Liberal Arts Blog — “The Homicide Spike is Real”
Liberal Arts Blog — Monday is the Joy of Math, Statistics, Shapes, and Numbers Day
Today’s topic:“The Homicide Spike is Real” — analysis and ideology
Good prescription depends on good analysis but if analysis is driven by partisan animus rather than a search for truth the average citizen has a serious problem making sense of the data. So when you hear that New York City homicides were up huge last year, what comes to mind first to you as an explanation? What is your knee-jerk answer to the why question? Are you sure? Is your hypothesis testable? What would prove you wrong? Today, the summary of an article in the New York Times by Raphael Mangal on this subject. Experts — please chime in. Correct, elaborate elucidate.
THE DATA ON NYC HOMICIDES AND SHOOTINGS IN 2020
1. Homicides — up 41% to 441 (through December 27th)
2. Shootings — up 97.4% to 1518.
3. NYC has not seen as dramatic a rise since the early 1970s.
NB: “Black and Hispanic people have constituted at least 95% of the cities shooting victims every year for the more than a decade.”
ALTERNATIVE EXPLANATIONS — how much weight should be given to each?
1. Covid — rise in unemployment and lockdown
2. Poverty
3. Well intentioned criminal justice policies (bail reform, defunding of police, decriminalization,…)
NB: “Statistics are poor stand-ins for the lives cut short, the families torn apart, and the innocence stolen from the souls of children — like the 6-year-old girl whose father was gunned down righty before her eyes as they crossed a Bronx street, hand in hand, in broad daylight.”
THE LESSONS OF THE PAST AND RECENT CHANGES IN CRIMINAL JUSTICE
POLICIES
1. Between 2006 and 2009 the unemployment rate for working age Black men rose from 9% to 17.9% but homicides fell from 596 in 2006 to 471 in 2009.
3. “In 2016 — the year before New York City posted a modern-era record-low 292 homicides — the citywide poverty rate was 19.5%, almost a full point higher than it was in 1989, the year before the city posted a record-high 2262 homicides.”
3. Mangual thinks that the most important cause of the spike is a rash of well-intentioned criminal justice reforms that have crippled the police while incentivizing criminals. Prime examples: decriminalization of. many offenses, making it more difficult to prosecute minors, drop in pedestrian stops, bail and discovery reform, the disbanding of the plain-clothes crime teams.
NB “All of these changes have either raised the transaction costs of policing and prosecution or increased the amount of time repeat offenders are spending on the street.”
Opinion | The Homicide Spike Is Real
PDF with headlines — Google Drive
YOUR TURN
So what are your personal favorite magic numbers? What do they stand for? Please share the coolest thing you learned this week related to math, statistics, or numbers in general. Or, even better, the coolest or most important thing you learned in your life related to math.
This is your chance to make someone else’s day. And to consolidate in your memory something you might otherwise forget. Or to think more deeply than otherwise about something dear to your heart. Continuity is key to depth of thought
