Over the past 27 years, crime in New York city has dropped by almost a whopping 90%.
Sparko and others here have been telling me that crime is an inherent product of the human sinful condition... so I guess we should praise God for his miraculous intervention to undo human sinfulness en masse in NY city post-1990?
An NYT article from the end of last year:
Crime in New York City Plunges to a Level Not Seen Since the 1950s:
Fast-forward to this week:
Once the ‘Killing Fields,’ East New York Has No Murders in 2018:
So not only are murders down almost 90% from 1990, with improvements for 27 years straight, but murders in 2018 are down 10% from 2017. What this clearly demonstrates is that crime is not something inevitable that is somehow tied to the 'sinful human condition', but rather that crime rates are a product of particular environments and are affected by dozens of variables from employment opportunities to policing strategies to dozens of other government policies and cultural and economic conditions. Rather than just dismiss crime as done by "bad people" who are just guilty of "bad choices" and who thus need to take "individual responsibility", we can and should look at the systemic and social causes of crime and change our policies and culture and environment to produce less of it, because in doing so we can potentially change the crime rates by a factor of 10, as NYC demonstrates.
Sparko and others here have been telling me that crime is an inherent product of the human sinful condition... so I guess we should praise God for his miraculous intervention to undo human sinfulness en masse in NY city post-1990?
An NYT article from the end of last year:
Crime in New York City Plunges to a Level Not Seen Since the 1950s:
It would have seemed unbelievable in 1990, when there were 2,245 killings in New York City, but... there have been just 286 in the city this year [2017] — 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 theft...
...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.
One of the results is that police officers are using deadly force less often. As of Dec. 20, police officers intentionally fired their service guns in 23 encounters, a record low...
More broadly, research suggests that crime trends are closely tied to economic conditions. Interest rates, inflation and unemployment are among the macro-level factors influencing crime, according to James Austin, the president of the JFA Institute, a criminal justice policy nonprofit.
“What the Fed does will have more of an impact than any sentencing or police reforms,” Mr. Austin said.
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 theft...
...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.
One of the results is that police officers are using deadly force less often. As of Dec. 20, police officers intentionally fired their service guns in 23 encounters, a record low...
More broadly, research suggests that crime trends are closely tied to economic conditions. Interest rates, inflation and unemployment are among the macro-level factors influencing crime, according to James Austin, the president of the JFA Institute, a criminal justice policy nonprofit.
“What the Fed does will have more of an impact than any sentencing or police reforms,” Mr. Austin said.
Fast-forward to this week:
Once the ‘Killing Fields,’ East New York Has No Murders in 2018:
the 75th Precinct, an area long scarred by violence that gained notoriety in the 1990s as New York City’s “killing fields” and regularly logged more than 100 murders a year...
But so far this year, something remarkable has happened in the 75th Precinct — or, more precisely, not happened: No one has been killed...
In other city neighborhoods that were hotbeds of violence, like Harlem and Washington Heights, crime declines have coincided with demographic shifts brought on by gentrification and economic uplift. But those kinds of changes have been slow to reach more distant places like East New York, a predominantly black and Latino neighborhood that still struggles with severe poverty and leads the city in robberies this year.
Police officials say the zero murder toll this year is one of the results of efforts to go after guns and gangs concentrated in area housing projects, often with the help of community ties. Since 2016, the police and other law enforcement agencies have confiscated 535 guns in the 75th Precinct and charged 843 people, a quarter of whom were believed to have gang ties.
“When you take the gang out of commission,” Inspector John Chell, the commander of the 75th Precinct, said on Thursday, “these are the residual effects.” Murders in the city overall continue to drop, down 10 percent from last year at this time.
But so far this year, something remarkable has happened in the 75th Precinct — or, more precisely, not happened: No one has been killed...
In other city neighborhoods that were hotbeds of violence, like Harlem and Washington Heights, crime declines have coincided with demographic shifts brought on by gentrification and economic uplift. But those kinds of changes have been slow to reach more distant places like East New York, a predominantly black and Latino neighborhood that still struggles with severe poverty and leads the city in robberies this year.
Police officials say the zero murder toll this year is one of the results of efforts to go after guns and gangs concentrated in area housing projects, often with the help of community ties. Since 2016, the police and other law enforcement agencies have confiscated 535 guns in the 75th Precinct and charged 843 people, a quarter of whom were believed to have gang ties.
“When you take the gang out of commission,” Inspector John Chell, the commander of the 75th Precinct, said on Thursday, “these are the residual effects.” Murders in the city overall continue to drop, down 10 percent from last year at this time.
So not only are murders down almost 90% from 1990, with improvements for 27 years straight, but murders in 2018 are down 10% from 2017. What this clearly demonstrates is that crime is not something inevitable that is somehow tied to the 'sinful human condition', but rather that crime rates are a product of particular environments and are affected by dozens of variables from employment opportunities to policing strategies to dozens of other government policies and cultural and economic conditions. Rather than just dismiss crime as done by "bad people" who are just guilty of "bad choices" and who thus need to take "individual responsibility", we can and should look at the systemic and social causes of crime and change our policies and culture and environment to produce less of it, because in doing so we can potentially change the crime rates by a factor of 10, as NYC demonstrates.
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