Start by talking about crime. Over the last few decades, has the crime rate been going up, been going down, or holding steady? How many think it's going down? How many think it's going up? How many think it's holding steady? Here's a chart, the green shows the percentage of people that think that the crime rate is going up, and that's a majority. Most of my students think the crime rate is going up, although you're sort of split as a group. Here is the actual data, this is the violent crime rate. You see there were many years when it was going up, it peaked in the mid 90s and since then it has been going down. Why do you think that many Americans believe the crime rate is going up even though it's actually going down? >> [INAUDIBLE] >> So blame it on the media. >> [INAUDIBLE] >> Okay, good answer. The police talk about crime, of course, but the media focus on crime. If you watch the local news tonight at six, or at five, or at ten, what's the first story going to be? A crime. If it's not a crime, it's going to be? A car accident. Or, today it won't be this way, but last week it would have probably been? The weather. So what does local news cover? The first choice is a crime, then the weather, then accidents. So if you can combine these, if is was a police chase that leads to an accident. And it's raining, you know for sure that's going to be the lead story in the news. If it bleeds, it leads. There are different ways of measuring crime. There is the uniform crime reports, this is a compilation of offenses known to police. So the Houston Police Department, police departments around the nation report to the FBI how many crimes have been reported. Why is this an imperfect measure? [INAUDIBLE] >> Are you asking or telling? Eric what were you going to say? >> [INAUDIBLE] some crimes might [INAUDIBLE] >> Okay, but so therefore- >> [INAUDIBLE] >> Okay, but the reporting of crime breaks it down. If you look at the uniform crime reports it tells you about murder, tells you about robbery. What is robbery? >> [INAUDIBLE] >> That's burglary. >> [INAUDIBLE] >> That's probably theft. There are three property crimes, burglary, robbery, and robbery's actually not a property crime. Robbery is a violent crime, which sort of tells you what the official definition is. A person to person robbery, so if somebody comes to you and takes your money. If you're leaving a club and somebody may flash a knife at you, may have a gun or may just be intimidating and demand your money, that's a robbery. If someone breaks into your apartment, that is a burglary. If somebody steals your bicycle that's parked outside, that's a theft. Another way of measuring crime is by interviews. Why are interviews an imperfect measure? >> Because people don't necessarily know the crimes that happen to them, so they might just burglarized. >> Okay. Are people going to report every crime? >> No. >> Are people going to maybe misremember? >> Yes. >> Sure, here is violent crime rate, and you see the violent crime rate has fallen. The yellow and the magenta lines show you whether the crimes are reported to police or not reported to police. About what percentage of crime is reported to police? These numbers are victimization per 1,000 people. So of every 1,000 people, here is 40 are victims of crimes. These are not percentages, this is the total crime, this is reported, this is not reported. So about what percentage of crime is reported? No. Is every crime either reported or not reported? So those two numbers should add to 100, right? Okay, here they are. Therefore, they are 50. They're about the same place, about the same number of crimes are reported as are not reported. So the reporting rate's only about 50%. Why do people not report crimes? What? >> Snitches get stitches. >> Okay, that's a reason. Besides snitches getting stitches, what's another reason? >> [INAUDIBLE] >> Okay, if you are a criminal yourself, you're probably not wanting to deal with police. Probably if you are an undocumented person, you many not want to deal with police. Okay, another good answer. Let's talk about the incidence of crime, property crimes are more frequent than violent crimes. Theft is the most frequently reported crime. The crime rate in Texas is above the national average. Here is the Houston crime rate, darker colors show higher rate. The closer you get to the center of the city, the higher the crime rate. Your neighborhood may very well be in a very high crime rate area. Crime is more frequent in urban areas than in rural areas. Here is the crime index for Houston, blue is Houston. You see the crime rate for Houston on all of these different sorts of crime is higher than other rates in other places. Well, I don't have Chicago. People bring up Chicago, but I don't have Chicago, you can look it up. Here is the crime rate per 1,000 residents, and you see that Texas is above the national average. And has a higher crime rate than other large states. Why is the Texas crime rate relatively high? That's one answer. I'm gonna give you several answers actually. >> [INAUDIBLE] >> I'm not sure we're all that dense. >> [INAUDIBLE] >> How come California is not? I can give you reasons why Texas is higher. I can't give you the reasons why California's not higher. But you can, maybe you can extrapolate from it. Here are reasons, relatively young population. Why does that matter? Well let me ask you, who's the typical criminal? >> [INAUDIBLE] >> A young man, whether rational or not, a young man. So the number of young men you have in a society is going to be a major factor here. Population's relatively poor, the population is relatively mobile. People who move around a lot have fewer ties to the community, and there's a connection. The state's political