FBI: Murder Up 21% in First 3/4 of 2020

Rape -15%, robbery -10%, aggravated assault +8%. Arson +24%, car theft +9%, burglary -9%, larceny -11%.

The results are here, "based on data received from 11,980 of 18,653 law enforcement agencies." You can download the tables here; this is the January-September data, released Dec. 15.

Thanks to Jeff Asher (@Crimealytics) for the pointer.

Comments

[KevinP]

Defund the Police!

[RabbiHarveyWeinstein]

Fund the Shomrim instead!

[BillyG]

But...but...but....Vigilantism!

[Martinned]

Why not? Clearly they're not doing a very good job of bringing down the murder rate to acceptable levels. The overall trend is down, but in absolute terms violent crime in the US is still an embarrassment. Maybe time for a different approach?

[Ben_]

Because you have no alternative plan. No one does.

The left's plan is to destroy and watch everyone suffer while you count your money behind guarded gates.

[Hans Bader]

The plan among progressives seems to be to reduce sentences for murder, destroying deterrence: https://cnsnews.com/commentary/hans-bader/murder-rate-rose-37-us-cities-2020

Prison sentences are shrinking for murder due to expansions of parole and geriatric release, and progressive prosecutors' unwillingness to seek life without parole or enhanced sentences. So it is not surprising that the murder rate is rising faster than the crime rate generally.

Life without parole is likely to become a joke. That's because geriatric release is likely to become available even to people serving life sentences without parole, at age 50, rather than 60, in many states. Such progressive legislation nearly passed in Virginia this year, and may well pass next year.

Some jurisdictions like California and Washington DC are now letting people who committed murder at below age 25 out of prison early as "youthful offenders." At least 40% of all murderers commit their crime below age 25, so that means a lot of murderers will get out.

Los Angeles prosecutor George Gascon won't seek life without parole even for serial killers and torturers. He says that sentencing enhancements for repeat offenders and aggravated murders are "racist," so he won't seek them, even for the worst murderers. That includes the sentencing enhancements for repeat offenders in Proposition 8, which a study found substantially cut the crime rate for covered crimes (like willful homicide). See NBER Working Paper #6484.

[NToJ]

For those interested, NBER Working Paper #6484 (1998) is available here. I think readers would be better off not reading the Working Paper, and just reading the actual paper published a year later. I'll post the link to it in a reply. By the time of the actual paper, the amount of the reduction had gone from "substantially" to not as substantially. And with respect to three strikes specifically, their conclusions are not as strong, at least for their test subject (California).

[NToJ]

Here is the 1999 paper.

[Ben_]

For the record, defund police only gained traction outside insane fringes because police unions and negotiated contracts make police departments nearly impossible to reform.

So if we could end government unions and their practice of negotiating against the public, police could actually be reformed and the problems of policing could begin to be addressed. (It would still take a lot of effort.)

But government unions provide cash and votes and in-kind help to Democrats, so government unions are encouraged. And you therefore have un-reformable policing (and un-reformable education, and every other unionized government agency).

So Dems say defund police because they know it can never happen. It's their way to wash their hands of the problem they are perpetuating while pretending to care. They'll be behind their gates counting their money, toasting their virtues and vanities, as always.

[MatthewSlyfield]

"Because you have no alternative plan. No one does."

If you are doing A and the data is telling you that A is not accomplishing anything, why do you need an alternative plan before you stop doing A?

[Ben_]

You have no such data

[Roman Moroni]

Are you claiming that law enforcement as is accomplishes literally nothing? So that if it were replaced by nothing there would be no difference?

I don’t think you really believe that.

There is almost definitely a better version of law enforcement than we currently have, but there is also a worse one. I don’t think it’s all that difficult to come up with improvements that many of us would agree upon, even if they were difficult to implement politically.

[WuzYoungOnceToo]

If you are doing A and the data is telling you that A is not accomplishing anything, why do you need an alternative plan before you stop doing A?

Do you have data that funding law enforcement is "not accomplishing anything"?

[Bored Lawyer]

They were actually doing a very good job, until the powers in some places decided to declare them the enemy.

New York under Giuliani and Bloomberg had plummeting murder rates. The new clown not so much.

[Dr. Ed 2]

Washington DC before Obama, with the exception of the Green Line of the METRO, was a safe city where race didn't matter.

