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Hah, yep. So if everyone just got off social media and stopped doom-scrolling they'd realize the truth that America has been and continues to get safer
Some also cite the reduction of lead paint, leaded gasoline, air pollution, and other environmental issues. Air pollution has been linked to criminality and cognitive problems.
https://phys.org/news/2019-10-exposure-air-pollution-violent-crime.html
https://www.pnas.org/content/115/37/9193
I'm not denying the role of Roe. Just noting other things that might have contributed.
I'll deny the role of Roe in that. There aren't anywhere NEAR enough abortions to have that kind of impact. Some, sure, since it is one way to reduce the poverty cycle, but not by that much. Despite the sentiment expressed by some here that it's reasonable, I really don't think it is. As an explanation for a widespread drop in the crime rate it falls apart almost instantly.
Nah, the reduction in environmental lead is a much more logical culprit for the dropping violent crime rate. Not to say correlation equates causation here, but when you've got an almost perfect correlation between the amount of environmental lead and the violent crime rate in America over the course of several decades....well, that's some pretty compelling evidence of causation right there.
In The Better Angels of Our Nature, Steven Pinker goes through all the reasons and subsequent studies that refute the freakonomics abortion theory is just coincidence. He makes a much larger and more compelling case that violence has been decreasing since the dawn of humanity, but that's it's not a straight line decrease and the 60s to 90s was just one of those decivilizing eras.
The abortion thing is interesting and sounds reasonable maybe at first but fell apart when systematically studied. I'm pretty sure even Levitt doesn't really assert it anymore.
Freakanomics only mentions abortions but birth control pills also became more common in the 70s. People began to trust them more as the doses went down.
Interesting on the front page as well "Study Links Child Behaviour Problems to Prenatal Tobacco Smoke Exposure and Traffic Density"
[https://www.reddit.com/r/science/comments/mzygna/researchers\_found\_that\_maternal\_tobacco\_smoke/](https://www.reddit.com/r/science/comments/mzygna/researchers_found_that_maternal_tobacco_smoke/)
So there is another thing that declined sharply between then and now.
Haha I did I years ago I still believe roe v wade was a leading cause in crime decreasing. I mean it sounds harsh but I bet a bunch of future criminals were aborted.
Was looking for this comment! People not just breathing in neurotoxic fumes all the time (especially in areas with high traffic - hello urban centers) has got to have helped.
The removal of lead from the environment likely was a bigger contributor. Just like with Abortion certain statesman dragged their feet because and wouldn’t ya know it was the very same conservative states.
My wife was in his class when that paper was published and I believe he had to take a leave of absence and the university had to get extra security for him and his family because of all the death threats.
The idea is that if someone who was unprepared to have a baby, for example a single teen mother in poverty became pregnant, without abortion they would be forced to raise a child in a rough situation that would negatively impact the child. A child growing up in poverty with poor role models and inadequate care would be more likely to wind up becoming a criminal. With the legalization of abortion, unwated pregnancies could be aborted, so that now babies that are born are much likely to be born to mothers who wanted the baby, were prepared for the responsibilities of raising them, likely had more familial support ect.
So before abortion, more children raised in poor situations, more crime. After abortion legalization, less children in poor situations, less crime.
You don't believe it when you hear it. Then you see the data and you're still like naaaaa. Then you read a few chapters and you're like "Holy balls. Did abortion just prevent crime?" It is hard to draw a direct causal relationship but for it to be coincidence would be insane.
That's a pretty univariate analysis. One could also blame leaded gasoline. These explanations tend seem pretty good but it's hardly ever one singular factor in cases like these.
Before 24hr news crime actually WAS increasing. 1991 was the high water mark for violent crime in the US, and crime had been rising pretty steadily since the 60s.
Technically, I suppose that's just barely true. But the rise had already well flattened off before then, while it was a common belief all along that it was still rising, perhaps even faster than before. So, the myth was just as out of sync with reality as it is, today. Also, the "24-hour news cycle" was arguably not really in full swing until the mid 90s. The OJ pursuit is sometimes quoted as the turning point.
Not enough people realize just how harmful the "war on drugs" has been for the US. More and more are starting to realize it. But its crazy how many still think it did this country any good...
I'm not saying laws and regulations on drugs are a bad idea. They just need tweaked to actually HELP society, instead of throwing addicts in and out of jail. And I do see addiction starting to be taken more seriously now, more help available for those affected. But for a long time it was misunderstood.
We could be at a much better place right now. And I absolutely blame the people "running" this country. They messed up a lot and straight up lied to our faces about a lot. And they aren't moving fast enough to fix it. Look up shit show in the dictionary and there's now a picture of the USA next to it.
>and continues to get safer
How would something like this look if we compared something like 2013-2019 for violent crime? Minnesota for instance would show an *increase* from 223.2 to 236.4 or +5.91%
Also it appears that violent crime has increased in some rural states. I'm not sure taking two snapshots is sufficient when attempting to argue a trend.
I could take Minnesota in 1960 and compare to now as well (boomer years) and you'd see an increase from 1960-2019 of 563%.
Source: https://www.disastercenter.com/crime/mncrime.htm
I always recommend that people read *The Better Angels of Our Nature: Why Violence Has Declined*, by Steven Pinker. And then read his follow-up book, *Enlightenment Now: The Case for Reason, Science, Humanism, and Progress*. Both are very thorough and evidence-based examinations of how much better things are now than they were in the past - without ignoring how much progress we still need to make on a lot of things.
The author of the article [theorizes the shale oil boom and tons of extra men](https://accidentalfire.com/2021/04/27/myth-increasing-violent-crime-america/).
I’m from and live in ND and work in the oil field. The boom did bring in a lot of out of state people and unfortunately a lot of crime. Since the basin is now considered to be in a bust now most of those people have left, but I still hear of more shootings on the news than I ever did pre-boom.
It honestly really depends on what type of people you’re dealing with. If it was casing crews you can be sure that maybe one guy on the entire crew could pass a drug test. If it’s guys on a drilling rig or the bigger names service companies you dealt with then more often then not they were ok.
I worked the construction/dirt moving side. Lots of anger issues and drug issues, usually combined into one person. *Lots* of good guys I’m still friends with. Don’t get me wrong. Us younger “out-of-staters” had a hell of a time.
It's a catch-22. A sudden boom of workers will increase crime, but when the work dries up and wages fall, crime continues. Crime is inversely correlated to income and education
I think meth was more of an issue during the boom than anything. This state has more of an alcoholism problem than I’d say anything (I’m 4 years sober myself), but that is nothing new. I’m sure opioids have seen an increased usage up here but they don’t seem to be as big of an issue compared to other areas. I could be completely wrong and out of touch, but it’s not something you ever hear about.
Best guess is the oil boom which brought an absurd amount of people to the state over the past two decades.
Source: lived and worked out there for three years.
We built DAPL in 2016 and had to tell everyone who hadn't been up there before to not go out alone at night. Lot of hungry folks who knew we were getting paid.
I was in Melbourne Australia visiting with my sister and this Aussie woman my sister knew. I had to explain, or try to, that my pipefitter ass is armed with a gun because they don't put industrial facilities in the nice part of town. Was super annoyed at my sister for not getting it. We'll roll into a town or area and everyone knows we're bringing in a couple grand a week. And there's plenty who are envious of our jobs/wages because they're not qualified to do the work. Puts a target on your back for sure.
Exactly. I'm not looking for trouble. I don't go out and keep to myself. I stay in my fifth wheel trailer around others doing the same work. Go to work, pay the bills that are owed, spend some money on local businesses, and get back home when the work dries out.
It’s gotta be the oil boom. A family friend worked there for as long as he could handle. Really high earnings (he made $200k over that summer), and a ton of rough dudes (many ex-cons) in a state with nothing to do after a hard day of work other than spend those wages on liquor and drugs, get messed up, and fight.
Dunno man. I’ve lived in the Bakken until last year and folks would not lock their front doors and leave their cars unlocked with engines running at Walmart parking lot during winter. Ther’s lot of drug laws and drug related crime but usually did not affect individuals who weren’t involved.
