stark when people talk about the overall crime rate,
Speaker 2: what they tend to be referring to is the incidences
Speaker 2: of the four violent offenses that Justin referred to, plus
Speaker 2: the three property crime offenses historically tracked by the FBI,
Speaker 2: so burglary, larceny, motor vehicle theft. But when you add
Speaker 2: all those together, larceny is far and away the most
Speaker 2: common offense, overwhelming all of them. So when people talk
Speaker 2: about the quote crime rate, there's often a risk that
Speaker 2: you're really talking about the larceny rate with some other
Speaker 2: crimes thrown in there. It's a very sort of blunt
Speaker 2: way of looking at crime trends.
Speaker 1: And skewed statistically skewed.
Speaker 2: Yes, especially because we actually saw this phenomenon in the
Speaker 2: COVID nineteen pandemic. Larcenies have fallen for starting in nineteen ninety,
Speaker 2: they fill every year until I think twenty twenty two.
Speaker 2: So you could look at quote overall crime data in
Speaker 2: twenty twenty and see a decline in crime rates twenty
Speaker 2: nineteen to twenty twenty. So you could hear people say, well,
Speaker 2: the murder rate is up and respond with well crime
Speaker 2: is down, and you're both right. But if you're discounting
Speaker 2: a thirty percent spike in murder. By looking at larceny data,
Speaker 2: you're just not.
Speaker 1: Doing apples and oranges.
Speaker 2: Yes, as oranges. You're not doing the real analysis the
Speaker 2: public needs. That's part of the challenge of it.
Speaker 1: So how do we get better data so we all
Speaker 1: have better confidence in what we're talking about?
Speaker 2: So here I actually have some good news for you,
Speaker 2: which I think we're all eager for. At this time,
Speaker 2: the FBI is in the process of a transition to
Speaker 2: something called the National Incident Based Reporting System. So when
Speaker 2: that transition is done, we will have two things. Number One,
Speaker 2: we'll have a system that tracks a much wider array
Speaker 2: of offenses in much greater detail. So we won't just have
Speaker 2: data on larsenies. We'll have data on larceny dash, shoplifting,
Speaker 2: larceny dash, by fraud, larceny dash, you know, every variety
Speaker 2: of every variety of crime. That's going to allow for
Speaker 2: much richer, more thoughtful analysis of crime trends year over year.
Speaker 2: And you can actually see that in some work already,
Speaker 2: because many cities have already adopted this new system. You
Speaker 2: can see that in some work by the Council and
Speaker 2: Criminal Justice A great nonprofit organization. They put together an
Speaker 2: analysis of shoplifting trends across the country using NYBERS data,
Speaker 2: which is how people in my field refer to the
Speaker 2: National Incident based Crime Reporting System, and they had a
Speaker 2: much richer look at what's actually happening shoplifting around the country.
Speaker 2: It was really interesting. Their finding was, as we discussed,
Speaker 2: that it's a real problem in New York. But so
Speaker 2: number one, we'll have a richer analysis of what the
Speaker 2: data actually look like. Number two will actually have more
Speaker 2: timely data. The FBI is in the process of rolling
Speaker 2: out quarterly reports, so rather than have to wait for
Speaker 2: September October every year for your dose of national crime data,
Speaker 2: every quarter you should get a little more data on
Speaker 2: the national picture. That data will still have a lag time,
Speaker 2: it will still be fairly stale by the time you
Speaker 2: read it, but you won't have to wait a year.
Speaker 2: And I think that's the real improvement and should help
Speaker 2: policymakers come to better and more thoughtful and more timely
Speaker 2: conclusions about crime data. I can't give you unallied good
Speaker 2: news here though, because although this new system is going
Speaker 2: to be fantastic when it's fully implemented, implementation is going
Speaker 2: better than it was a year ago, but it's not
Speaker 2: going great. That's because to switch over to the system,
Speaker 2: police departments, that is, the agencies that report crime data
Speaker 2: up through their state to the federal government, have to
Speaker 2: rework their computer systems and their way of tracking crime data.
