Outside the Beltway

“Police Line Crime Scene” is licensed under CC BY-SA 4.0

If It Doesn’t Bleed, It Doesn’t Lead

Good news is seldom news.

James Joyner
24

Comments

Kevin Drum looks at the lastest FBI crime data and observes, “as expected, crime was down considerably everywhere.”

Overall, violent crime was down 15.2%. Murder was down 26.4%. Overall property crime was down 15.1%. Crime was down by double digits or more in every single category and in every region of the country.

Which is good news except that, well, it isn’t:

I don’t want to pretend this is all Joe Biden’s doing. Nevertheless, the press dedicated a lot of time and space to crime when it went up, and you’d think they could spare a few column inches on their front pages when it’s plummeting.

Now, in fairness, pretty much everyone is, in fact, reporting the news.

Even the WSJ (“Violent Crime Rate Falls Sharply After Pandemic Surge“) covered it yesterday on the website and in today’s print edition. WaPo‘s Phillip Bump had an analysis piece on the data (“Violent crime continues to drop — but it’s not clear how much“) yesterday. Ditto AP‘s Mead Gruver (“FBI data show sharp drop in violent crime but steepness is questioned“). The NYT is the outlier among major outlets in not having at least some mention of this report—which just came out yesterday—on its site.

Still, the larger point stands: the return to normal isn’t getting anywhere near as much attention last the surge. Which isn’t the least bit surprising. Planes that don’t crash, houses that don’t burn, and dogs that don’t bite aren’t news.

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24 responses to “If It Doesn’t Bleed, It Doesn’t Lead”

  1. OzarkHillbilly Avatar
    OzarkHillbilly

    I don’t want to pretend this is all Joe Biden’s doing.

    Which of course is true, but to the extent that the good economy has affected the crime rate, he deserves at least some of the credit.

    1
  2. MarkedMan Avatar
    MarkedMan

    One way Biden’s team could get coverage for this: creating outrage about how conservative news sites are attempting to cover this up and then sell the outrage as the story. An old fashioned political cat fight is worth covering in all its gory detail.

    4
  3. EddIeInCA Avatar
    EddIeInCA

    Driving around Los Angeles yesterday, I noticed how far gas prices have fallen over the last month.

    I decided to look it up. As of today, according to AAA, gas in Los Angeles is $4.88 per gallon. A week ago it was $5.01, which is down from it’s high of $6.44 almost two years ago on 6/12/22.

    I haven’t seen any reports of “lowered gas prices”.

    Nationally, the average is down to $3.54 from it’s high of $5.02 on 6/14/22.

    Thanks Brandon.

    4
  4. JKB Avatar
    JKB

    Of course, that is headline crime and only what the cities and state report. But in many urban areas, police don’t respond to crimes. I was reading an article about the dead zone downtown Minneapolis was now. The author of a quoted article reported that police didn’t respond when his daughter was mugged as no one was injured. That crime isn’t going to be in the statistics, but it will be in the local gossip.

    Report the crime stats are down and get the comments filled with anecdotes. Accurate or not, the comments will reflect the opinion of the citizens.

    2
  5. Mister Bluster Avatar
    Mister Bluster

    How important the local angle is I learned years later when I read that a man named Bonfils, owner of a Denver newspaper, frequently said to his staff, “Remember that a dog fight on Champa Street is a bigger story for us than three thousand [or it may have been 3000,000] Chinese drowned in a typhoon”.
    Witness to a Century (1987)
    George Seldes

    And it really still comes down to this:

    We can do the innuendo
    We can dance and sing
    When it’s said and done
    We haven’t told you a thing
    We all know that crap is king
    Give us dirty laundry

    3
  6. Gavin Avatar
    Gavin

    All bad things are immediately Biden’s fault; all good things are obviously the inevitable cultural response to Orval Faubus resisting the desegregation of Central High School in 1957!

    4
  7. Rick DeMent Avatar
    Rick DeMent

    And the other reality is that crime was never “Up” all that much in the first place.

    Crime in this country has been doing nothing but going down since the late 80’s. No one under the age of 70 has ever experienced violent crime being so low. Despite the hand wringing and JBK’s anecdote heavy and evidence free comment, we have never been safer as a country, and that includes the increase mass shootings.

    4
  8. Chip Daniels Avatar
    Chip Daniels

    OUTTACONTROL crime is part of the Decline Narrative which holds that the world is falling apart, which is itself just a trope, a proxy for the conservative anxiety over witnessing a world in which those they consider inferior are afforded equal rights.

    Notice Ms. Alitos lament about having to witness Pride flags. One of the most privileged people in America, who wants for nothing and suffers not at all, is distressed that other people are allowed to live as they wish.