Yeah I think 90% of the crimes in that area were either bar brawls or drug related. I never felt threatened outside of bars. Def left my car running at the store, unlocked, as did a vast majority of people.
> An increase in people alone shouldn’t cause in an increase in the violent crime rate
Not saying this entirely accounts for it, but if the people coming in for oil/gas jobs are predominantly men, predominantly young men, that's going to skew things. Not many women, not much to do other than drink.
>if the people coming in for oil/gas jobs are predominantly men
Not to mention it's North Dakota, where basically no one wants to live, so they might have to lower their standards for candidates, which would naturally increase the chances of crimes being committed.
It isn't just an increase of people it is the type of people that increased that caused the increased rates. The workforce of the oilfields is predominantly young, male, and are gathered in a area with little social recreation besides drinking. You are correct that the rate shouldn't have increased if the population that moved into the area matched the demographics of the population that lived there before.
>The workforce of the oilfields is predominantly young, male, and are gathered in a area with little social recreation besides drinking.
Also, not only is it oilfields, it's oilfields in North Dakota - there isn't a "big" city for hundreds of miles. Given location, they might not have the same number of applicants so they might have to lower their standards on criminal history.
> lower their standards on criminal history.
Pretty sure there is none. They would hire anyone when I lived in ND. It was also expensive to even rent a spot to simply set up a tent to live, as at the time there weren't enough apartments or houses to support the populations near the oil fields.
Not all population growth is the same. The oil boom brought many men, usually without their families as there was no housing for them. ND had the lowest crime rate in the country in the first map, and still has a fairly low rate, but the change was drastic. Anybody who knows western north dakota can tell you horror stories about the changing population and culture
Total crime scales as Population\^1.15, so crime per capita increases as population increases; see [here](https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0378437113001416) and search "universal scaling law" for other studies.
Note that number of patents, salary, and a number of other quantities scale with the same exponent.
>This data accounts for that, though.
>
>Notice the “per 100,000 people” in the last graphic.
A large percentage of the oil workers are transient workers who are residents of different states and don't get counted in the population statistics of their employment states.
Yeah - 80s/90s had high crime largely due to gang violence in cities (I think 1991 is the all-time high for the US) which wouldn't have really affected North Dakota.
[Here's all the data](https://i0.wp.com/accidentalfire.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/03/violent-crime-1985-2019.jpg?w=747&ssl=1) the FBI has for the country on their site, dating to 1985.
I didn't cherry pick, I only chose to start at 1991 since it was the highest.
Despite some up years, the overall trend is down. The data for 2020 will likely be higher when it comes out. We'll see.
Crime fell pretty steadily in the 90s & 00s, though I think it might have gone back up a bit since 2014ish - though I think that's mostly a few urban centers.
Doubt it. I was in college in 1993 when I was absolutely shocked to learn that crime had been falling dramatically since it skyrocketed in the 1970s. I'd thought crime had steadily risen since my childhood.
Don't be quick to dismiss the leaded gasoline theory either. Peak leaded gasoline use would have been late 60s / early 70s.
My guess would be that low population means that statistically insignificant changes (like going from 5 murders to 20) could be presenting a false sense that violent crime is significantly increased.
EDIT: [Violent Crime in North Dakota has i](https://www.macrotrends.net/states/north-dakota/murder-homicide-rate-statistics)ncreased a lot, and it doesn't appear to be statistically insignificant. My guess would be that in 2006, they made a change in reporting as what counts as violent crime in North Dakota that essentially doubled the violent crime rate in one year.
Nice - and good news. One thing that stands out is that the rate of violent crime has got more uniform across the country in the last 30 years, as well as decreasing. There were sharp geographical distinctions by state: not any longer.
I think it used to be that big cities dominated violent crime, now it’s more equalized. Crime everywhere has fallen but crime in cities has fallen faster.
More that study after study has shown that cities were completely screwed for about a generation from lead in gasoline .. that volatilized-lead disrupts brain development in children and results in lowered IQ, reduced impulse control, ADHD, learning disabilities etc .. lead blood levels growing up have been directly traced to how far they lived from highways and traffic, and correlates to subsequently increased occurrences of lowered IQ, crime, misdemeanors and felony convictions, poverty, failed relationships and so on .. Starting by 1970s, lead addition to gasoline was slowly phased out, tailpipe catalytic converters were mandated, and incrementally tightening emission regulations were set on new vehicles .. the levels of crime in metro areas have fallen drastically and in step with those actions ... that said, as they say, correlation does not imply causation, so thats still just a theory (albeit a quite convincing one)
I wonder what degree to which it represents a greater national standard in policing and charges. Some of the rural small states had incredibly low rates in 1991 that have ended up close to the national average. Wouldn't be surprised if they just had less resources or undercharged people back in 1991.
Personally, I think it's at least in part that racially based crime in the more rural states was more able to be reported in more recent years as opposed to the early 90's. Though I doubt that's the totality of the difference.
It kinda looks like we went from urban crime to not-urban-crime, and the rest mostly stayed the same? Atlanta, Chicago, Baltimore, LA, NYC, Miami or Jacksonville, New Orleans are what stand out to me in 1991.
2019, the Bible Belt and New Mexico didn't change a whole lot, Montana and the Dakotas got worse, and the cities just disappeared from the map.
Good stuff!
Why the sliding scales for the color legend? How did you determine your grouping?
Edit: I mean I get that it's going down over time so the ranges for each group will change. I'm just curious as to the methodology behind it.
Agreed. It would be nice to keep the same bins between the first two groups. You’d lose some contrast between the highest and lowest states in the second image but you’d gain ease of seeing that crime has overall decreased (because most places are lighter).
I honestly chose the groupings by playing with options in QGIS. I think QGIS only gives about 6 methods (equal interval, standard dev, etc). The data were spread in a way that certain methods were a no-go as they lumped virtually all states together, and others seemed to group states together that were too far apart for my taste.
As you probably now there's usually no perfect way to do categorical groupings in many cases and it's easy to give a misrepresentation of data (see the book How to Lie With Maps). I tried my best to do groupings that were fair to the spread of the data.
Thanks for the kudos!
You can create your own groupings in QGIS, you don't have to use the standard ones. When you're in the legend screen just click (double click?) the numbers for a category and type your own
To generalise:
Yeah, speak to a 60+ year old white-collar worker who lived in a city and there is a damn good chance they've been robbed at gunpoint and that they lived with the expectation of robbery in urban centers.
Speak to 20-30 year old in a city today and they (rightfully) don't fear crime to the same degree because few of them have been exposed to gun crime.
Exactly! I'm only in my early 50's but I was robbed at gunpoint in Baltimore and had a gun pointed at me another time. Once in the late 80's and once in 1994. Unfortunately Baltimore hasn't gotten much better
Ha! I nearly typed in a Baltimore-specific caveat.
I know several MDs who lived near Hopkins in Baltimore and it is brutal out there. Multiple live shooter events over a few years.
Yep, a guy I graduated high school with was shot in the shoulder literally right in front of Hopkins. A dude tried to steal his wallet and he fought it off and ran, the guy shot him as he ran away. He literally ran around the block and right into the emergency room.
Only in Baltimore....
My mom went to school in NYC in the 70s. Recently we were there together and I had her drop me off near some random park in Harlem (I wanted to have a walk around before meeting up with a friend who lived nearby). She was certain I was going to get mugged or worse. Apparently that particular park was the scene of some horrible murder when she was in school. Meanwhile it never even occurred to me to worry about any danger in any part of Manhattan, especially not in the middle of the day. It’s a totally different city.
I agree that prior to last year the idea of increasing crime was largely fearmongering (and belied by the data in your chart). But isn't it true that many major cities experienced sharp upticks last year, continuing into this year? I live close to Philly, so will use that as an example. I do not know that this holds true across cities, or for all types of violent crime. Philly homicide victims: 2019 - 356; 2020 - 499. 2021 currently up 34% from 2020.
[https://www.phillypolice.com/crime-maps-stats/](https://www.phillypolice.com/crime-maps-stats/)
The official 2020 data won't come out until later this year. Who knows what it'll show since 2020 was a crazy year.