Obama changed all of that...

[Rat on a train]

next stop, Anacostia

[Sarcastr0]

I lived in DC since 2004; you're lying again.

[Armchair Lawyer]

Certain areas of DC are safe. Certain areas are...less so.

The homicide map in the wiki article is enlightening. North and West DC...perfectly safe. Southeast DC...well, lots of murders.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crime_in_Washington,_D.C.

[Sarcastr0]

But that's not what Ed is saying, he is saying DC was safe before Obama

[bernard11]

It's really hard to figure out Ed's game.

Is he just trolling, does he believe his nonsense, is he demented, does he just spew random stuff he wishes were true?

[Dr. Ed 2]

No, what Ed is saying is that he felt safe as an occasional visitor to DC before Obama, and doesn't now. Nothing more -- nothing less.

[Noscitur a sociis]

I mean, that is very obviously not what you said.

[Sarcastr0]

https://mpdc.dc.gov/page/district-crime-data-glance

check out the '20-Year Homicide Trend.'

[Jerry B.]

And let’s not forget the Washington Post’s regional homicide database. They used to include the race of the victim, but stopped after 2018.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/graphics/local/homicides/

[zztop8970]

The same sort of logic that brought you this gem https://www.nytimes.com/2019/04/25/us/us-mass-incarceration-rate.html

[Á àß äẞç ãþÇđ âÞ¢Đæ ǎB€Ðëf ảhf]

And the corollary is to increase police funding as crime goes down, as some kind of reward?

We could just make everyone police! Pay them all! Call it a Universal Police Income!

Problem solved! You are a frickin' genius!

[Kazinski]

In terms of violent crime the US is on a par with large parts of Europe. Sure you are much safer in the Netherlands, but you better take care if you head to Paris or Brussels for the weekend.

United States 47.7
Sweden 47.43
France 47.37
Ireland 45.68
Belgium 45.29
United Kingdom 44.54
Netherlands 27.15

But in terms of how well the police are doing dealing with murders, the murder rate for white males is 3.4/100k for Black Males it's 40.4. And about 80% of murders are committed by a perpetrator of the same race. So are you really proposing to abandon Blacks and give up on saving Black lives by fighting crime? Only 22% of Blacks support defunding the police, and 27% of Democrats, so it seems like it's main proponents are White Democrats, who are mostly immune from the higher level of violence Blacks face.

[jb]

"Only 22% of Blacks support defunding the police, and 27% of Democrats, so it seems like it’s main proponents are White Democrats, who are mostly immune from the higher level of violence Blacks face."

Uhh, math fails to check out here. With just the data points provided, it's entirely possible that white democrats and black democrats support defunding the police in almost identical proportions (i.e., 27% of black Democrats support defunding, 27% of white Democrats support defunding, 0% of black non-Democrats support defunding, assuming ~85% of blacks identifying as Democrats).

[Don Nico]

What is your point?

[jb]

That there's no data to support Kazinski's assertion that defunding the police is mostly pushed by white democrats.

[bernard11]

Interesting numbers, but I'd ask what the definition(s) of "violent crime" are. This definition varies a good bit across countries, IIRC.

Homicide rates (2018) don't tell the same story.

US 5.0
Sweden 1.1
France 1.2
Ireland .9
Belgium 1.7 (2017)
United Kingdom 1.2
Netherlands .6

[Noscitur a sociis]

I'm not totally clear where the data comes from on the eurostat link Martinned posted earlier, but their definition for robbery definitions seems fairly close to what the UCR uses, and it does show a significantly higher rate in many European countries, with France and Belgium being nearly twice the US average, and the EU as a whole only slightly better than the US

[Bored Lawyer]

The definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting a different result. -- Albert Einstein

[WuzYoungOnceToo]

There is no evidence that Einstein ever said any such thing.

[Rev. Arthur L. Kirkland]

"Defund the Police!"

Rethink the police.

Replace the president.

[BillyG]

What does the president have to do with local police forces under the jurisdiction of cities & counties?

BTW, the new one is a dementia patient. The 25th amendment will be invoked during the next 4 years.

[Rev. Arthur L. Kirkland]

The Department of Justice oversees lousy police departments, imposing adult supervision.

