One of the common responses to my piece from last week on the widespread — albeit preliminary — reported decline in murder and crime could be summarized in the below comment from Twitter:
Thank You very much for this! Your take on what can be gleaned from the NCVS was more or less where my thinking had taken me, but I have more confidence in you than myself on these things. :)
In your last paragraph, you wrote: "Crime data is inherently flawed...", and that made me think of the quote attributed to George Box - "All models are wrong, but some are useful". Crime data, like any data can be useful, even though it can never be perfect.
7 percent of identity thefts are reported to law enforcement per BJS. Do we create policy based on the 7 percent? Crimes reported to law enforcement are filled with endless problems which is why we have the National Crime Victimization Survey (which is routinely ignored).
Per the FBI's data from 2022 and their slight decrease in violent crime, we all recognize that violence "may" have gone up considerably for a multitude of reasons, underreporting may be the tip of the iceberg. I just did an article on family members and non-strangers being responsible for most violence. How many of these events were reported? I'm guessing that the number is quite low. It's the bulk of violent crime.
Yet crimes reported to law enforcement is the hand dealt, warts and all. It's all we have beyond the ignored National Crime Victimization Survey. There is a point where if crime statistics do not show a clear pattern of increases or decreases, does it really count?
As always, thanks for your analysis. You do great work. But I believe that we need to rethink what we report and how we report it while understanding that the caveats would be endless.
An example: Vermont (via the Associated Press-today) is reporting a huge increase in violence in one of the lowest crime states in the country per FBI numbers. Small numbers allow for large percentage increases or decreases. Yet that wasn't mentioned.
Based on a preliminary exploration of NCVS data via N-DASH(https://ncvs.bjs.ojp.gov/Home), it appears that the growth in violence measured by that instrument saw disproportinate growth of violent crime commited by intimate partners. As is pointed out, these violent victimizations are less likely to be reported to the police. I also noted that in 2022 the rate of violent victimizations reported to the police went down 4%.
I think that it's very fair to consider the hypothesis that under-reporting is not *generally* up do to outside factors, but that larger growth of usually un-reported crimes, a shift in the 'mix' of victimization attributes if you will, has taken place.
As you point out, staff shortages is likely to be part of the issue, but I also believe that the lack of police legitimacy--trust in law enforcement--is also to blame, especially in minority and immigrant neighborhoods. Residents in these neighborhoods tend to have negative interactions with police, so they don't often report crime.
You are absolutely right. However, I would caution against saying: "Both perpetrators and victims likely know that clearance rates for property crimes are usually pretty low throughout the country." A huge portion of perpetrators, those who are young (16-25ish) and live in poverty, haven't any idea about clearance rates (or, for that matter, the penalty for the crime they're committing).
“Perpetrators” know more than you give them credit for. They know clearances are low because they are not caught. And if they are caught what happens to them spreads through their community
I think you're half right. The low odds of getting caught are pretty obvious. The variation in that level of low odds - not so much.
Conversely, everyone I've ever known with an established shoplifting habit - from rich kids doing it for the thrill to people stealing food because they are hungry as well as the people who effectively shoplift for a portion of their living expenses... all of them got caught at least once, and usually more often.
The last group passes around a lot of information about the consequences... but like the first two groups they're ultimately still too locked into responding to scarcity to be deterred by harsher or even more consistent legal punishment. The two events just have too much time between them.
The consequences those shoplifters are sharing information about, and planning their heists around, are much more immediate: return policies and cash value.
So people talk to each other quite a bit about what small, high value items are most accessible.
And when Home Depot went from limiting the no-receipt returns that could be done with a specific id (which means a prolific thief will have to pay people to do the return) to requiring the resulting gift card funds get spent by the same person who did the return, it became a less attractive target.
What sort of security a store has. Whether they will call the police and have you arrested. Whether you know someone who will pay for a specific item, or at least trade for drugs you like.
NOT: how aggressive they are in pursuing charges.
NOT: at what dollar value your theft becomes a more serious offense (something that weed dealers I knew DID regularly respond to)
But yes, people who shoplift are aware that they are unlikely to be caught.
"The study of the data reveals, from 2021 to 2023, more officers were feloniously killed (194) than in any other consecutive three-year period in the past 20 years (73 officers in 2021, 61 officers in 2022, and 60 officers in 2023)."
You know what's not under reported? Officer deaths. Clear indication of rise in crime
Noooo this cant be true because all my liberal friends say that crime is down across all major cities. Doesnt match what I see with my eye but thats okay because....um.....well.............you know trump was racist right???