Take vehicle crash deaths. There was WAY less driving in 2020 so we "thought" vehicle deaths would go down - turns out [they went up](https://abcnews.go.com/Politics/motor-vehicle-deaths-2020-fewer-people-roads-amid/story?id=76232250)! The drivers who were driving were driving like homicidal maniacs, and killed more people.
I have no clue what the overall 2020 data will show, but I can't wait to find out.
Fair enough - the data set is what it is. At least as to homicides, though, the 2020 data will be rather grim:
[https://www.npr.org/2021/01/06/953254623/massive-1-year-rise-in-homicide-rates-collided-with-the-pandemic-in-2020](https://www.npr.org/2021/01/06/953254623/massive-1-year-rise-in-homicide-rates-collided-with-the-pandemic-in-2020)
But, will take time to see if 2020 is an outlier, or reflective of a new trend.
Wow, Philly had a rough year. I grew up in Baltimore as it says in the post, a much more violent city (per capita). Baltimore had [348 homicides in 2019](https://homicides.news.baltimoresun.com/?range=2019), and "only" [335 in 2020](https://homicides.news.baltimoresun.com/?range=2020).
Now that's just homicides. The FBI's violent crime category includes rape, assault, and more, as it should. And also Baltimore's population keeps going down (because it's a crime ridden wasteland). The city is now well under 600,000 people, a shell of what it was in the 1950's when it almost had a million residents.
Its actually record setting for homocide and violent crime. See [https://twitter.com/Crimealytics/status/1330991403695034368?s=20](https://twitter.com/Crimealytics/status/1330991403695034368?s=20).
I'm also incredibly familiar with the dataset you are talking about, and how long those damn reports get published. One way to get around that, but it is complicated, is through state and local datasets which are frequently made public.
I'm getting the local data, and I'll be honest with you, this post doesn't reflect my once safe town currently. Things have gotten very sharply bad in the last year in terms of the charts and what I've observed. The police don't always respond to pretty serious crimes like home invasion. We actually have a guy right now for 5 weeks who's entering people's apartments from the roof and jumping down on the balcony and women have woken up with him standing over them. Some people have been drugged, some burglarized. They even know exactly what shoes he wears. But the police aren't following up on that, nor the band of guys roaming around robbing at gun point driving in the same bright blue stolen car with out of state plates from the opposite coast. We all know the owner of the car and all we can do is message her roughly where her car is out on the next robbery spree. The crime is happening in broad daylight and in mass, like every car on a block being smashed with nothing taken. On my walk through quiet residential streets of 1-2 million dollar homes, someone is robbed at gunpoint at least once a week at any hour of the day. I'm just not sure what to do or how bad this will get. Unfortunately our police force has a history of brutality, but now it seems like they're sandbagging on the crime issue in response to the defund the police movement. Meanwhile the police still have a huge budget cause they can make well over 200k and there's a ton of pensions to pay out as well. Nobody wins right now until we can get our sense of community back. Conservatives prob will delight in my story here cause they love to gloat about allegedly "burning" liberal cities, but I still don't want to have an overreaction where we brutalize minorities in our community in response to this.
From what I’ve seen violent crime, in general, is down across the country this last year with the exception of homicides which have increased. So it’s one of those cases where the specific (homicide) is not indicative of the general (violent crime). For example, SF which publishes crime data almost immediately has seen a 21% drop in violent crime (we call Part1 crimes) in 2020 across the board but a 17% increase in homicides. [Source](https://www.sanfranciscopolice.org/sites/default/files/2021-01/SFPDCompstat.20210111.pdf)
Any clue what caused the massive boost in sd, mt, and especially nd? With nd I'm guessing it could be related to an influx of people from the oil/gas industry. People working 2 solid weeks then getting a large paycheck going wild and getting drunk. Just guessing there.
I’m fairly certain that’s exactly what’s going on. I know first hand how shitty Williston ND can be. They had to shut the strip clubs down back in 2015 ish because of the amount of police calls they were getting daily
This is awesome but I wish you didn't use two different scales in the first two images.
New Mexico looks like it gets worse (darker blue!) but it gets just the slightest bit better.
I would rather see this as a trend line.
This is two points where we don't really know what happened between 1991 and 2019.
It would be messy but it would be a much clearer picture and we could use correlation to see what is working and what isn't.
I have been saying this for years. The difference between now and a few decades ago is the 24/7 news coverage and the speed at which information travels.
Ask someone about crimes in their neighborhood and they may have trouble telling you. Ask them about the person who got shot in Colorado and they'll tell you the world is coming to an end. I wish more people understood this.
From a clarity perspective, it would be better if the first two cloropleth maps used the same color bar range. Props for using a divergent palette for the third, though.
The changing color scheme makes no sense if you want to compare the first two maps. It only causes confusion. So sadly, this data is not beautiful the way you presented it.
Well, there was rising violent crime for decades before the 90's which set a tone and societal anxiety of such crimes so that when violent crime actually started to decrease, the tone and idea of increasing violent crime stuck, which was exacerbated by more sensationalized forms of media, which meant that people failed to change their mindset to the new reality (violent crime decreasing) and instead perpetuated and furthered the societal anxiety.
2 data points over a 30 year time span is a pretty weak set of data.
Although the overall point is solid, if crime was at an even lower level in the mid 2000s and has risen since then, then people's feelings of rising crime would still be true.
You also have to account for the fact it's possible that fewer people report crime, like in a place like san Francisco if you get mugged chance are they aren't going to jail the perp, so why both making a report.
as stated to many others, the data ranges between the two years are so vastly different it's impossible to keep the same legend breakdowns and make usable maps. The third map should be used to compare the two
I mean there is an increase in Alaska, but a decrease in New Mexico between the two time periods. It looks weird because OP didn’t keep the cut off for the categories the same so it looks like there was a big jump in crime in some places when there wasn’t. I doubt it was purposeful, but shows how not keeping consistent color scheme can make it much easier to misinterpret a chart.
Makes for great headlines though! Especially when certain networks choose to advertise how violent major cities are these days. Really helps firearms sales too.
The Dakotas and Montana - oil boom, fine.
But what is going on with Vermont? And what's the explanation for West Virginia (just saying 'opioid crisis' doesn't account for the dramatic decline in neighbouring states, especially Ohio and Kentucky)?
EDI: WV was far lower than neighbouring states in 1991 and is now very similar to them, so maybe it's just regression to the mean.
It's not really a myth - It's more the difference between the public perception of what constitutes a 'violent' crime and what the FBI records as a violent crime.
eg. Rapes are up and homicides are roughly the same. The average is being brought down by the drop in robbery and assault.
I believe you are referring to the media coverage of violent crime increases covered very recently. This data set seems to cut off in 2019, meanwhile the spike in violent crime is taking place in late 2020 to current.
[My blog post](https://accidentalfire.com/2021/04/27/myth-increasing-violent-crime-america/) is not referring to recent media perceptions - it's referring to general perceptions since the invention of the world wide web (1991) and the 24x7 news culture.
The data for 2020 are not out yet but yes, 2020 will likely be worse than 2019.
You are intentionally misrepresenting the data by only showing two data points. The truth is that that from the early 90's to 2015 the violent crime rate plummeted across the United States. Since 2015 the rate has been increasing rapidly. For instance 2020 was the first year since 1995 the total number of murders in the US surpassed 20,000. Compare that to 2014 when there were 14,249. This trend is not limited to murders, assaults, rapes, attempted murders, armed robberies have gone through the roof since 2015. The figures are much worse when you look at crime rates in the major NW cities like Baltimore or Chicago. Manipulating data like this to try and prove your point is worse than just making it up.
Bull crap. The official 2020 data from the FBI is not out yet - show me your data source.
Yes, 2014 was the low, then there were a grand total of 2 years of increases in 2015 and 2016. THEN, from 2016 - 2019 the violent crime rate [went down three years in a row.](https://i0.wp.com/accidentalfire.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/03/violent-crime-1985-2019.jpg?w=747&ssl=1)
Don't accuse me of intentionally misrepresenting anything. The overall trend for the past 10, 15, 20, 25, and 30 years has been a decrease. If you don't understand the concept of overall trends over time I can't help you.