It did until 2017. I shall again, and soon.

Open wider, clingers. Your betters have even more progress, to be imposed against your wishes and efforts, on the way.

[Don Nico]

More of your obnoxious mean spirited bigotry. Swallow your tongue in the New Year. Your geriatric President elect has announce i=his brilliant goal for the first 100 days: vaccinate at a rate that will take 2 years to immunize Americans.
Carry on whiner.

[Rev. Arthur L. Kirkland]

Happy New Year, bigot. You’re getting closer to replacement. By your betters. Extinguishing your conservative cause.

I am content.

[JohnSteed]

Are these counted as COVID deaths?

[Martinned]

They might be. The UK government's Covid dashboard reports "deaths within 28 days of Covid diagnosis", which would include murder victims. Then again, in many of these cases Covid may well be a genuine "but for" cause of the murder...

[Dr. Ed 2]

The US statistic is based on (a) dead and (b) positive Covid test, with a financial advantage to inflate the stats. It's included motorcycle crash victims, etc.

[bernard11]

Evidence?

[zztop8970]

"We rate the claim that hospitals get paid more if patients are listed as COVID-19 and on ventilators as TRUE." https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/factcheck/2020/04/24/fact-check-medicare-hospitals-paid-more-covid-19-patients-coronavirus/3000638001/

It's not as if this is hard to find - do you know how to use Google?

[Á àß äẞç ãþÇđ âÞ¢Đæ ǎB€Ðëf ảhf]

But remember, UK does not count any death as murder until a conviction has been obtained. No investigation -- no arrest -- no trial -- no conviction -- not murder, even if the body was found with a dozen bullet wounds.

[Martinned]

Murder is a legal finding that gets made in a court of law. "Unlawful killing", on the other hand, is a verdict that is open to a Coroner's inquest. For the record, that might include a conclusion of murder even in the absence of a defendant.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inquests_in_England_and_Wales#Verdict_or_conclusions

Not sure what made you think of that, but sure.

[BillyG]

In Oregon, Yes. Probably elsewhere as well.

https://www.kgw.com/article/news/investigations/questions-over-the-accuracy-of-how-the-state-tracks-covid-deaths/283-0b1b7b6c-695e-4313-92cf-a4cfd7510721

[Martinned]

For comparison, Eurostat counted 3,993 "intentional homicides" in the EU in 2018, the most recent year available.

https://ec.europa.eu/eurostat/statistics-explained/index.php?title=Crime_statistics#intentional_homicides_in_the_EU-27_in_2018

[Bob from Ohio]

Fake News

Does not include murders like these just from your country:

"According to the 2017 Regional Euthanasia Review Committees (RTE), in the Netherlands there were 6,585 cases of voluntary euthanasia or assisted suicide"

https://www.theguardian.com/news/2019/jul/15/euthanasia-and-assisted-dying-rates-are-soaring-but-where-are-they-legal

[Martinned]

Well, no, because that's not a murder/homicide. It also doesn't include abortions, which plenty of American wingnuts would count as murder.

[Bob from Ohio]

"not a murder/homicide"

Sure, sure. Keep telling yourself that. Elderly people coerced into death and unable to change their minds.

https://nationalpost.com/news/world/dutch-doctor-acquitted-in-case-of-euthanasia-of-patient-with-dementia-2

[Hans Bader]

Europe does have fewer murders, due to very different demographics, and perhaps to higher police spending. Europe spends a higher percentage of its GDP on the police, as Daniel Bier has noted. If Europe had America's demographics and cultural pathologies, it would have a higher crime rate. Even in the U.S., some homogeneous states have very low crime rates, like Vermont and Maine.

Murderers are spending less time in prison than they used to, which is helping fuel the rising murder rate. Murderers will be getting out earlier than they did even a few years ago due to (1) the general restoration of parole in some states, (2) retroactive expansion of parole for youthful offenders in other jurisdictions like California and DC (by youthful, I mean below age 25. The peak age for murder is the late teens and early 20s, and four in ten murderers commit their crime before age 25), and (3) other forms of expanded release (like giving prisoners eligibility for geriatric release at age 50, rather than 60, even if they were sentenced to life without parole).