Speaker 2: That takes time, that takes money, it's difficult to do,
Speaker 2: take staff, and many departments, through no fault of their own,
Speaker 2: don't have the ability to do that and.
Speaker 1: Happen, including some pretty big ones, some.
Speaker 2: Very big ones in fact, so Florida and Pennsylvania remain
Speaker 2: big blind spots and the incident based reporting system, as
Speaker 2: does New York City.
Speaker 1: Right, and you've mentioned now two different states in a city.
Speaker 1: How reliable is data comparing one state to another or
Speaker 1: one city to another when when you see these sort
Speaker 1: of comparisons about what's safe and what isn't, what's a
Speaker 1: crime written place and what isn't.
Speaker 2: Yeah, let me put it this way. You know, the
Speaker 2: FBI's role is they seek to standardize the data to
Speaker 2: the extent possible between cities so that you can make
Speaker 2: these comparisons insofar as they're possible to be made at all.
Speaker 2: But that can definitely be a little challenging. Even with
Speaker 2: that standardization. The one data point that we sort of
Speaker 2: know is accurate and reflects, you know, what is actually
Speaker 2: happening on the ground is murder. Because of the tragic
Speaker 2: nature of defense. At the end of it, someone has
Speaker 2: lost their life, and that tends to be reported to
Speaker 2: many different authorities. So murder counts, murder rates tend to
Speaker 2: reflect the actual number of those offenses committed in a community.
Speaker 2: But the same might not be true of larceny. The
Speaker 2: same might not be true of burglary in all cases,
Speaker 2: you know I'm thinking of You know, I had my
Speaker 2: bike stolen in Brooklyn, and I certainly never told the
Speaker 2: police that bike was gone. So those sort of challenges
Speaker 2: and reporting rate also might have an issue a way
Speaker 2: of confounding comparisons between jurisdictions, It's not impossible. Those comparisons
Speaker 2: are certainly meaningful, but they might not fully reflect facts
Speaker 2: on the ground. They might come close to it. More.
Speaker 1: You mentioned murder again, and we started talking about murder
Speaker 1: in this happy episode we're having, and I wanted to
Speaker 1: ask you, given this spike in the homicide rate in
Speaker 1: twenty twenty, and it's cooled down subsequently, but it's still
Speaker 1: higher than it had been. What aren't we doing about
Speaker 1: homicide and violent crimes that could address that more directly?
Speaker 2: That is the question. Two metrics that I've been thinking about,
Speaker 2: and I'm going to refer to the work of some
Speaker 2: other scholars in the process, are clearance rates and response times.
Speaker 2: So the clearance rate is you can think of it
Speaker 2: very roughly as the rate at which police solve an offense.
Speaker 2: So it's the ratio of crimes in which an arrest
Speaker 2: has been made or in which an arrest is impossible
Speaker 2: to the number of crimes that are actually reported to them.
Speaker 2: So if you have four murders in a given year,
Speaker 2: and you make an arrest in three of them, your
Speaker 2: clearance rate is seventy five percent. Unfortunately, seventy five percent
Speaker 2: would be an outlier clearance rate in many cities in
Speaker 2: this country. We've seen clearance rates below fifty percent in
Speaker 2: some major cities, and in Chicago one year I think
Speaker 2: it was below thirty percent. That suggests that, you know,
Speaker 2: quite literally, people can get away with murder, and that's
Speaker 2: very dispiriting, that's horrifying. I think we need to figure
Speaker 2: out exactly what's happening and see if we can figure
Speaker 2: out a way to increase clearance rates so people who
Speaker 2: commit these most serious of offenses are actually brought to justice.