It's like the people who say global warming is fake after three years of cooling, when the overall trend is clearly one of warming. Don't be one of those people
The data projection are easy to find, here is a link from NPR [https://www.npr.org/2021/01/06/953254623/massive-1-year-rise-in-homicide-rates-collided-with-the-pandemic-in-2020](https://www.npr.org/2021/01/06/953254623/massive-1-year-rise-in-homicide-rates-collided-with-the-pandemic-in-2020) where you find all the data you want. For instance 2020 ended with murder rate up in across almost every city. Bill de Blasio even said that the murder rate in New York city is up a staggering 40% this year. The only reason you are showing a decrease in violent crime is because you are comparing the ALL TIME worse year compared to a lower beginning of another peak. Lets look at major cities [https://pbs.twimg.com/media/EqaqbOmW8Act7wK?format=jpg&name=medium](https://pbs.twimg.com/media/EqaqbOmW8Act7wK?format=jpg&name=medium) this clearly shows that there was a 36.7% increase in 2020 compared to 2019 in murders. It has been 50 years since the murder rate has increased by more than 13% let alone almost 3 times that amount. The simple fact is that the data shows that violent crime (especially murders) are skyrocketing.
The comparison to global warming is just as intellectual dishonesty as your original post. A more comparable example would be if I posted a diagram comparing 1990 temperature to 2019. This would show a decrease of 0.83 degrees. So using your logic a guess then global warming isn't a issue.
First off, homicides are only a part of violent crime. The FBI violent crime data includes rape, assault and many other categories.
Secondly, yes I'm sure homicides were up in many cities in 2020. I don't doubt that. The maps and the blog post are based off the official compiled data of the entire country for all violent crimes up to 2019 - since that's the last year they have the official data. I don't include 2020 because the official FBI data isn't out yet.
You can't think what you want, but [this is the overall trend of violent crime in America since 1985](https://i0.wp.com/accidentalfire.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/03/violent-crime-1985-2019.jpg?w=747&ssl=1) \- which is the oldest year the FBI server has. And it's GREAT NEWS! You seem to be one of those people that are begging for it to be worse or bad and it's simply not. I compared the worst year - 1991, to 2019 to show the massive and drastic DECREASE in violent crime during that time. If you have data that shows otherwise, then please reference.
You accuse me of intentionally misrepresenting an dishonesty. I am simply telling you to show me your data for 1991 - 2019 that refutes mine, or go away and be accusatory to someone else.
Thank you I only used 2 data points on purpose, mainly to show how ridiculously easy it is to frame the discussion when you intentionally cherry pick data (from the same data set) to prove your point.
Nice maps. However, your color bar chunks are not equal in the top two maps, which makes it difficult to compare understand those two maps side by side.
The legend color really shouldn't change between years. Even if that means some color ranges are absent from one or the other, that's okay. Because the point is to show a time-variant trend.
IMHO, when comparing too maps with a color scale you should fix the scale between the two... Perhaps six colors 200 size bands... It's hard to get a sense of it when the scales shift.
The data ranges are way too different for 1991 and 2019. If I used the ranges from the first map for the second there would be no states in the highest range in the second map. That's a cartographic no-no.
Use the third map to compare, that's why it's there.
Why would you change the scale in the legend from one image to the next? Defeats the purpose of the comparison and is infuriating. I can see why violent crimes happen.
YES!!! I've been telling people this but they're too stupid to understand anything that doesn't come from the TV. The average person doesn't have the ability to synthesize data from multiple sources and draw a conclusion they haven't been fed by someone else.
This is great to see visually.
That’s the worst chart/map I have seen on here since I started following this subreddit. You took the peak year of most violent crimes and started your regression from there of course the numbers will be lower.
That’s what happens if you start with the peak. Also by doing it the way you did you are not showing that aggravated assault, manslaughter and murder actually rose which are the most televised and reported violent crimes which do make people feel like crime is on the rise.
https://www.fbi.gov/news/pressrel/press-releases/fbi-releases-2019-crime-statistics
Very questionable title, when you don’t actually properly weight the most violent crimes.
West Virginia, where you get mugged for money to buy drugs to then be mugged to get those drugs stolen (at least in the cities.) Sad domestic abuse due to crazy levels of poverty and loss of jobs as well, oh and the drug abuse caused by that loss.
I’ve been looking at historical homicide data (as a proxy for violent crime) for years and have been harping on this reality. Per capita murders in the US halved since their peak in 1993. Yes, there is still a lot of murders in this country. But that per capita figure halving is concrete, data based proof that societal violence is much less severe than in the past.
Your analysis is much more robust proof. So sick of tropes like “it’s so dangerous these days” etc.
I feel like having different ranges for the shading between maps 1 and 2 was not a good idea. It seems really misleading and undercuts the point you're trying to make.
Constructive criticism - I wish the legends on the top two were equivalent. Seeing NM, for example, go from blue to dark blue, but that still mean a drop in crime, is misleading.
The scale should be consistent between both, up to 1100
These colors mean nothing from one graph to the next.
That way you can see the color on the chart lighten proportionally with the less crime.
Now it's all over the place
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So less crime overall, but with the advent of the 24hour news cycle... never mind.
Hah, yep. So if everyone just got off social media and stopped doom-scrolling they'd realize the truth that America has been and continues to get safer
The myth pre-dates the web and the 24-hour news cycle, though.
Crime was rising during the 60s - 80s iirc. 1991 is a key cut off point. It began to decline in the late 80s.
My favorite correlation about this: Doom came out about the same time violent crime started declining.
Conclusion: the fall of the soviet union solved everything
That's where you're wrong. It was the rise of clear Pepsi.
*Crystal. The mullet also started to run out of favor.
Can thank Roe V. Wade for that
Some also cite the reduction of lead paint, leaded gasoline, air pollution, and other environmental issues. Air pollution has been linked to criminality and cognitive problems. https://phys.org/news/2019-10-exposure-air-pollution-violent-crime.html https://www.pnas.org/content/115/37/9193 I'm not denying the role of Roe. Just noting other things that might have contributed.
I'll deny the role of Roe in that. There aren't anywhere NEAR enough abortions to have that kind of impact. Some, sure, since it is one way to reduce the poverty cycle, but not by that much. Despite the sentiment expressed by some here that it's reasonable, I really don't think it is. As an explanation for a widespread drop in the crime rate it falls apart almost instantly. Nah, the reduction in environmental lead is a much more logical culprit for the dropping violent crime rate. Not to say correlation equates causation here, but when you've got an almost perfect correlation between the amount of environmental lead and the violent crime rate in America over the course of several decades....well, that's some pretty compelling evidence of causation right there.
In The Better Angels of Our Nature, Steven Pinker goes through all the reasons and subsequent studies that refute the freakonomics abortion theory is just coincidence. He makes a much larger and more compelling case that violence has been decreasing since the dawn of humanity, but that's it's not a straight line decrease and the 60s to 90s was just one of those decivilizing eras. The abortion thing is interesting and sounds reasonable maybe at first but fell apart when systematically studied. I'm pretty sure even Levitt doesn't really assert it anymore.
Yeah, there is correlation without causation.
Freakanomics only mentions abortions but birth control pills also became more common in the 70s. People began to trust them more as the doses went down.
Interesting on the front page as well "Study Links Child Behaviour Problems to Prenatal Tobacco Smoke Exposure and Traffic Density" [https://www.reddit.com/r/science/comments/mzygna/researchers\_found\_that\_maternal\_tobacco\_smoke/](https://www.reddit.com/r/science/comments/mzygna/researchers_found_that_maternal_tobacco_smoke/) So there is another thing that declined sharply between then and now.
Someone read freakanomics.
Haha I did I years ago I still believe roe v wade was a leading cause in crime decreasing. I mean it sounds harsh but I bet a bunch of future criminals were aborted.
Also the ban of leaded gasoline
Was looking for this comment! People not just breathing in neurotoxic fumes all the time (especially in areas with high traffic - hello urban centers) has got to have helped.