Life without parole is likely to effectively disappear in many states. That’s because progressives are pushing for geriatric release to become available even to people serving life sentences without parole, at age 50, rather than 60, in many states. Such legislation nearly passed in Virginia this year, and may well pass next year.

Recently-elected Los Angeles District Attorney George Gascon refuses to seek life without parole even for serial killers and torturers. He claims sentencing enhancements are categorically “racist,” so he won’t allow his prosecutors to seek them, even for the most heinous murders. That includes the sentencing enhancements for repeat offenders mandated by a ballot initiative, which greatly reduced the crime rate for covered crimes (such as murder), according to a study.

As researchers Daniel Kessler & Steven D. Levitt found in that study, longer sentences have "a large deterrent effect," suggesting that "sentence enhancements" are a "cost-effective" way to reduce crime. They described this in their study, "Using Sentence Enhancements to Distinguish between Deterrence and Incapacitation." As they noted in that study, "California's Proposition 8...imposed sentence enhancements for a selected group of crimes. In the year following its passage, crimes covered by Proposition 8 fell by more than 10 percent relative to similar crimes not affected by the law, suggesting a large deterrent effect. Three years after the law comes into effect, eligible crimes have fallen roughly 20-40 percent compared to non-eligible crimes."

[Dr. Ed 2]

"Even in the U.S., some homogeneous states have very low crime rates, like Vermont and Maine."

Vermont and Maine also have a high rate of gun ownership....

[NToJ]

If by "high" you mean "below average", yea, that's true I guess. Maine is 38th (22.6%) and Vermont is 31st (28.8%). The national average is 33%.

[Dr. Ed 2]

Most guns aren't registered in ME & VT -- hence bad data.

[bernard11]

Congratulations on not self-linking.

Still, this is the second time you've posted the same thing.

[jb]

Wait, don't European countries have shorter sentences for murder? I can't find a really good source, but this site seems to say yes:

https://www.robertreeveslaw.com/blog/life-sentences/

[NToJ]

The economic model of crime, which the paper listed above is purporting to support, probably isn't the only basis for explaining increases or decreases in crime. The fundamental problem is that it assumes violent criminals are rational actors. Some may be. Some may not be. That's why it's been remarkably difficult to prove the economic model of crime empirically, even though it makes total sense theoretically.

Another major problem with it is that because of modern society's aversion to putting innocent people in jail accidentally, you're never going to have very good deterrence through any criminal justice regime. There's simply too much lag between the commission of most crimes and the punishment (or threat of punishment).

Overreliance on any one aspect of crime reduction is, in my view, as likely to be a function of self-interest or regulatory capture as anything else. Big surprise, law enforcement thinks law enforcement is the best means of reducing crime. Prisons think more prisons will solve the problem. Budget hawks and bleeding hearts think less prisons will solve the problem. Social workers think social work is a better alternative. The homeless industrial complex thinks reducing homelessness will solve it. Churches think donating money to churches solves the problem. It's probably the case that the thing most responsible for reducing crime in the United States over the last X years was reducing lead in water and better prenatal care. But I wouldn't even overemphasize those. Anyone offering a simple answer to the complicated problem of why some guy murders his wife in a world with 6 billion people, is probably selling something.

[Stephen Lathrop]

( . . . and four in ten murderers commit their crime before age 25)

And by what age do the other 60% of murderers commit their crimes? Just want to be sure this isn't like, "Forty-percent of your sick days were on Mondays and Fridays."

[jb]

"He said the mercy killing of people in such an advanced stage of dementia is rare and makes up just two or three cases out of over 6,000 cases of euthanasia reported in the Netherlands each year."

[Bob from Ohio]

They just started the killing a few years ago.

Now that they have a court authorizing this particular perversion, the trend will accelerate.

[Sarcastr0]

Bob, you're also into torturing suspects of terrorism as revenge for 9-11.
Your fairweather un-nuanced outrage is ridiculous.

[Ben_]

Mentioned only to complain about America.

You Americans just got dunked on by another leftist! In your face you Americans!

[BillyG]

Are murders counted the same way? (Seriously) In the US every death is investigated as a homicide until ruled otherwise. How do the EU countries count?

[Martinned]

I have no idea, that's why I put "intentional homicides" between quotation marks and provided the link, so that anyone who cares more than I do can try to find out.