New here - appreciating the context and consideration you bring.
You describe the reality of how the choices of the people and prosecutors impact crime stats, but I offer the discretion of the responding officer weighs heavily on the resulting stats. Sure, people decide whether or not to call the police, but the crime stats don’t come from the calls for service. Crimes ‘known to police’ come from a cop making the choice to pull a case number (how varies by department and system) and then to attribute an offense to that case number’s report. Seeing Seattle’s drop in the percent of property crime calls resulting in a report is certainly influenced by slower response times - if dude is still there, it’s much more likely a report will be taken - but regardless of when a response occurs, the choice to turn a call for service into a crime report should hold steady. It’s the patrol cop or community service officer who makes that choice - and they stand squarely at the point where the other perceptions and decisions of the people and prosecutors come together. But they make that choice under the pressure of a backlog of other calls for service holding, a field supervisor pushing for the next call to get handled, and a salty detective who will ask why a report was taken if it’s got low solvability factors. Cops hand out call for service numbers (rather than case number) for expediency and so people feel better served. But it only becomes a crime for stats purposes if a case number and associated report are filed in the first place.
Really good analysis Jeff. But there are independent studies that show crime reporting is lower than even the NCVS indicates. Also, ORC is just one type of retail theft and big retailers just one type of victim. How many ground floor retailers in Seattle or SF or SJ have closed? Thousands between all three and most are not Walgreens or CVS or Dicks.
Yet we still measure commercial theft by population which is wrong. Commercial theft rates should be measured by the number of businesses. The SF Chronicle recently got this very wrong when they claimed shoplifting had dropped from 2022 to 2023. They failed to note a larger increase in retail closures. So yes, there were fewer shopliftings, but there were also fewer victim businesses to victimize. Meaning shoplifting hadn't declined at all.
It’s not just reporting times or prosecutions that measure law enforcement effectiveness and perhaps it’s effect on reporting. How about looking at confidence in policing by looking at trusted profession research? It’s declining along with reporting
And I still believe murder is down - to some degree - because emergency medicine is improving. But we’ll see.
I think you have been in research long enough to make credible inferences in your analysis based on things you know outside of the official statistics you so accurately report as well as ones your have cleverly devised and track on your own. I predict your multi city murder tracking figures will make you far more relevant than the FBI. Timeliness is also a statistical point of reference- is it not?
Can we really assume all retail closures are *solely* the results of criminal activity? Especially smaller, local businesses? I seem to recall that there's an effect on smaller local businesses when a big corporate player moves into town, in that it strains those local businesses. Think Blockbuster in the video rental space. Do we also think that the impact of on-line commerce has stabilized to the point where it can be ignored? Same goes for the impact of remote-work changing foot traffic in downtown areas, do we think that has stabilized enough to assume there's no retail 'fatalities' attributeable to office-spaces being less populated?
Yes, all of those things have an effect. But it’s not an assumption - there are volumes of information available to you should you want to do your own research on shoplifting and its affect on small businesses. It’s actually a more profound impact, because small businesses cannot spread their losses out to their less money losing affiliates in other areas like big retailers can.
But how is the cause of closure to be determined, it's not an issue of the relative impact of shoplifting on small business versus large(which I would be interesting in getting some insight on), but the impact of other factors relative to shoplifting. Right now there are big shake ups in the retail pharmacy space - as hard as shoplifting is hitting, so too are lower reimbursment rates for perscription drugs. When looking at closed pharmicies in the coming years how would the root cause be ascribed to one factor or the other?
***okay, new here - seeing now a post referencing Target’s closures - will go take a look…*** Target closing a store in Oakland CA may offer a good case study in the near future. The reason has been clearly stated as theft and violence - at that location and at least eight others. Loss of jobs, groceries, etc etc etc.
A restaurant in my area closes. The owner blames "people don't want to work anymore".
Local workers detail extensive mismanagement and the owner's failure to understand that just because the owner has always dreamed of running a restaurant and inherited a chunk of money large enough to open one... doesn't mean anyone else is interested in volunteering to support their passion project.
When there's research on what's causing business closures one of those two explanations tends not to make the list.
Steve if you have never looked into the 'history' of crime in that era, you will be astonished - 'there's nothing new under the sun' when it comes to crime.