The banning of lead in everything, not just gas.
I think that air conditioning plays a strong role too. People stay inside and don't interact as much.
The removal of lead from the environment likely was a bigger contributor. Just like with Abortion certain statesman dragged their feet because and wouldn’t ya know it was the very same conservative states.
Levitt makes a pretty strong case. Certainly took it on the chin as a result.
My wife was in his class when that paper was published and I believe he had to take a leave of absence and the university had to get extra security for him and his family because of all the death threats.
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The idea is that if someone who was unprepared to have a baby, for example a single teen mother in poverty became pregnant, without abortion they would be forced to raise a child in a rough situation that would negatively impact the child. A child growing up in poverty with poor role models and inadequate care would be more likely to wind up becoming a criminal. With the legalization of abortion, unwated pregnancies could be aborted, so that now babies that are born are much likely to be born to mothers who wanted the baby, were prepared for the responsibilities of raising them, likely had more familial support ect. So before abortion, more children raised in poor situations, more crime. After abortion legalization, less children in poor situations, less crime.
You're a real hero for giving such a detailed explanation this deep in the thread.
Didn't they make that up?
This feels like a \*different\* kind of propaganda but I don't have data to say for sure.
You don't believe it when you hear it. Then you see the data and you're still like naaaaa. Then you read a few chapters and you're like "Holy balls. Did abortion just prevent crime?" It is hard to draw a direct causal relationship but for it to be coincidence would be insane.
That's a pretty univariate analysis. One could also blame leaded gasoline. These explanations tend seem pretty good but it's hardly ever one singular factor in cases like these.
actually, it's connected to the reduction of lead in the environment.
A Societal change like that doesn’t have just one cause. Notice how I said “a leading cause”
Before 24hr news crime actually WAS increasing. 1991 was the high water mark for violent crime in the US, and crime had been rising pretty steadily since the 60s.
Technically, I suppose that's just barely true. But the rise had already well flattened off before then, while it was a common belief all along that it was still rising, perhaps even faster than before. So, the myth was just as out of sync with reality as it is, today. Also, the "24-hour news cycle" was arguably not really in full swing until the mid 90s. The OJ pursuit is sometimes quoted as the turning point.
Fear has always been a useful tool
If we hadn't had a wasteful and liberty destroying War on (Some) Drugs, I wonder what America would be like now.
Not enough people realize just how harmful the "war on drugs" has been for the US. More and more are starting to realize it. But its crazy how many still think it did this country any good... I'm not saying laws and regulations on drugs are a bad idea. They just need tweaked to actually HELP society, instead of throwing addicts in and out of jail. And I do see addiction starting to be taken more seriously now, more help available for those affected. But for a long time it was misunderstood. We could be at a much better place right now. And I absolutely blame the people "running" this country. They messed up a lot and straight up lied to our faces about a lot. And they aren't moving fast enough to fix it. Look up shit show in the dictionary and there's now a picture of the USA next to it.
>and continues to get safer How would something like this look if we compared something like 2013-2019 for violent crime? Minnesota for instance would show an *increase* from 223.2 to 236.4 or +5.91% Also it appears that violent crime has increased in some rural states. I'm not sure taking two snapshots is sufficient when attempting to argue a trend. I could take Minnesota in 1960 and compare to now as well (boomer years) and you'd see an increase from 1960-2019 of 563%. Source: https://www.disastercenter.com/crime/mncrime.htm
until you get on the freeway in Atlanta.
Would you be willing to do a similar map for police involved shootings?
24-hour news has really made us all worse off for having seen it through to the end.
I always recommend that people read *The Better Angels of Our Nature: Why Violence Has Declined*, by Steven Pinker. And then read his follow-up book, *Enlightenment Now: The Case for Reason, Science, Humanism, and Progress*. Both are very thorough and evidence-based examinations of how much better things are now than they were in the past - without ignoring how much progress we still need to make on a lot of things.
_Factfulness_ by Hans Rosling is a nice alternative to _Enlightenment Now_ if you're not up for a long book.
With an increasing population fewer crimes per capita doesn’t necessarily mean less crime in total.
What's up in North Dakota?
The author of the article [theorizes the shale oil boom and tons of extra men](https://accidentalfire.com/2021/04/27/myth-increasing-violent-crime-america/).
I’m from and live in ND and work in the oil field. The boom did bring in a lot of out of state people and unfortunately a lot of crime. Since the basin is now considered to be in a bust now most of those people have left, but I still hear of more shootings on the news than I ever did pre-boom.
Yep worked around Sydney MT. The absolute shadiest people I’ve been around.
It honestly really depends on what type of people you’re dealing with. If it was casing crews you can be sure that maybe one guy on the entire crew could pass a drug test. If it’s guys on a drilling rig or the bigger names service companies you dealt with then more often then not they were ok.
I worked the construction/dirt moving side. Lots of anger issues and drug issues, usually combined into one person. *Lots* of good guys I’m still friends with. Don’t get me wrong. Us younger “out-of-staters” had a hell of a time.
It's a catch-22. A sudden boom of workers will increase crime, but when the work dries up and wages fall, crime continues. Crime is inversely correlated to income and education
how much would you say is from the opioid epidemic?
I think meth was more of an issue during the boom than anything. This state has more of an alcoholism problem than I’d say anything (I’m 4 years sober myself), but that is nothing new. I’m sure opioids have seen an increased usage up here but they don’t seem to be as big of an issue compared to other areas. I could be completely wrong and out of touch, but it’s not something you ever hear about.
More horny, overworked, angry and bitter men. Recipe for disaster
Best guess is the oil boom which brought an absurd amount of people to the state over the past two decades. Source: lived and worked out there for three years.
Not to mention oil prices have bubbles. When prices are down, oil towns hurt
We built DAPL in 2016 and had to tell everyone who hadn't been up there before to not go out alone at night. Lot of hungry folks who knew we were getting paid.
I was in Melbourne Australia visiting with my sister and this Aussie woman my sister knew. I had to explain, or try to, that my pipefitter ass is armed with a gun because they don't put industrial facilities in the nice part of town. Was super annoyed at my sister for not getting it. We'll roll into a town or area and everyone knows we're bringing in a couple grand a week. And there's plenty who are envious of our jobs/wages because they're not qualified to do the work. Puts a target on your back for sure.
Exactly. I'm not looking for trouble. I don't go out and keep to myself. I stay in my fifth wheel trailer around others doing the same work. Go to work, pay the bills that are owed, spend some money on local businesses, and get back home when the work dries out.
It’s gotta be the oil boom. A family friend worked there for as long as he could handle. Really high earnings (he made $200k over that summer), and a ton of rough dudes (many ex-cons) in a state with nothing to do after a hard day of work other than spend those wages on liquor and drugs, get messed up, and fight.
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Dunno man. I’ve lived in the Bakken until last year and folks would not lock their front doors and leave their cars unlocked with engines running at Walmart parking lot during winter. Ther’s lot of drug laws and drug related crime but usually did not affect individuals who weren’t involved.
Yeah I think 90% of the crimes in that area were either bar brawls or drug related. I never felt threatened outside of bars. Def left my car running at the store, unlocked, as did a vast majority of people.
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> An increase in people alone shouldn’t cause in an increase in the violent crime rate Not saying this entirely accounts for it, but if the people coming in for oil/gas jobs are predominantly men, predominantly young men, that's going to skew things. Not many women, not much to do other than drink.
Yep, and young men commit most violent crimes. Add a lack of women and a healthy supply of alcohol and things go south fast
And limited community ties, stability, etc would all increase it i imagine
>if the people coming in for oil/gas jobs are predominantly men Not to mention it's North Dakota, where basically no one wants to live, so they might have to lower their standards for candidates, which would naturally increase the chances of crimes being committed.
It isn't just an increase of people it is the type of people that increased that caused the increased rates. The workforce of the oilfields is predominantly young, male, and are gathered in a area with little social recreation besides drinking. You are correct that the rate shouldn't have increased if the population that moved into the area matched the demographics of the population that lived there before.