[loki13]

I predict that everyone will use these numbers and immediately state that they prove what they already knew to be true, without any particular foundation for it.

Same as it ever was.

[Don Nico]

How right you are! Best wishes for the New Year.

[Dr. Ed 2]

For some reason I can't open this with Open Office -- and refuse to purchase yet another copy of Microsquish Office -- but from what I could see, cities over 1M have a 54% increase in arson.

Between the Bitchy Little Marxists and businesses failing because they were shut down by governmental fiat, I'm really surprised that it isn't more. I'd really like to see a June 1st to Dec 31st breakdown.

I also noticed a footnote about how the rape stat is *only* from PDs using the FBI's definition -- excluding departments that don't will inherently reduce the statistic unless you norm it, i.e. take the average of those PDs whose data you use and inflate that number to attribute the same percentage to the jurisdictions you don't.

[Dr. Ed 2]

And I maintain that the Bitchy Little Marxists are largely bored White Millennial women who have nothing to do -- no jobs to go to, no bars to go to, and no place to flirt with dangerous men.

I've long said that the riots on college campi were social events and that the increase of the 20 years ago was more a reflection of the isolation of college students and the decline of traditional social events than anything else.

[Ben_]

You know nobody cares about your computer software preferences and the self-imposed difficulties your personal choices create for you, right? Just FYI.

[MatthewSlyfield]

Because the download is a zip file, not a MS office document, though the zip file has several MS Excel spreadsheets in it.

I had no difficulty opening the spreadsheets in OO Calc after extracting them from the Zip file.

[BadLib]

Although I'm not sure what "this" is WRT what you're trying to open and others have indicated the file is a zip file so isn't supported by office. (I did find zip files at the FBI site and was pleasantly surprised to find they included postgres scripts to create tables and load them - cool). However...

At this Microsoft site you can upload/read/edit/download office documents for "free" (I think you have to register which is why I put "free" in quotes).

Downloading the files as a PDF is an option also.

I use this occasionally as I don't have access to Office otherwise and some office stuff just doesn't format well or (esp. spreadsheets) even work well in LibreOffice.

Obviously, since the file you view/edit must be uploaded to MS servers, you may not want to use it for files containing confidential information.

[A. Friend]

How many of the murders were committed by police officers? It would also be good to compare the murder rate for the months before June 1 to the months after June 1, which, of course, is around when the rhetoric against the police really began.

[Dr. Ed 2]

Actually, none.

The first thing you have to understand about statistics is that how you define your terms makes a big difference, and the FBI states that "[t]he classification of this offense is based solely on police investigation..." See: https://ucr.fbi.gov/crime-in-the-u.s/2017/crime-in-the-u.s.-2017/topic-pages/murder

The FBI does not keep statistics on persons whom the police kill.

[Brett Bellmore]

Keep in mind that most people killed by police were probably not murders to begin with.

The Washington Post has this nifty database of police shootings. In typical WaPo style, you can sort by a number of criteria, which conspicuously doesn't include criminal records.

Gee, I wonder why?

[Brian Thomas]

Because it's not relevant? Because prior bad acts don't justify being killed by the police later? Because criminal records aren't physical, visual indicators like gender, race, or age are, and they often aren't known to the officers at the time of the shooting?

[Dr. Ed 2]

Then why prevent convicted felons from owning guns?

[bernard11]

What?

He didn't say felons weren't more likely to offend than others. He said you can't identify one by looking at him.

[Dr. Ed 2]

Doesn't that show up when Officer Friendly runs your license through his computer? If they run the plate before/as they stop a vehicle (protocol), they'll have an owner, etc.

[rsteinmetz]

The history of an individual is an indicator of their future behavior.

If a person killed by police has a significant criminal history, it is more likely that their death was related to wrong doing.

Think Michael Brown and his buddy who lied about what happened.

[Stephen Lathrop]

rsteinmetz, no.

That's the OJ Simpson argument—a high percentage of women killed by their spouses had previously suffered spousal abuse. Simpson had abused his spouse, therefore Simpson is guilty of her murder.

Making it retrospective is a statistical fallacy. To have any even slightly relevant imputation to use against presumably-innocent Simpson, you would have to ask instead what percent of spousal abusers go on to kill their spouses. Not a high percentage? Then no imputation against Simpson which can get over the bar of reasonable doubt.

