The World Beyond BetterMost > The Culture Tent
In the New Yorker...
serious crayons:
I plan to read the Frankenstein article, but I started with Adam Gopnik's book review piece about the huge decline in crime over the past couple of decades and how nobody seems to know about it. I've often wondered myself why that isn't more discussed. When Donald Trump kept using inner city crime during his campaign as evidence that America is getting worse, I kept thinking, why doesn't anyone point out how wrong he is?
Last year there were 650 murders in Chicago. I just googled it to get the exact number, and all of the google hits, at least at the top, said things like "Chicago murder rate down sharply, but still 650 killed." Always the "but still." These were items from places that Trump would call fake news, like CNN. Not to minimize 650 people's deaths. But Chicago's population is 9.5 million.
When I lived in New Orleans in the early '90s, it was the murder capital of the country. There was at least a murder a day. It peaked at 450 in 1994. New Orleans' population then was just under 500,000.
So Chicago had less than twice as many murders with 19 times as many people. That's pretty mind-blowing.
According to the google page, Chicago's rate is still higher than most major cities. That's worth pointing out. But how often does anyone comment on this gigantic decline?
One possible factor furthering this misconception is that, according to that New Yorker story a while back about Grand Junction, CO, a big Trump-supporter area, the murder rate in places like Grand Junction actually has gone up. Apparently because of economic problems in depressed areas. So maybe Trump voters were under the impression that crime was booming out of control everywhere -- if it's that bad in Grand Junction, what must it be like in places like Chicago?!
And in this case, the MSM isn't doing a very good job of educating anyone. I just happen to know about it because I lived in NOLA, wrote about crime there and have done the math. And Adam Gopnik knows about it. But I'm not sure how many others do.
serious crayons:
--- Quote from: Front-Ranger on February 07, 2018, 08:59:36 pm ---Meanwhile there's a funny article in McSweeney's (I think it's like the NY) about alternatives to resting bitch face:
--- End quote ---
McSweeney's is like the New Yorker if the New Yorker were all "Shouts and Murmurs." That is, it's humor. It doesn't do big serious duty articles or even big interesting articles like the Frankenstein one or the crime one. It's all hip goofy humor.
But it can be a rabbit hole -- so much good stuff, and a lot of it very funny!
Aloysius J. Gleek:
--- Quote from: serious crayons on February 08, 2018, 10:36:19 am ---I plan to read the Frankenstein article, but I started with Adam Gopnik's book review piece about the huge decline in crime over the past couple of decades and how nobody seems to know about it. I've often wondered myself why that isn't more discussed. When Donald Trump kept using inner city crime during his campaign as evidence that America is getting worse, I kept thinking, why doesn't anyone point out how wrong he is?
Last year there were 650 murders in Chicago. I just googled it to get the exact number, and all of the google hits, at least at the top, said things like "Chicago murder rate down sharply, but still 650 killed." Always the "but still." These were items from places that Trump would call fake news, like CNN. Not to minimize 650 people's deaths. But Chicago's population is 9.5 million.
When I lived in New Orleans in the early '90s, it was the murder capital of the country. There was at least a murder a day. It peaked at 450 in 1994. New Orleans' population then was just under 500,000.
So Chicago had less than twice as many murders with 19 times as many people. That's pretty mind-blowing.
According to the google page, Chicago's rate is still higher than most major cities. That's worth pointing out. But how often does anyone comment on this gigantic decline?
One possible factor furthering this misconception is that, according to that New Yorker story a while back about Grand Junction, CO, a big Trump-supporter area, the murder rate in places like Grand Junction actually has gone up. Apparently because of economic problems in depressed areas. So maybe Trump voters were under the impression that crime was booming out of control everywhere -- if it's that bad in Grand Junction, what must it be like in places like Chicago?!
And in this case, the MSM isn't doing a very good job of educating anyone. I just happen to know about it because I lived in NOLA, wrote about crime there and have done the math. And Adam Gopnik knows about it. But I'm not sure how many others do.
--- End quote ---
https://www.nytimes.com/2017/12/27/nyregion/new-york-city-crime-2017.html
Crime in New York City Plunges to a Level Not Seen Since the 1950s
By Ashley Southall Dec. 27, 2017
It would have seemed unbelievable in 1990, when there were 2,245 killings in New York City, but as of Wednesday there have been just 286 in the city this year — the lowest since reliable records have been kept.
In fact, crime has fallen in New York City in each of the major felony categories — murder and manslaughter, rape, assault, robbery, burglary, grand larceny, and car thefts — to a total of 94,806 as of Sunday, well below the previous record low of 101,716 set last year.
If the trend holds just a few more days, this year’s homicide total will be under the city’s previous low of 333 in 2014, and crime will have declined for 27 straight years, to levels that police officials have said are the lowest since the 1950s. The numbers, when taken together, portray a city of 8.5 million people growing safer even as the police, under Mayor Bill de Blasio, use less deadly force, make fewer arrests and scale back controversial practices like stopping and frisking thousands of people on the streets.
“There is no denying that the arc is truly exceptional in the unbroken streak of declining crime,” said William J. Bratton, who retired from his second stint as police commissioner last year.