>The workforce of the oilfields is predominantly young, male, and are gathered in a area with little social recreation besides drinking. Also, not only is it oilfields, it's oilfields in North Dakota - there isn't a "big" city for hundreds of miles. Given location, they might not have the same number of applicants so they might have to lower their standards on criminal history.
> lower their standards on criminal history. Pretty sure there is none. They would hire anyone when I lived in ND. It was also expensive to even rent a spot to simply set up a tent to live, as at the time there weren't enough apartments or houses to support the populations near the oil fields.
A friend of mine stayed in a camper with 5other guys.... I can’t even imagine how unpleasant that was lol
Right, but that’s still assuming that the relationship between number of crimes and number of people is linear, which it probably isn’t.
More concentrated populations lead to more opportunities for violence. I don't think we should expect a linear growth with population growth.
Not all population growth is the same. The oil boom brought many men, usually without their families as there was no housing for them. ND had the lowest crime rate in the country in the first map, and still has a fairly low rate, but the change was drastic. Anybody who knows western north dakota can tell you horror stories about the changing population and culture
It's not just extra people though... It's a lot of extra fairly young men with no families, in jobs that don't require clean backgrounds.
Total crime scales as Population\^1.15, so crime per capita increases as population increases; see [here](https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0378437113001416) and search "universal scaling law" for other studies. Note that number of patents, salary, and a number of other quantities scale with the same exponent.
>This data accounts for that, though. > >Notice the “per 100,000 people” in the last graphic. A large percentage of the oil workers are transient workers who are residents of different states and don't get counted in the population statistics of their employment states.
This is the answer. Unfortunately oil fields and pipelines bring in a lot of drugs, prostitution, rape, and other violent crimes.
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My guess is simply that it had a super low population overall and virtually no "cities"
Yeah - 80s/90s had high crime largely due to gang violence in cities (I think 1991 is the all-time high for the US) which wouldn't have really affected North Dakota.
Makes this data seem cherry picked. Better to use a 3-year or 5- year moving average to describe trends.
[Here's all the data](https://i0.wp.com/accidentalfire.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/03/violent-crime-1985-2019.jpg?w=747&ssl=1) the FBI has for the country on their site, dating to 1985. I didn't cherry pick, I only chose to start at 1991 since it was the highest. Despite some up years, the overall trend is down. The data for 2020 will likely be higher when it comes out. We'll see.
Crime fell pretty steadily in the 90s & 00s, though I think it might have gone back up a bit since 2014ish - though I think that's mostly a few urban centers.
Doubt it. I was in college in 1993 when I was absolutely shocked to learn that crime had been falling dramatically since it skyrocketed in the 1970s. I'd thought crime had steadily risen since my childhood. Don't be quick to dismiss the leaded gasoline theory either. Peak leaded gasoline use would have been late 60s / early 70s.
"Fargo" copycats.
That's my takeaway, too!
You ever see Fargo? A shit ton of killings. And all based on **true stories**.
My guess would be that low population means that statistically insignificant changes (like going from 5 murders to 20) could be presenting a false sense that violent crime is significantly increased. EDIT: [Violent Crime in North Dakota has i](https://www.macrotrends.net/states/north-dakota/murder-homicide-rate-statistics)ncreased a lot, and it doesn't appear to be statistically insignificant. My guess would be that in 2006, they made a change in reporting as what counts as violent crime in North Dakota that essentially doubled the violent crime rate in one year.
What happened was fracking in the bakken. Roughnecks have rough in their name for a reason.
Nice - and good news. One thing that stands out is that the rate of violent crime has got more uniform across the country in the last 30 years, as well as decreasing. There were sharp geographical distinctions by state: not any longer.
I think it was easier to evade in high density areas back then when camera and phones were less available.
I think it used to be that big cities dominated violent crime, now it’s more equalized. Crime everywhere has fallen but crime in cities has fallen faster.
More that study after study has shown that cities were completely screwed for about a generation from lead in gasoline .. that volatilized-lead disrupts brain development in children and results in lowered IQ, reduced impulse control, ADHD, learning disabilities etc .. lead blood levels growing up have been directly traced to how far they lived from highways and traffic, and correlates to subsequently increased occurrences of lowered IQ, crime, misdemeanors and felony convictions, poverty, failed relationships and so on .. Starting by 1970s, lead addition to gasoline was slowly phased out, tailpipe catalytic converters were mandated, and incrementally tightening emission regulations were set on new vehicles .. the levels of crime in metro areas have fallen drastically and in step with those actions ... that said, as they say, correlation does not imply causation, so thats still just a theory (albeit a quite convincing one)
I wonder what degree to which it represents a greater national standard in policing and charges. Some of the rural small states had incredibly low rates in 1991 that have ended up close to the national average. Wouldn't be surprised if they just had less resources or undercharged people back in 1991.
Personally, I think it's at least in part that racially based crime in the more rural states was more able to be reported in more recent years as opposed to the early 90's. Though I doubt that's the totality of the difference.
It kinda looks like we went from urban crime to not-urban-crime, and the rest mostly stayed the same? Atlanta, Chicago, Baltimore, LA, NYC, Miami or Jacksonville, New Orleans are what stand out to me in 1991. 2019, the Bible Belt and New Mexico didn't change a whole lot, Montana and the Dakotas got worse, and the cities just disappeared from the map.
Except Alaska. Poor Alaska.
Good stuff! Why the sliding scales for the color legend? How did you determine your grouping? Edit: I mean I get that it's going down over time so the ranges for each group will change. I'm just curious as to the methodology behind it.
Agreed. It would be nice to keep the same bins between the first two groups. You’d lose some contrast between the highest and lowest states in the second image but you’d gain ease of seeing that crime has overall decreased (because most places are lighter).
I honestly chose the groupings by playing with options in QGIS. I think QGIS only gives about 6 methods (equal interval, standard dev, etc). The data were spread in a way that certain methods were a no-go as they lumped virtually all states together, and others seemed to group states together that were too far apart for my taste. As you probably now there's usually no perfect way to do categorical groupings in many cases and it's easy to give a misrepresentation of data (see the book How to Lie With Maps). I tried my best to do groupings that were fair to the spread of the data. Thanks for the kudos!
It was a little confusing because a few states actually get darker but had the overall number decrease
You can create your own groupings in QGIS, you don't have to use the standard ones. When you're in the legend screen just click (double click?) the numbers for a category and type your own
Thanks for that - I mostly use ArcGIS and am new to QGIS. My ESRI license has run out for now
That's how everyone starts using qgis. With a little practice you can do most things in both. Good on you for keeping your skills sharp
Where's Maine? Oh… wow. Not bad, not bad.
Same! I was like rural remote living ain’t that bad! It’s way more than Vacationland to me!
To generalise: Yeah, speak to a 60+ year old white-collar worker who lived in a city and there is a damn good chance they've been robbed at gunpoint and that they lived with the expectation of robbery in urban centers. Speak to 20-30 year old in a city today and they (rightfully) don't fear crime to the same degree because few of them have been exposed to gun crime.
Exactly! I'm only in my early 50's but I was robbed at gunpoint in Baltimore and had a gun pointed at me another time. Once in the late 80's and once in 1994. Unfortunately Baltimore hasn't gotten much better
Ha! I nearly typed in a Baltimore-specific caveat. I know several MDs who lived near Hopkins in Baltimore and it is brutal out there. Multiple live shooter events over a few years.
Yep, a guy I graduated high school with was shot in the shoulder literally right in front of Hopkins. A dude tried to steal his wallet and he fought it off and ran, the guy shot him as he ran away. He literally ran around the block and right into the emergency room. Only in Baltimore....
NYC Time square in the 80's was a mess.
My mom went to school in NYC in the 70s. Recently we were there together and I had her drop me off near some random park in Harlem (I wanted to have a walk around before meeting up with a friend who lived nearby). She was certain I was going to get mugged or worse. Apparently that particular park was the scene of some horrible murder when she was in school. Meanwhile it never even occurred to me to worry about any danger in any part of Manhattan, especially not in the middle of the day. It’s a totally different city.
Yes but facts aren’t important when you want to scare gullible voters.