    7
  9. gVOR10 Avatar
    gVOR10

    @Rick DeMent: That’s what I shake my head over. We’re pretty much the safest, most prosperous, freest people who ever lived. And everybody’s pissed.

    5
  10. Jay L Gischer Avatar
    Jay L Gischer

    @JKB: “Police didn’t respond” doesn’t mean “there was no report”. In the story you cite, police didn’t respond because there was nothing for them to do. The assailant was long gone.

    I have been contending with homeless squatters in a property that was empty over the last year. I have learned how the police do triage – what they come out for, and what they don’t, and what they do when they have time. It makes sense.

    The business with the squatters was mostly non-violent, and no immediate threat. Once, when someone else called them, they caught someone inside the house and hauled him to jail and called me.

    I think these narratives of “police don’t respond” are born of lack of experience. The police do what they can, but it’s probably less than you think they can do.

    Oh, and by the way, one could say about this situation: “I just want the laws to be enforced.” Or perhaps, “Anything that permits even ONE illegal act is unacceptable.” Does that make sense in this context?

    Really, this is all about spending priorities. In my memory, it’s Republicans who don’t want to spend money on things because that might require collecting more taxes.

    Anyway, crime going down has several contributing factors.

    4
  11. OzarkHillbilly Avatar
    OzarkHillbilly

    @JKB: I was reading an article about the dead zone downtown Minneapolis was now.

    I have to ask, in what?

    2
  12. Kathy Avatar
    Kathy

    Well, there was that big spike indicating White House crime was way, way, up. But for some unexplained reason, this ended in January 20th 2021.

    6
  13. steve Avatar
    steve

    We also have the National Crime Victim Survey. In the survey households are asked about crime, not just ones they report. There are sometimes discrepancies but they generally come from police not reporting stuff to the FBI. Also, remember that Pew surveys for the 25 years between, IIRC, 1996 and 2021 showed that people thought crime was increasing in 22 out of 25 of those years while we saw one of the largest, steady decreases in crime in our history.

    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Crime_Victimization_Survey#:~:text=The%20National%20Crime%20Victimization%20Survey,frequency%20of%20crime%20victimization%2C%20as

    Steve

    3
  14. Slugger Avatar
    Slugger

    Some crimes are not reported, but others are. Car theft is likely to be reported except for junkers because insurance is involved. https://counciloncj.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/01/motor-vehicle-theft-factsheet-2.pdf
    Murder gets reported https://www.statista.com/statistics/191134/reported-murder-and-nonnegligent-manslaughter-cases-in-the-us-since-1990/
    Rates are better than 50 years ago, but there has been a recent uptrend. This uptick coincides with Trump’s presidency, and we can all agree that this is his fault.

    1
  15. Matt Bernius Avatar
    Matt Bernius

    I wrote a follow-on to this post, and in particular @JKB’s critique, here:
    https://drjjoyner-cmlud.wpcomstaging.com/why-we-can-say-crime-is-down-part-1-of-2/

    @steve:
    The NCVS is a really important dataset for examining trends in under-reporting. However, because of length issues, I wasn’t able to address it in my post. Jeff Ascher, the author whose work I build on, does go into it in some depth.

    Also, remember that Pew surveys for the 25 years between, IIRC, 1996 and 2021 showed that people thought crime was increasing in 22 out of 25 of those years while we saw one of the largest, steady decreases in crime in our history.

    There’s an entire field (which I suspect you know of) called risk studies that tries to understand why this happens.

    2
  16. Matt Bernius Avatar
    Matt Bernius

    @Slugger:

    Rates are better than 50 years ago, but there has been a recent uptrend. This uptick coincides with Trump’s presidency, and we can all agree that this is his fault.

    There needs to be some nuance here. Tl;dr: Trump should not be blamed for this.

    The slight uptick began under Obama, dropped, and then rose again under most of the Trump years. Generally speaking, what we saw from 2015 to 2019 (if memory serves) was a mix of normal fluctuation with a slight (historically speaking) upward trend.

    2020-1 saw a historic acute jump in rates. While correlation is not causation, most experts link the jump to COVID-19 and its aftermath. Research done over the next few decades will help us understand the link better.

    And what’s happening is what most experts expected: once we cleared acute C19, those numbers would drop. There have been a few unexpected things that have kept some rates for specific violent crimes higher–no one would have predicted that two major lower-cost automakers would create cars susceptible to a USB hack. Overall, this looks to have been a temporary spike created by a once-in-a-lifetime forcing event that was outside of human control.

    Unfortunately, a lot of bad law was passed (and good laws repealed) under the panic that ensued, and it set the criminal legal system reform movement back by a decade, if not more.