Speaker 2: That's one factor. Anna Harvey, a researcher who I mentioned before,
Speaker 2: is also some thought into studying police response times, which
Speaker 2: in some jurisdictions can be quite high, and that also
Speaker 2: can lead you a feeling of impunity. You know, if
Speaker 2: by the time police show up it's an hour later,
Speaker 2: it's much more difficult to solve that crime. So these
Speaker 2: are two statistics that feed into each other, but I
Speaker 2: don't want to talk exclusively about those two metrics. Another
Speaker 2: promising intervention we've seen is something called the community violence
Speaker 2: intervention programs. These are models where people from the community
Speaker 2: build nonprofit organizations and employ people from the community to
Speaker 2: help stop violence before it starts. So a model that
Speaker 2: I've seen in Newark, New Jersey, which is quite near
Speaker 2: to me, you will see people who have experienced in
Speaker 2: the criminal justice system spend time in their communities, hear
Speaker 2: what's happening here about nascent fights that might be brewing,
Speaker 2: hear about conflicts that might be brewing, and then find
Speaker 2: the people affected by those conflicts and try to put
Speaker 2: a stop to it. Try to say, you know, I
Speaker 2: understand what you're going through, but violence is not the
Speaker 2: solution here. These sort of programs, when they work, they
Speaker 2: are very effective. New York is one of very few
Speaker 2: cities that didn't see homicide rates in create appreciably in
Speaker 2: twenty twenty, for example. But they're very hard to get right,
Speaker 2: and they typically require more money and more professionalization and
Speaker 2: more staff than they're ever given. So this is a
Speaker 2: promising option that I'm glad to say. Here's another piece
Speaker 2: of good news. The Biden administration has actually taking a
Speaker 2: serious interest and promoting and investing in ames.
Speaker 1: I always like to ask guess what they've learned that
Speaker 1: is an aha or a new thing to them about
Speaker 1: the subject we're discussing. In your longtime observer of crime trends,
Speaker 1: what did you learn watching the way that crime statistics
Speaker 1: took shape in the early parts of the pandemic and
Speaker 1: where they are now and the kind of public debate
Speaker 1: we had around all of that.
Speaker 2: That's a great question to think through. One thing I've
Speaker 2: learned is statistics don't always reflect people's experience. We actually
Speaker 2: see this in the economy as well. To bring it
Speaker 2: near to a topic that always care about. The data
Speaker 2: may show one thing, but people may feel another thing.
Speaker 2: So there's a real gap often between people's perceptions of
Speaker 2: safety and the actual data. And the reasons for that
Speaker 2: may be really complicated. They may be because we've discussed
Speaker 2: the data don't quantify the offenses that people are actually
Speaker 2: worried about. But whatever the reason for that gap, we've
Speaker 2: just got to take people's perceptions seriously. And it is
Speaker 2: no answer to someone who's worried about their safety to say, well,
Speaker 2: technically crime is down. That's non answer. That's not an
Speaker 2: answer that helps bring us to a safer and more
Speaker 2: just place. Games.
Speaker 1: We're out of time. Thank you for coming on today.
Speaker 2: Thank you.
Speaker 1: Ames Groward is an expert on crime statistics and Senior
Speaker 1: counsel at the Brennan Center for Justice at the NYU
Speaker 1: Law School. Here at Crash Course, we believe that collisions
Speaker 1: can be messy, impressive, challenging, surprising, and always instructive. In
Speaker 1: today's Crash Course, I learned that the perception of crime
Speaker 1: can almost be as influential for people as the reality
Speaker 1: of crime itself and has to be taken into consideration
Speaker 1: when we're coming up with policies to address crime. What
Speaker 1: did you learn? We'd love to hear from you. You
Speaker 1: can tweak at the Bloomberg Opinion, handle at Opinion or
Speaker 1: me at Tim O'Brien using the hashtag Bloomberg Crash Course.
Speaker 1: You can also subscribe to our show wherever you're listening
Speaker 1: right now and leave us a review. It helps more
Speaker 1: people find the show. This episode was produced by the
Speaker 1: Indispensable and always Lawful Anna Maazarakis and me. Our supervising
Speaker 1: producer is Magnus Hendrickson, and we had editing help from Sagebauman,
Speaker 1: Jeff Grocott, Mike Nize and Christine Vanden Bilart. Blake Maples
Speaker 1: does our sound engineering, and our original theme song was
Speaker 1: composed by Luis Gara. I'm Tim O'Brien. We'll be back
Speaker 1: next week with another Crash Course