[Michael P]

The Washington Post also doesn't include any kind of direct indicator of whether the police shooting was, or could be, considered justified -- much less what kind of justification was present.

One description the WaPo entered was "a 19-year-old White man with a toy weapon, was shot on Dec. 23, 2020". They flag it as "no/unknown mental illness".

The man in question was threatening himself and police with a BB pistol that looked like a semi-automatic handgun. Police arrived after he called 911 and said "bodies were going to drop" (unless police got there immediately). Calling it a "toy weapon" is a stretch at best -- BB guns are weapons, although not super dangerous to most adult humans, and that one looked a lot more dangerous.

The WaPo database seems to be intentionally inflammatory in how it categorizes police shootings.

[Jerry B.]

Ya think?

[Brian Thomas]

It's a statistical database, not a narrative. The labels they use will have definitions to show how certain situations are categorized. BB guns don't require permits or licenses to buy (not in the states I've lived in at least) and generally the age restriction is under 18 to buy them, so I wouldn't be surprised if that falls under "toy weapon" category depending on how it's defined. And the Washington Post isn't going to label someone as having a mental illness solely based on his alleged behavior. They are just going off of what is actually known about the person.

[WuzYoungOnceToo]

Because it’s not relevant?

Except that it is.

Because prior bad acts don’t justify being killed by the police later?

No, but they do tell us something about the likelyhood that the shootee was engaged in behavior that would have justified the shooting. For instance, if a large % of those shot by police had histories of repeatedly engaging in violent crime, that would have some influence on the impression one would be inclined to form from that data, wouldn't you think?

[Stephen Lathrop]

Wuz, I think it does have that influence you mention. Because the people influenced are careless about statistics, and reason retrospectively, the way you do, about prior information, without noticing that their conclusion requires prospective analysis.

To draw any vaguely legitimate inference, you would have to ask what % of those who engage in violent crime are subsequently killed by police. A very small percentage, right?

Even that doesn't help you much, for the reason others already mentioned—the police mostly don't know the record of the guy they kill before they do it. Why not concentrate on what police can see. Ask what percentage of innocent, unarmed people who are killed by police turn out to be black or Hispanic.

[Absaroka]

"...the police mostly don’t know the record of the guy they kill before they do it. Why not concentrate on what police can see. "

You are missing the point(s).

1)Let's consider Adam and Bob. Both are about to get pulled over for a broken taillight. The officer knows absolutely nothing about either.

Adam is a 28 year old with 17 felony convictions (since he was an adult), 9 of them for violent crimes. He stopped checking in with his parole officer a while ago and suspects there is a warrant out, that the officer will find the drugs and guns, his parole will be revoked and he's looking at a minimum of ten years before he gets out again.

Bob is also a 28 year old whose worst offense was a parking ticket 4 years ago.

Now imagine repeating those traffic stops over and over. Statistically speaking, would you expect a greater proportion of shootouts with the police to result from the stops involving the Adams or the Bobs?

That's the argument - that people with a history of bad judgement are more likely to exhibit bad judgement in the future. This argument has nothing to do with the presumption of innocence everyone gets at trial. It is all about what is inside Adam and Bob's heads, and how that affects the choices they make.

"...the police mostly don’t know the record of the guy they kill before they do it."

If you are going to make that argument, you should exclude shootings where the police do know a lot about the person they are contacting. One obvious class of incidents where that is true is when they are out to arrest a known violent crook, and those aren't uncommon. And even for traffic stops, you'd be surprised how many times the officer knows the stoppee. You and I are largely ignorant of the small percentage of bad crooks out there, but cops know many of the well. I've heard stories, for example, that start out like 'I saw Fred Felon pull out of the bar parking lot, and knew he had a DUI conviction a couple of months ago, and so his license was suspended'.

To be clear, I'm not suggesting that the officer knows the suspect in most police shootings. If you have data I'm happy to hear it. But I don't think you should assume the proportion is negligible w/o data.

[Absaroka]

As an example, here's video of the recent shooting that is getting Minneapolis going again. Note "Authorities say officers executed the traffic stop as part of a "probable cause" weapons investigation". The officers there weren't interacting with someone they had no information about.

[NToJ]

Do they sort by the victims' favorite color?