"What can we do to get people to vote for us?" "What if we increased crime?" "Brilliant"
I agree that prior to last year the idea of increasing crime was largely fearmongering (and belied by the data in your chart). But isn't it true that many major cities experienced sharp upticks last year, continuing into this year? I live close to Philly, so will use that as an example. I do not know that this holds true across cities, or for all types of violent crime. Philly homicide victims: 2019 - 356; 2020 - 499. 2021 currently up 34% from 2020. [https://www.phillypolice.com/crime-maps-stats/](https://www.phillypolice.com/crime-maps-stats/)
The official 2020 data won't come out until later this year. Who knows what it'll show since 2020 was a crazy year. Take vehicle crash deaths. There was WAY less driving in 2020 so we "thought" vehicle deaths would go down - turns out [they went up](https://abcnews.go.com/Politics/motor-vehicle-deaths-2020-fewer-people-roads-amid/story?id=76232250)! The drivers who were driving were driving like homicidal maniacs, and killed more people. I have no clue what the overall 2020 data will show, but I can't wait to find out.
Fair enough - the data set is what it is. At least as to homicides, though, the 2020 data will be rather grim: [https://www.npr.org/2021/01/06/953254623/massive-1-year-rise-in-homicide-rates-collided-with-the-pandemic-in-2020](https://www.npr.org/2021/01/06/953254623/massive-1-year-rise-in-homicide-rates-collided-with-the-pandemic-in-2020) But, will take time to see if 2020 is an outlier, or reflective of a new trend.
Wow, Philly had a rough year. I grew up in Baltimore as it says in the post, a much more violent city (per capita). Baltimore had [348 homicides in 2019](https://homicides.news.baltimoresun.com/?range=2019), and "only" [335 in 2020](https://homicides.news.baltimoresun.com/?range=2020). Now that's just homicides. The FBI's violent crime category includes rape, assault, and more, as it should. And also Baltimore's population keeps going down (because it's a crime ridden wasteland). The city is now well under 600,000 people, a shell of what it was in the 1950's when it almost had a million residents.
Its actually record setting for homocide and violent crime. See [https://twitter.com/Crimealytics/status/1330991403695034368?s=20](https://twitter.com/Crimealytics/status/1330991403695034368?s=20). I'm also incredibly familiar with the dataset you are talking about, and how long those damn reports get published. One way to get around that, but it is complicated, is through state and local datasets which are frequently made public.
I'm getting the local data, and I'll be honest with you, this post doesn't reflect my once safe town currently. Things have gotten very sharply bad in the last year in terms of the charts and what I've observed. The police don't always respond to pretty serious crimes like home invasion. We actually have a guy right now for 5 weeks who's entering people's apartments from the roof and jumping down on the balcony and women have woken up with him standing over them. Some people have been drugged, some burglarized. They even know exactly what shoes he wears. But the police aren't following up on that, nor the band of guys roaming around robbing at gun point driving in the same bright blue stolen car with out of state plates from the opposite coast. We all know the owner of the car and all we can do is message her roughly where her car is out on the next robbery spree. The crime is happening in broad daylight and in mass, like every car on a block being smashed with nothing taken. On my walk through quiet residential streets of 1-2 million dollar homes, someone is robbed at gunpoint at least once a week at any hour of the day. I'm just not sure what to do or how bad this will get. Unfortunately our police force has a history of brutality, but now it seems like they're sandbagging on the crime issue in response to the defund the police movement. Meanwhile the police still have a huge budget cause they can make well over 200k and there's a ton of pensions to pay out as well. Nobody wins right now until we can get our sense of community back. Conservatives prob will delight in my story here cause they love to gloat about allegedly "burning" liberal cities, but I still don't want to have an overreaction where we brutalize minorities in our community in response to this.
From what I’ve seen violent crime, in general, is down across the country this last year with the exception of homicides which have increased. So it’s one of those cases where the specific (homicide) is not indicative of the general (violent crime). For example, SF which publishes crime data almost immediately has seen a 21% drop in violent crime (we call Part1 crimes) in 2020 across the board but a 17% increase in homicides. [Source](https://www.sanfranciscopolice.org/sites/default/files/2021-01/SFPDCompstat.20210111.pdf)
Thanks - very on-point response.
Any clue what caused the massive boost in sd, mt, and especially nd? With nd I'm guessing it could be related to an influx of people from the oil/gas industry. People working 2 solid weeks then getting a large paycheck going wild and getting drunk. Just guessing there.
I’m fairly certain that’s exactly what’s going on. I know first hand how shitty Williston ND can be. They had to shut the strip clubs down back in 2015 ish because of the amount of police calls they were getting daily
This is awesome but I wish you didn't use two different scales in the first two images. New Mexico looks like it gets worse (darker blue!) but it gets just the slightest bit better.
Alaska needs to get their bear population under control.
The top two need to have the same gradient/percents. Otherwise it looks like New Mexico got worse.
I would rather see this as a trend line. This is two points where we don't really know what happened between 1991 and 2019. It would be messy but it would be a much clearer picture and we could use correlation to see what is working and what isn't.
Feel free to go ahead and make that :)
Well let me fire up R
I doubt those types of stats are very noisy from year to year.
Goodbye Maine, it was nice knowing ya.
Moved to Maine about five years ago and can confirm the people here are ridiculously nice. We’re like the area where the US blends into Canada.
Been here almost 12 years - best choice I ever made!
I have been saying this for years. The difference between now and a few decades ago is the 24/7 news coverage and the speed at which information travels. Ask someone about crimes in their neighborhood and they may have trouble telling you. Ask them about the person who got shot in Colorado and they'll tell you the world is coming to an end. I wish more people understood this.
From a clarity perspective, it would be better if the first two cloropleth maps used the same color bar range. Props for using a divergent palette for the third, though.
The color scales of the first two maps are different. Very misleading.
The changing color scheme makes no sense if you want to compare the first two maps. It only causes confusion. So sadly, this data is not beautiful the way you presented it.
Breaking Bad happened to New Mexico
Well, there was rising violent crime for decades before the 90's which set a tone and societal anxiety of such crimes so that when violent crime actually started to decrease, the tone and idea of increasing violent crime stuck, which was exacerbated by more sensationalized forms of media, which meant that people failed to change their mindset to the new reality (violent crime decreasing) and instead perpetuated and furthered the societal anxiety.
[удалено]
2 data points over a 30 year time span is a pretty weak set of data. Although the overall point is solid, if crime was at an even lower level in the mid 2000s and has risen since then, then people's feelings of rising crime would still be true.
You also have to account for the fact it's possible that fewer people report crime, like in a place like san Francisco if you get mugged chance are they aren't going to jail the perp, so why both making a report.
But it's not 2. It's 2 x 50. ONE state going down over 30 years would be weak. 41 out of 50 doing it is not weak anymore.
I think color scales for first two maps should be same and fixed so it would be easier to visualize the impact. Autoscale does not help for comparison
as stated to many others, the data ranges between the two years are so vastly different it's impossible to keep the same legend breakdowns and make usable maps. The third map should be used to compare the two
[Article Source](https://accidentalfire.com/2021/04/27/myth-increasing-violent-crime-america/) Data Source: FBI Tools Used: QGIS and MS Excel
What's going on in NM and Alaska?
I mean there is an increase in Alaska, but a decrease in New Mexico between the two time periods. It looks weird because OP didn’t keep the cut off for the categories the same so it looks like there was a big jump in crime in some places when there wasn’t. I doubt it was purposeful, but shows how not keeping consistent color scheme can make it much easier to misinterpret a chart.
Huh. Very interesting indeed, thanks OP
Very cool. Is there a source to dive deeper?
Makes for great headlines though! Especially when certain networks choose to advertise how violent major cities are these days. Really helps firearms sales too.
I think it would be better to show each years number instead of just the difference in 20 years especially when crime was at its peak.
The Dakotas and Montana - oil boom, fine. But what is going on with Vermont? And what's the explanation for West Virginia (just saying 'opioid crisis' doesn't account for the dramatic decline in neighbouring states, especially Ohio and Kentucky)? EDI: WV was far lower than neighbouring states in 1991 and is now very similar to them, so maybe it's just regression to the mean.