Thank You very much for this! Your take on what can be gleaned from the NCVS was more or less where my thinking had taken me, but I have more confidence in you than myself on these things. :)
In your last paragraph, you wrote: "Crime data is inherently flawed...", and that made me think of the quote attributed to George Box - "All models are wrong, but some are useful". Crime data, like any data can be useful, even though it can never be perfect.
7 percent of identity thefts are reported to law enforcement per BJS. Do we create policy based on the 7 percent? Crimes reported to law enforcement are filled with endless problems which is why we have the National Crime Victimization Survey (which is routinely ignored).
Per the FBI's data from 2022 and their slight decrease in violent crime, we all recognize that violence "may" have gone up considerably for a multitude of reasons, underreporting may be the tip of the iceberg. I just did an article on family members and non-strangers being responsible for most violence. How many of these events were reported? I'm guessing that the number is quite low. It's the bulk of violent crime.
Yet crimes reported to law enforcement is the hand dealt, warts and all. It's all we have beyond the ignored National Crime Victimization Survey. There is a point where if crime statistics do not show a clear pattern of increases or decreases, does it really count?
As always, thanks for your analysis. You do great work. But I believe that we need to rethink what we report and how we report it while understanding that the caveats would be endless.
An example: Vermont (via the Associated Press-today) is reporting a huge increase in violence in one of the lowest crime states in the country per FBI numbers. Small numbers allow for large percentage increases or decreases. Yet that wasn't mentioned.
Based on a preliminary exploration of NCVS data via N-DASH(https://ncvs.bjs.ojp.gov/Home), it appears that the growth in violence measured by that instrument saw disproportinate growth of violent crime commited by intimate partners. As is pointed out, these violent victimizations are less likely to be reported to the police. I also noted that in 2022 the rate of violent victimizations reported to the police went down 4%.
I think that it's very fair to consider the hypothesis that under-reporting is not *generally* up do to outside factors, but that larger growth of usually un-reported crimes, a shift in the 'mix' of victimization attributes if you will, has taken place.
As you point out, staff shortages is likely to be part of the issue, but I also believe that the lack of police legitimacy--trust in law enforcement--is also to blame, especially in minority and immigrant neighborhoods. Residents in these neighborhoods tend to have negative interactions with police, so they don't often report crime.
You are absolutely right. However, I would caution against saying: "Both perpetrators and victims likely know that clearance rates for property crimes are usually pretty low throughout the country." A huge portion of perpetrators, those who are young (16-25ish) and live in poverty, haven't any idea about clearance rates (or, for that matter, the penalty for the crime they're committing).
“Perpetrators” know more than you give them credit for. They know clearances are low because they are not caught. And if they are caught what happens to them spreads through their community
I think you're half right. The low odds of getting caught are pretty obvious. The variation in that level of low odds - not so much.
Conversely, everyone I've ever known with an established shoplifting habit - from rich kids doing it for the thrill to people stealing food because they are hungry as well as the people who effectively shoplift for a portion of their living expenses... all of them got caught at least once, and usually more often.
The last group passes around a lot of information about the consequences... but like the first two groups they're ultimately still too locked into responding to scarcity to be deterred by harsher or even more consistent legal punishment. The two events just have too much time between them.
The consequences those shoplifters are sharing information about, and planning their heists around, are much more immediate: return policies and cash value.
So people talk to each other quite a bit about what small, high value items are most accessible.
And when Home Depot went from limiting the no-receipt returns that could be done with a specific id (which means a prolific thief will have to pay people to do the return) to requiring the resulting gift card funds get spent by the same person who did the return, it became a less attractive target.
What sort of security a store has. Whether they will call the police and have you arrested. Whether you know someone who will pay for a specific item, or at least trade for drugs you like.
NOT: how aggressive they are in pursuing charges.
NOT: at what dollar value your theft becomes a more serious offense (something that weed dealers I knew DID regularly respond to)
But yes, people who shoplift are aware that they are unlikely to be caught.
"The study of the data reveals, from 2021 to 2023, more officers were feloniously killed (194) than in any other consecutive three-year period in the past 20 years (73 officers in 2021, 61 officers in 2022, and 60 officers in 2023)."
You know what's not under reported? Officer deaths. Clear indication of rise in crime
Noooo this cant be true because all my liberal friends say that crime is down across all major cities. Doesnt match what I see with my eye but thats okay because....um.....well.............you know trump was racist right???
New here - appreciating the context and consideration you bring.