culture condones violence. Here is the Texas crime rate compared to the US. You notice on a number of the types of crimes it is very close. On burglary and on larceny, theft, Texas has a significantly higher crime rate. Here is the murder rate, and it's another one of these charts that's like ten different colors. Most of which you can't come up, what's the difference between these two? Even these two colors, it's very close. The highest murder rate is in the darkest red, Louisiana. So you take your life in your hands when you go to Louisiana. Mississippi has a fairly high murder rate and I figure that's probably associated with Mississippi leading the nation in obesity. When people are shooting at other people, it's easier to hit them because they're bigger targets. >> [LAUGH] >> Texas is, actually I guess below average, sort of in the middle. Texas, Oklahoma, New Mexico, we kinda fit in with these states more than we do Louisiana. And I'm guessing Louisiana is very heavily New Orleans. So if you go to New Orleans you may end up dead. Is the crime rate in Texas falling, staying the same, or rising? The nation's falling and Texas is falling too. I'm sorry this is not the most recent chart, but I don't think things have changed. The crime rate's falling. How about Houston? Actually yes, here's some data. And you notice the total crime rate is falling. Various categories is falling. Juvenile crime rate is falling. Why has the crime rate fallen? Here's a number of possible explanations. And if you wanna know the truth, criminologists don't know. In fact they predicted that the crime rate would go up. For a couple of reasons. There was a prison building boom in the 1980s, 1990s and a whole bunch of people were sent to prison, they're getting out now. So the expectation was that all these people getting out of prison, having served 20 year sentences, many of them would go back to crime. The other thing is, a really good predictor of crime is the number of young men between 14 and 22 years of age. The number of young men in American society was increasing and it peaked a few years ago and now it's falling back. And you can predict things by looking at demographic numbers. So the expectation is the number of young men in society increased the crime rate would increase. So none of that happened, it's gone down, so we're trying to figure out why. Here's a possible explanation, prison expansion, we have a lot of people in prison. If you're in prison you're probably not committing crimes. Better police work, police say it's us, we're doing a better job. We're using better tools, crime fighting tools, we're using different policies that work. High tech crime fighting tools. We have GPS systems that can tell us where to send our patrol officers, what time of the day. So if you identify neighborhoods where crime is highest, times of day where crime is highest, that's where you send your police. Unleaded gasoline, states banned unleaded gasoline in the 70s and early 80s. Research shows that exposure to lead, if children are exposed to lead it complicates their later life with a number of really bad things. Including a likelihood to take part in criminal activity. So get the lead out, and you reduce the crime rate. There are a couple of scholars who actually attribute the drop in crime to legalized abortion. What do you think their theory is? [INAUDIBLE] Parents [INAUDIBLE] this. >> Okay, the idea is, if you wanted to abort a child, if you wanted to abort a fetus. I'm trying to figure out what the politically correct way of saying this is. If you want to abort a fetus, that is going to be an unwanted child. So an unwanted child is more likely to have a troubled life. And the data for this, here is when abortion is legalized. When do people commit crimes? Well, they begin at age 14. So if you are aborting unwanted children, 14 years from now, the crime rate should start to fall. Because you don't have a number of 14, 15, 16, 17 year olds, 18, 19, 20 year olds in the population who had difficult lives because their parents actually didn't want them. That's Donohue and Levitt's theory on this. I'm not telling you this is right or wrong, it's their theory. And there's actually data that back this up. Another theory is the decline of the crack cocaine market. When crack cocaine fell out of favor, the crime rate fell as well. Notice there's a drop in the crime rate around the time of Mr. Obama's election. Another theory is that when Mr. Obama was elected president, that a lot of young men looked at that. And said, you know, I have opportunities so I don't have to do a life of crime. There's other things that I can do and I can be successful. If Barack Obama can get elected president, you know, I can do stuff too. Who are crime victims? People living in rural areas or urban? Who's more likely to be a victim? Urban. Low income or high income? >> Low income. >> Low income. Young people or old? >> Young. >> Young. They what? >> [INAUDIBLE] >> Yeah, and who's out and about? Young people. Men or women? What? When? Men, men, again, criminals and victims look a lot alike, if you want to know the truth. Racial and ethnic minority groups are why? >> [INAUDIBLE] >> Right. Renters or home owners? Renters. Who are criminals? Most criminals are young poorly educated men. Criminals and victims often know each other, especially violent criminals. Murder typically stays within racial groups. Most murders are committed by people that know one another. Stranger on stranger murders scares you and it makes the news but it's actually pretty rare is what we've learned.
The Crime Rate: Professor Tannahill's Lecture of May 5, 2016
From Neal Tannahill 5/5/2016
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