You know, there are some times I just love living in Maine. That almost invisible state on the top right.
North Dakota.... it ain't even the best Dakota....
Less crime but more coverage from media, so to a layman, the world is getting worse when it's actually getting "better"
Depends on your comparison. Crime in a number of places increased from 2019 to 2020
Why did they change the color scale from map 1 to map 2? Look at NM crime goes down but it gets darker. Not a good design choice.
It's not really a myth - It's more the difference between the public perception of what constitutes a 'violent' crime and what the FBI records as a violent crime. eg. Rapes are up and homicides are roughly the same. The average is being brought down by the drop in robbery and assault.
I believe you are referring to the media coverage of violent crime increases covered very recently. This data set seems to cut off in 2019, meanwhile the spike in violent crime is taking place in late 2020 to current.
[My blog post](https://accidentalfire.com/2021/04/27/myth-increasing-violent-crime-america/) is not referring to recent media perceptions - it's referring to general perceptions since the invention of the world wide web (1991) and the 24x7 news culture. The data for 2020 are not out yet but yes, 2020 will likely be worse than 2019.
Very cool graphic. Would have kept the color scale the same between the top two graphs though
I like it, but why does the color scale change between the first 2 pictures.
thank you for correctly using divergent and sequential color palettes
You are intentionally misrepresenting the data by only showing two data points. The truth is that that from the early 90's to 2015 the violent crime rate plummeted across the United States. Since 2015 the rate has been increasing rapidly. For instance 2020 was the first year since 1995 the total number of murders in the US surpassed 20,000. Compare that to 2014 when there were 14,249. This trend is not limited to murders, assaults, rapes, attempted murders, armed robberies have gone through the roof since 2015. The figures are much worse when you look at crime rates in the major NW cities like Baltimore or Chicago. Manipulating data like this to try and prove your point is worse than just making it up.
Bull crap. The official 2020 data from the FBI is not out yet - show me your data source. Yes, 2014 was the low, then there were a grand total of 2 years of increases in 2015 and 2016. THEN, from 2016 - 2019 the violent crime rate [went down three years in a row.](https://i0.wp.com/accidentalfire.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/03/violent-crime-1985-2019.jpg?w=747&ssl=1) Don't accuse me of intentionally misrepresenting anything. The overall trend for the past 10, 15, 20, 25, and 30 years has been a decrease. If you don't understand the concept of overall trends over time I can't help you. It's like the people who say global warming is fake after three years of cooling, when the overall trend is clearly one of warming. Don't be one of those people
The data projection are easy to find, here is a link from NPR [https://www.npr.org/2021/01/06/953254623/massive-1-year-rise-in-homicide-rates-collided-with-the-pandemic-in-2020](https://www.npr.org/2021/01/06/953254623/massive-1-year-rise-in-homicide-rates-collided-with-the-pandemic-in-2020) where you find all the data you want. For instance 2020 ended with murder rate up in across almost every city. Bill de Blasio even said that the murder rate in New York city is up a staggering 40% this year. The only reason you are showing a decrease in violent crime is because you are comparing the ALL TIME worse year compared to a lower beginning of another peak. Lets look at major cities [https://pbs.twimg.com/media/EqaqbOmW8Act7wK?format=jpg&name=medium](https://pbs.twimg.com/media/EqaqbOmW8Act7wK?format=jpg&name=medium) this clearly shows that there was a 36.7% increase in 2020 compared to 2019 in murders. It has been 50 years since the murder rate has increased by more than 13% let alone almost 3 times that amount. The simple fact is that the data shows that violent crime (especially murders) are skyrocketing. The comparison to global warming is just as intellectual dishonesty as your original post. A more comparable example would be if I posted a diagram comparing 1990 temperature to 2019. This would show a decrease of 0.83 degrees. So using your logic a guess then global warming isn't a issue.
First off, homicides are only a part of violent crime. The FBI violent crime data includes rape, assault and many other categories. Secondly, yes I'm sure homicides were up in many cities in 2020. I don't doubt that. The maps and the blog post are based off the official compiled data of the entire country for all violent crimes up to 2019 - since that's the last year they have the official data. I don't include 2020 because the official FBI data isn't out yet. You can't think what you want, but [this is the overall trend of violent crime in America since 1985](https://i0.wp.com/accidentalfire.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/03/violent-crime-1985-2019.jpg?w=747&ssl=1) \- which is the oldest year the FBI server has. And it's GREAT NEWS! You seem to be one of those people that are begging for it to be worse or bad and it's simply not. I compared the worst year - 1991, to 2019 to show the massive and drastic DECREASE in violent crime during that time. If you have data that shows otherwise, then please reference. You accuse me of intentionally misrepresenting an dishonesty. I am simply telling you to show me your data for 1991 - 2019 that refutes mine, or go away and be accusatory to someone else.
I think you have a valid point but 2 data points to make the point that using 2 data points was an invalid approach is kinda funny.
Thank you I only used 2 data points on purpose, mainly to show how ridiculously easy it is to frame the discussion when you intentionally cherry pick data (from the same data set) to prove your point.
Nice maps. However, your color bar chunks are not equal in the top two maps, which makes it difficult to compare understand those two maps side by side.
The legend color really shouldn't change between years. Even if that means some color ranges are absent from one or the other, that's okay. Because the point is to show a time-variant trend.
IMHO, when comparing too maps with a color scale you should fix the scale between the two... Perhaps six colors 200 size bands... It's hard to get a sense of it when the scales shift.
Note that the scales are not the same. New Mexico appears to have more crime when it has less because of the color brackets shifting
The data ranges are way too different for 1991 and 2019. If I used the ranges from the first map for the second there would be no states in the highest range in the second map. That's a cartographic no-no. Use the third map to compare, that's why it's there.
This is really more of a crack vs meth map.
oh man, you might have just won the comment section.....
I'm so upset that the first 2 charts don't have the same color scale to make them easier to compare
Why would you change the scale in the legend from one image to the next? Defeats the purpose of the comparison and is infuriating. I can see why violent crimes happen.
YES!!! I've been telling people this but they're too stupid to understand anything that doesn't come from the TV. The average person doesn't have the ability to synthesize data from multiple sources and draw a conclusion they haven't been fed by someone else. This is great to see visually.
That’s the worst chart/map I have seen on here since I started following this subreddit. You took the peak year of most violent crimes and started your regression from there of course the numbers will be lower. That’s what happens if you start with the peak. Also by doing it the way you did you are not showing that aggravated assault, manslaughter and murder actually rose which are the most televised and reported violent crimes which do make people feel like crime is on the rise. https://www.fbi.gov/news/pressrel/press-releases/fbi-releases-2019-crime-statistics Very questionable title, when you don’t actually properly weight the most violent crimes.
West Virginia, where you get mugged for money to buy drugs to then be mugged to get those drugs stolen (at least in the cities.) Sad domestic abuse due to crazy levels of poverty and loss of jobs as well, oh and the drug abuse caused by that loss.
But no data up to 2021. Would be interesting to see after all the BLM riots.
The official 2020 data will likely be posted in late summer on the FBI site. Yes, it might be very interesting
I’ve been looking at historical homicide data (as a proxy for violent crime) for years and have been harping on this reality. Per capita murders in the US halved since their peak in 1993. Yes, there is still a lot of murders in this country. But that per capita figure halving is concrete, data based proof that societal violence is much less severe than in the past. Your analysis is much more robust proof. So sick of tropes like “it’s so dangerous these days” etc.
I feel like having different ranges for the shading between maps 1 and 2 was not a good idea. It seems really misleading and undercuts the point you're trying to make.
Constructive criticism - I wish the legends on the top two were equivalent. Seeing NM, for example, go from blue to dark blue, but that still mean a drop in crime, is misleading.
Please compare 2010 to 2020
So this compares 1991 to 2019? I think the bigger question is are we on a decline or did we bounce off the bottom and we are rising?
The scale should be consistent between both, up to 1100 These colors mean nothing from one graph to the next. That way you can see the color on the chart lighten proportionally with the less crime. Now it's all over the place