[jb]

Presumably if you filtered out murders based on prior criminal convictions, the overall murder rate would go way down. This isn't something unique to murders committed by police.

[Brett Bellmore]

Well, yes, that's the dirty little secret about murder in the US: Most of it is criminals killing criminals; If you're law abiding you're pretty safe, outside of some nasty hot spots, most of them urban ghettos.

[WillDD]

Takin' it to the streets. Interesting that what might seem more like home crimes (rape, robbery, burglary, larceny) were down, while what might seem more like outside-the-home crimes (aggravated assault, arson, and car theft) were up.

I had always heard that most murders involved people who knew one another. Would be interested in how murders broke down last year.

[Dr. Ed 2]

I don't see your distinction between rape and aggravated assault e both are often included in the same offense -- both are violent assaults against a person qua person (as opposed to property).

I think the difference is that people are locked down at home and not out in public. Hence less street crime, less B&E because houses are occupied and valuables removed from businesses -- while more crimes involving unattended property (arson & car theft).

Rape is down because women (like men) aren't allowed to go out in public as much as they were BC (Before Covid). The Brave New People's Republic of Maskachusetts has a 9:30 PM curfew...

[MatthewSlyfield]

What was the curfew in the cowardly old People's Republic of Maskachusetts?

[Dr. Ed 2]

https://boston.cbslocal.com/2020/11/02/massachusetts-coronavirus-reopening-gov-charlie-baker-covid-19-latest-news/

[MatthewSlyfield]

That whoosh you hear is the sound of a joke going over your head. I asked what the curfew was BC.

[Michael P]

There was no similar curfew BC because there was not a deadly virus going around. Fortunately the virus only comes out after 9:30 PM, at least in Maskachusetts, which is why the governor picked that time for the curfew.

[Dr. Ed 2]

As a general rule, BC bars closed at 1AM, although some cities allowed them to stay open later than that.

[jb]

Also interesting that for violent crime overall the various increases and decreases nearly cancel each other out. Overall violent crime rate was up a bit less than 2% for the first three quarters, the effect of which would be to take us back to 2017 levels of violent crime (2018 and 2019 saw ~1% decreases), or maybe 2011 since the violent crime rate seems to have been overall pretty stable since then.

[Brett Bellmore]

Unsurprisingly, arson was up enormously in large cities...

Since the data isn't sorted by lockdown and humoring Antifa policies, it's pretty much useless.

[NToJ]

Table 4 has the data broken down by City. If you'll tell me the jurisdiction you had in mind for "lockdown and humoring Antifa policies" I can give you the 2019 versus 2020 breakdown.

[Brett Bellmore]

DC, Portland, and Seattle are three cities that actually tolerated Antifa, and permitted them to establish "autonomous zones". Such zones were attempted in Nashville, Asheville, and Chicago, but swiftly shut down. That would be a good comparison.

Here's a handy interactive map on lockdown policies. But only as of June.

[NToJ]

I don't know if you were only asking about arson but:

Cities that tolerated Antifa, and permitted them to establish "autonomous zones".
DC: Couldn't find it.
Portland: Arson went down by 1 (from 204 to 203).
Seattle: Arson went from 70 to 161, a 130% increase.

Cities where zones were swiftly shut down:
Nashville: Arson went from 40 to 71, a 77% increase.
Asheville: Couldn't find it.
Chicago: Couldn't find it.

[Absaroka]

"Portland: Arson went down by..."

Just worth mentioning that the crime rate for CrimeX can go down if it becomes less of an enforcement priority (and hence reports aren't taken), or up if the mayor/police chief makes it a priority (because, say, that helps increase the budget).

In general, cops see to be pretty wary of the FBI crime numbers. They say that there isn't much incentive for departments to input high quality data, and many don't.

As an aside, another factor I recently hear from a cop (but haven't vetted, caveat emptor) is that reports over time have varied between incident based and ...mumble... based. The difference being how you report, say, when a guy breaks into a house, rapes the occupant, kills her, then torches the house to cover the crime. With 'incident based' reporting, that is one crime. With ... mumble ... based reporting it's a burglary, a rape, a murder, and an arson , so four crimes.

I (or my source) may be missing the details, but the cops I know pretty uniformly view the FBI numbers as not very reliable, for similar reasons. This was news to me; my general view was that they must be gold plated numbers, because FBI.

