KCRag Forum

I am posting this column by the Star's Yael Abouhalkah on crime statistics in Kansas City because I think it's significant, and people need to be aware that crime is dramatically lower now than in the 1990s.

Violent crime is down almost 50 percent from 1992.

1992 — 12,596 violent crimes
2009 — 6,303 violent crimes

Property crime is down 40 percent from 1992.

45,728 in 1990 -- reported property crimes.
26,992 in 2009.

All this, while the City's population has increased by almost 10 percent.

441,545 in 1990
482,299 in 2009.

http://www.kansascity.com/2010/07/07/20 ... f-kcs.html

Abouhalkah says that few people believe this, and he says one reason is that coverage of crime on local television has exploded in the last decade.

However, when TV news organizations report daily crime (i.e. murders), they never mention that crime statistics bear out that crime is significantly reduced in Kansas City compared to past years.

In 2009, Zip Code 64130, which straddles Brush Creek east of the Country Club Plaza was reported to account for 20 percent of Kansas Citians in prison for murder or voluntary manslaughter (101 killers).

Yael goes on to talk about how Kansas City's murder rate remains too high (which it certainly is, although I'd say one murder is one too many, however unrealistic) but I think even the murder statistic is misleading. I am no expert, but (following the news and murder stats) many areas of town, especially those that would be frequented by the average suburbanite, rarely if ever see a murder or shooting of a suburbanite/tourist. This would include downtown (however you want to define it), Plaza, Westport, Brookside, Union Hill, etc.

But, as we have mentioned before, the hypothetical straw-man suburbanite does not draw such distinctions. They hear "murder" "kcmo" and that's plenty enough to keep them away. Again, this doesn't cover them all, but it does cover our straw-man, at whom I shake my fist.

Don't want to politicize these stats, but anyone who has read Freakonomics can tell you what is perhaps the biggest contribution to the lowering of crime statistics.  It is a pretty amazing correlation and propelled a huge drop in crime across the entire nation.

bobbyhawks wrote: Don't want to politicize these stats, but anyone who has read Freakonomics can tell you what is perhaps the biggest contribution to the lowering of crime statistics.  It is a pretty amazing correlation and propelled a huge drop in crime across the entire nation.

I thought that was fascinating. I'm not sure that I buy into it wholeheartedly but it is definitely a compelling correlation.

bobbyhawks wrote: Don't want to politicize these stats, but anyone who has read Freakonomics can tell you what is perhaps the biggest contribution to the lowering of crime statistics.  It is a pretty amazing correlation and propelled a huge drop in crime across the entire nation.

what is it, for those of us who have not read the book?

chrizow wrote: what is it, for those of us who have not read the book?

Roe v. Wade led to the availability of abortions for poor people. Less unwanted babies = less crime in poor areas.

KCMax wrote: Roe v. Wade led to the availability of abortions for poor people. Less unwanted babies = less crime in poor areas.

Pretty amazing because people like Rudy Guliani made political fortunes over claiming that they were crime elimination wizards when the stats went down at almost the same rate per size of city all across the country.  This correlation began right around when those kids would have turned 18 (1992) and got better as the new generation overtook the old.  I think LA's stats were almost the same as NYC's.  I'm sure there are lots of factors, but there are thousands of comparisons that can be made between same-sized communities that invested heavily in crime prevention and those that didn't.  It seems that all experienced drops, and that the difference between drops in crime were not significant.  States where it was legal before Roe v. Wade had earlier and more dramatic drops in crime.

People seem to be more careful with crack, particularly dealers. A lot of shitbags won't sell it, as their crack customers tend to kill them. I don't know if there is a correlation there, however.

warwickland wrote: People seem to be more careful with crack, particularly dealers. A lot of shitbags won't sell it, as their crack customers tend to kill them. I don't know if there is a correlation there, however.

I believe the book also mentions that too. Crack violence is way down because the price of crack plummeted.

KCMax wrote: I believe the book also mentions that too. Crack violence is way down because the price of crack plummeted.

There you go...people fightin' over money. nobody has any now, so they just break into your house and steal your laptop and ipod. Heroins definitely back, even in some areas of rural MO where meth previously reigned (see washington, mo). Its just a different drug, anyway.

bobbyhawks wrote: States where it was legal before Roe v. Wade had earlier and more dramatic drops in crime.

I am extremely skeptical.  The biggest contribution to crime is socio-economic conditions and the number of poor have risen both in absolute terms and in terms of percent of the population in spite of Roe vs Wade.  Positive correlations do not necassarily confirm causality. 

Although I read Freakonomics, I later read that the violent crime drop happened in countries around the world regardless of whether their abortion laws changed or not.  So another economist found that a more direct correlation was between what year a country outlawed adding the metal lead to gasoline, and what year the babies who grew up in the reduced-lead environment entered their early twenties.  This update to environmental laws occurred in different years in different countries; each country saw a drop in violent crime almost exactly 21 years later. 

http://www.npr.org/templates/story/stor ... d=16034271

If this theory is true, higher crime in inner cities could be in part explained by higher air pollution levels from automobile traffic over the decades.  And for that matter there's still a lot of lead in old inner city homes even today in the form of flaking old paint.