ON THE OTHER HAND--
http://www.nydailynews.com/new-york/trump-silence-racist-murder-nyc-speaks-volumes-article-1.3006993
President Trump’s Twitter silence on Timothy Caughman’s murder by white supremacist speaks volumes
By LEONARD GREENE Thursday, March 23, 2017, 3:06 PM
AND A PERSONAL NOTE--
In the summer of 1994, August, a Sunday afternoon, I was on 9th Street and Avenue 'A' (the edge of edgy 'Alphabet City'--some of my friends called it Alphabetland, the actual name of a pre-school for kids) and I suddenly exclaimed to a semi-acquaintance who just happened to be walking by as I was having a personal epiphany: "This is it! Summer of 1994! Something is happening!" My semi-acquaintance smiled, although I never did know if he really understood my revelation. Summer 1994 was lovely, sunny and mild, and "interesting" (but very dicey) Alphabet City suddenly seemed Alphabetland safe.
So. I just now googled this article from January 1, 1995, which I had never previously read--
http://www.nytimes.com/1995/01/01/nyregion/new-york-city-crime-falls-but-just-why-is-a-mystery.html
New York City Crime Falls But Just Why Is a Mystery
By CLIFFORD KRAUSS Published: January 1, 1995
Behind the bloodcurdling headlines about a firebombing on the No. 4 train, a drive-by shooting on the Brooklyn Bridge and the killing of a police officer in a botched bicycle store holdup, behind the back-to-back campaigns that elected a new Mayor vowing to improve the quality of life in New York City and a new Governor committed to bring back the death penalty, lies an often-overlooked fact.
Crime in New York City is dropping. And dropping fast.
Murders, which had been falling gradually over the previous three years, dropped sharply, by nearly a fifth, in 1994. Over all, 350 fewer people were slain in 1994 than in the year before, and 650 fewer than in 1990, when murders, many of them fueled by the crack epidemic, reached a peak.
Shootings dropped by more than 15 percent, the latest police statistics show. And virtually every type of reported felony declined in frequency last year, with auto theft, grand larceny, burglary and robbery all dropping by better than 10 percent.
True, violent crime remains a constant menace of city life. The nearly 1,600 homicides that were committed in 1994 are still about four times the 390 killings that the city recorded in 1960. And a growing number of crimes are committed by teen-agers, whose vicious and often random acts of violence have raised fear to a level that statistics cannot overcome.
But coming after the staggering increases in crimes through the late 1980's -- a lethal period that culminated in mid-1990 with a string of senseless killings and a tabloid headline plea to Mayor David N. Dinkins to "Do Something, Dave" -- the latest figures show a surprising reversal.
The changes, which are mirrored in many cities across the country, have mystified criminologists. They offer a number of theories, from intensified police efforts to demographic shifts to a growing number of criminals behind bars, but no single explanation for the phenemenon.
(and etc.)
CellarDweller:
that list of faces was too funny!
serious crayons:
--- Quote from: Aloysius J. Gleek on February 08, 2018, 12:40:41 pm ---
https://www.nytimes.com/2017/12/27/nyregion/new-york-city-crime-2017.html
Crime in New York City Plunges to a Level Not Seen Since the 1950s
By Ashley Southall Dec. 27, 2017
--- End quote ---
Thanks, John! Good to know the MSM isn't entirely remiss. I didn't go to the links yet, but I hope those articles delve into demographics, which I previously thought were the main reason for the change. I know the broken-window theory has been more or less discredited, but that Gen. X is much smaller than Boomers, so as those people moved into crime-committing age, the crime rate would drop accordingly in those years.
But nowadays Gen Xers are now mostly out of the crime-committing age, Millennials outnumber Gen Xers and even Boomers, and millennials are in prime crime time. So clearly demographics don't entirely explain it.
I lived in New York the year before you had the epiphany in Alphabetland and according to my hazy memory and limited Upper West Side perspective, I had the sense the area had been dicey but was becoming somewhat safer. In years since then, of course, I have read that it totally is, but I attributed that to gentrification. My own epiphany in New York was that, while there were of course many more murders than there had been in NOLA (I lived in NYC in 1993-94, NOLA before and after), the per-capita rate was lower, which was fairly obvious, but also that the murder numbers were psychologically deceiving because if you looked at a newspaper there would be many more reported than you'd have found in the New Orleans paper, so it would seem like a more dangerous place. Fear about crime is so irrationally based on what happens to grab people's attention, like a particularly horrible crime, however rare those might be.
The other thing I realized is that your chances of getting murdered in most parts of Manhattan were pretty low, but relatively high in some parts of the city. In NOLA murders were scattered around every neighborhood, including the wealthiest, including the French Quarter and other touristy spots, including on the steps of the sandwich shop kitty-corner from our apartment. They were slightly higher in really poor neighborhoods, as always, but the poor neighborhoods are scattered all over the city rather than relegated to certain areas, as in New York or Chicago or Minneapolis.
That's not good news for the people who live in high-crime neighborhoods, of course. It was only good news for me personally.
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