[arch1]

The murder rate increases were 7% through Q1, 15% through Q2, and 21% through Q3. Note that these are based on cumulative (year-to-date) totals. To rough-estimate the quarterly increases, we can assume that the base rates were equal for each quarter in 2019. This yields 2019-to-2020 year-over-year increases of

7% in Q1
23% in Q2
33% in Q3

which seems broadly correlated with U.S. pandemic severity, and possibly also with whatever objective measures one could come up with of U.S. social/political unrest.

(It should be unnecessary to say this but I'm not asserting that these potential correlations imply causation and certainly not sole causation, or that either of these factors excuse or justify murder.)

[arch1]

Piggybacking on comments by WillDD and others, it would be very interesting to see the quarterly murder stats for 2019 and 2020 broken down by same-household murders vs other murders. If almost all growth is in the former, it would be hard not to speculate that home confinement + small homes + hot weather may have combined with higher-than-usual economic stress + stress due to friends/family at risk/sick/dying to send more people over the edge than usual.

[MatthewSlyfield]

But COVID is the only explanation for excess deaths in 2020.

[Dr. Ed 2]

Including opiate overdoses...

[bernard11]

There were about 16,000 murders and non-negligent homicides in the US in 2018.

Even if we have double that this year that hardly makes much of a dent in excess deaths.

[MatthewSlyfield]

But there are still other causes of excess deaths in 2020. The idea that all-cause excess death numbers say much of anything about COVID is bullshit.

[jb]

That may be true, but trying to tie it to the murder rate is a pretty weak example to make the case.

[bernard11]

Sure there are other causes. But it's hard to deny that Covid is the big one.

And if you are going to claim that the spike in murders and maybe suicides is a result of lock downs, you also have to consider deaths the lockdowns may have prevented.

Two things we do know are that we are in the midst of a pandemic, and that we have a lot of excess deaths this year. To say that connecting those two is BS doesn't hold water.

[MatthewSlyfield]

The point is not about murder per say, but that all-cause excess death numbers say nothing at all about whether we are over or under counting the direct tally of COVID deaths unless you explicitly account for all other possible sources of excess deaths.

There have been several groups/people trying to point to all-cause excess death numbers as proof that we are under counting COVID deaths.

[Don Nico]

The problem with arguing from excess deaths is that it is the opportunity to lie with statistics. In the US covid doubles has raised the deaths in 2020 to a number greater than that in 2020. That is all you can say. You still have no idea whether deaths DUE TO covid are either over counted or undercounted.

[MatthewSlyfield]

Exactly my point. But others are arguing that somehow, without any effort to account for any other source of excess deaths, that the all-cause excess death numbers for 2020 are proof positive that COVID deaths are being undercounted.

[Ben_]

In other crime news, here’s a story you won't see on CNN:

https://thenewamerican.com/victims-describes-abuse-at-senate-candidate-warnocks-camp-lawsuit-settled-warnock-arrested-charges-dropped/

[Dr. Ed 2]

That's all really from just one 30-year-old reporter -- with modern media, one person can make a difference.

[Rev. Arthur L. Kirkland]

Lathering the rubes.
Volokh, on his holiday,
lathering the rubes.

[Don Nico]

Yet worldwide the deaths this year were lower than in 2019. Sp excess deaths even in the US has to be interpreted with care.

[Don Nico]

It's remarkable how much drivel sprews out from you; But just keep clinging to your whining.

[Rev. Arthur L. Kirkland]

What is most remarkable is that you can say or type anything at all, Don Nico, with your tongue so firmly affixed to Prof. Volokh’s scrotum.

[Ghost on the Highway]

Deduct the minorities killing other minorities murder rate and the US is a lot more in line with other western nations.

[ragebot]

As has been mentioned a couple of times so far changing the level of resolution greatly changes crime rates. A short time ago if you removed Los Angles, Detroit, Chicago, and New Orleans the murder rate in the US is very similar to Europe. I am not sure how useful national crime stats are in revealing what is actually happening. As one poster noted the crime rate in DC changes greatly as you change the level of resolution.

My experience has been that in situations like this there is not a single cause; rather the increase in crime is not just due to efforts to defund the police but several other factors as well. But defunding the police is a major cause.