    3
  17. steve Avatar
    steve

    Matt- Yes, it has been area of interest for a while and used it for some of my work. There are an awful lot of areas where people just arent good at assessing risk. The wife likes to phrase it as people are stupid. She is probably a bit correct but then the world is large and complex and you cant know everything so people end up trusting people on topics they dont understand or have time and ability to learn. So if you are medically or scientifically inclined you know Ivermectin and HCQ dont really work. If you are a member of a cult, not much different than a vassal, you believe they do work.

    As an aside in assessing risk, after Trump’s explaining the risk of batteries in boats you think someone should tell him that most boats bigger than a bass boat already have at least one battery? That they have had them for a long time?

    Steve

    2
  18. MarkedMan Avatar
    MarkedMan

    @Matt Bernius:

    a once-in-a-lifetime forcing event that was outside of human control

    Minor nit: Very much in human control, very much an unforced error, but not in policymakers or law enforcement control

    2
  19. Matt Bernius Avatar
    Matt Bernius

    @steve:

    The wife likes to phrase it as people are stupid.

    At the risk of sounding like I’m insulting your wife, as a humanist, I hate this framing. I understand and empathize with it, but I still hate it.

    In the UX research field there’s a similar one: “Users lie in interviews.” Again, I understand what it’s shorthand for, but it sets up a really aweful framework.

    People are just incredibly bad at understanding things like risk. And there are whole host of cultural reasons for that (at least in terms of the type of risk we are and are not concerned about). I suspect some of those are also biological too (we are a herd animal). And that means we all have blind spots. I maintain the best we can do is try to be curious about them.

    As an aside in assessing risk, after Trump’s explaining the risk of batteries in boats you think someone should tell him that most boats bigger than a bass boat already have at least one battery? That they have had them for a long time?

    I have nothing other than to say we all believe we have novel perspectives–in other words, that we’re the only people who thought of this. I think there is some of that going on with assumptions about under-reporting. Which is where Dunning-Kruger is so helpful in explaining exactly why that is.

    1
  20. MarkedMan Avatar
    MarkedMan

    Made the mistake of reading while up-scrolling and encountered some stupidity.

    Apropos of nothing I will point out that watching Fox News makes you objectively stupider. If you get your information from them or similar sites you will know less about the real world and are likely to have a phantasmagorical view of reality that makes you a danger to yourself and others. As an example, the Baltimore Fox News station (which is more than Fox News here, it’s the Sinclair Media mothership) ran an extensive “investigative” piece on how dangerous it was to go to a game at Camden Yards. Murders, shootings, lawlessness everywhere. Now I’ve spent the last 5 years living within sight of Camden Yards and Ravens Stadium. In fact, if I stand up and look out my window I can clearly see a good chunk of the Warehouse, and on game days thousands of people stream past my door coming and going to the game. Further, I’m not just in this neighborhood, but in the neighborhoods all around the stadiums, day and night going to brew pubs and restaurants, even a museum or two. And I spend a lot of time walking around the stadiums, just because it’s the closest place nearby to get some exercise without having to stop at intersections. How much crime have I encountered? None. My neighbors and I talk about the Orioles all the time (and they talk about the Ravens while I nod my head). How much does crime come up around going to the game? Aside from complaints about suburbanites illegally parking, none.

    I’m not saying there is no crime here. There certainly is. But we walk everywhere in our neighborhood, day and night and have never personally encountered any in our five years here. But Fox News portrayed this very area as just short of existing in fear amongst running gun battles between “urbans”. Watching Fox News makes you stupider.

    4
  21. just nutha Avatar
    just nutha

    @OzarkHillbilly: Epoch Times, National Review, Stormfront? Lots of possibilities.

    1
  22. Thomm Avatar
    Thomm

    @OzarkHillbilly: in other words, “nice citation dipshit.”

    1
  23. OzarkHillbilly Avatar
    OzarkHillbilly

    @just nutha: @Thomm: And of course, I never got an answer. Not that I expected one. I just wanted to get his cowardice on record. Like countless others have done before me.

    1
  24. al Ameda Avatar
    al Ameda

    Certainly with regard to local news, for a long time, crime, spectacular accidents, and natural disasters have always been a tease and a lead. But these days local stations will get easily available footage from anywhere in the United States (or around the world) to satify their need to freak us out.

    You live in Flyoverville, Nebraska or Resentfield, Ohio? Get ready, your local or regional news will show you footage of a smash-and-grab in Portland, or a mugging in Baltimore, and suggest to you that all this might becoming to Flyoverville and Resentfield too.

    If it’s a Sinclair Media Station, of course you’re going to be told that Biden and _________ (insert names of Libs) caused this.

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