You describe the reality of how the choices of the people and prosecutors impact crime stats, but I offer the discretion of the responding officer weighs heavily on the resulting stats. Sure, people decide whether or not to call the police, but the crime stats don’t come from the calls for service. Crimes ‘known to police’ come from a cop making the choice to pull a case number (how varies by department and system) and then to attribute an offense to that case number’s report. Seeing Seattle’s drop in the percent of property crime calls resulting in a report is certainly influenced by slower response times - if dude is still there, it’s much more likely a report will be taken - but regardless of when a response occurs, the choice to turn a call for service into a crime report should hold steady. It’s the patrol cop or community service officer who makes that choice - and they stand squarely at the point where the other perceptions and decisions of the people and prosecutors come together. But they make that choice under the pressure of a backlog of other calls for service holding, a field supervisor pushing for the next call to get handled, and a salty detective who will ask why a report was taken if it’s got low solvability factors. Cops hand out call for service numbers (rather than case number) for expediency and so people feel better served. But it only becomes a crime for stats purposes if a case number and associated report are filed in the first place.
Really good analysis Jeff. But there are independent studies that show crime reporting is lower than even the NCVS indicates. Also, ORC is just one type of retail theft and big retailers just one type of victim. How many ground floor retailers in Seattle or SF or SJ have closed? Thousands between all three and most are not Walgreens or CVS or Dicks.
Yet we still measure commercial theft by population which is wrong. Commercial theft rates should be measured by the number of businesses. The SF Chronicle recently got this very wrong when they claimed shoplifting had dropped from 2022 to 2023. They failed to note a larger increase in retail closures. So yes, there were fewer shopliftings, but there were also fewer victim businesses to victimize. Meaning shoplifting hadn't declined at all.
It’s not just reporting times or prosecutions that measure law enforcement effectiveness and perhaps it’s effect on reporting. How about looking at confidence in policing by looking at trusted profession research? It’s declining along with reporting
And I still believe murder is down - to some degree - because emergency medicine is improving. But we’ll see.
I think you have been in research long enough to make credible inferences in your analysis based on things you know outside of the official statistics you so accurately report as well as ones your have cleverly devised and track on your own. I predict your multi city murder tracking figures will make you far more relevant than the FBI. Timeliness is also a statistical point of reference- is it not?
Have a Merry Christmas Jeff
Can we really assume all retail closures are *solely* the results of criminal activity? Especially smaller, local businesses? I seem to recall that there's an effect on smaller local businesses when a big corporate player moves into town, in that it strains those local businesses. Think Blockbuster in the video rental space. Do we also think that the impact of on-line commerce has stabilized to the point where it can be ignored? Same goes for the impact of remote-work changing foot traffic in downtown areas, do we think that has stabilized enough to assume there's no retail 'fatalities' attributeable to office-spaces being less populated?
Yes, all of those things have an effect. But it’s not an assumption - there are volumes of information available to you should you want to do your own research on shoplifting and its affect on small businesses. It’s actually a more profound impact, because small businesses cannot spread their losses out to their less money losing affiliates in other areas like big retailers can.
But how is the cause of closure to be determined, it's not an issue of the relative impact of shoplifting on small business versus large(which I would be interesting in getting some insight on), but the impact of other factors relative to shoplifting. Right now there are big shake ups in the retail pharmacy space - as hard as shoplifting is hitting, so too are lower reimbursment rates for perscription drugs. When looking at closed pharmicies in the coming years how would the root cause be ascribed to one factor or the other?
***okay, new here - seeing now a post referencing Target’s closures - will go take a look…*** Target closing a store in Oakland CA may offer a good case study in the near future. The reason has been clearly stated as theft and violence - at that location and at least eight others. Loss of jobs, groceries, etc etc etc.
Again. I’m referring to small businesses
Small business example:
A restaurant in my area closes. The owner blames "people don't want to work anymore".
Local workers detail extensive mismanagement and the owner's failure to understand that just because the owner has always dreamed of running a restaurant and inherited a chunk of money large enough to open one... doesn't mean anyone else is interested in volunteering to support their passion project.
When there's research on what's causing business closures one of those two explanations tends not to make the list.
I should’ve specified. Small retail businesses. Restaurants are not typically the victim of shoplifting’s and organized retail crime.
Victorian England? Really?
Steve if you have never looked into the 'history' of crime in that era, you will be astonished - 'there's nothing new under the sun' when it comes to crime.
Hanging children for stealing bread stand little chance of a return to usage