Is the crime rate in Chicago exaggerated? (Roscoe, Time: 2013, homes)

[jonnynonos]

Originally Posted by Vlajos

These increases seem to happen every few years. Why? Wtf knows. Long term trends clearly show declines.

Of course the US is filled with idiots who only look at the short term. Just look at our economic system.

Really? Across so many cities? I wasn't aware.

[jonnynonos]

Originally Posted by Ivory Lee Spurlock

Yeah Fox News and right wing talk radio has been talking about this for the last couple of days. According to them, the common denominator is these cities are all run by democrats or liberals. I think that's a bunch of nonsense. Those cities have always been violent ever since I can remember and I'm sure some have been run by Republicans at least once over the past 50 years and I'm sure the murder rate was still way higher than the national average.

Yeah, that's clearly a silly explanation.

[jonnynonos]

Originally Posted by jwuk45

Guns? Each year the number of guns in America increases. The violent crime rate continues to decrease every year but the homicide rate in certain areas of certain cities climbs.

Also, when you have a culture that increasingly puts being successful/respected/looked up to above human life, it's not that surprising. All it takes these days is someone to make a bad comment on facebook and they end up shot to death. I think social media has a big part to play. Young people grow up very detached from real social interaction, and are given a distorted view of human interaction through sites like facebook. People get murdered for not "liking" a person's status. It's ludicrous.



Reposting the link as yours is dead

http://www.nytimes.com/2015/09/01/us...us-cities.html

It's overwhelmingly a problem in the black community of America. Even as a very anti-racist far left liberal, I'm starting to get a bit tired of the #blacklivesmatter thing without any mention of issues in their own communities.

Thanks.

Hard to believe the proliferation of guns doesn't play a huge role, but from what I've read there's been no discernible uptick in recent years and it's likely no uptick at all year over year.

[jwuk45]

It's weird. I think we'd need to see a few more years of statistics. In general, crime is down massively across the board. Even in the worst Chicago neighborhoods, all types of crime are down as much as half what they were 10 years ago. But then, that would tie in with the theory of a lot of these new murders being the result of petty arguments among friends/family members rather than criminal activities.

[jonnynonos]

Originally Posted by jwuk45

It's weird. I think we'd need to see a few more years of statistics. In general, crime is down massively across the board. Even in the worst Chicago neighborhoods, all types of crime are down as much as half what they were 10 years ago. But then, that would tie in with the theory of a lot of these new murders being the result of petty arguments among friends/family members rather than criminal activities.

Real numbers or proportional? Real numbers are largely attributable to population loss.

Chicago's 50 more himicides is in my view noteworthy. That is a big jump in Chicago. But the huge increases across so many cities are very odd to me.

Likely it is a variety of factors, and we will probably never really know.

Hopefully it goes back down next year and is just an aberration.

[jwuk45]

Have all neighborhoods in Chicago seen their populations halved in the past 10 years though? I've looked at a ton of them on here http://crime.chicagotribune.com/chicago/community and they all have the same downward trend in crime numbers, which tallies with overall crime rate in America dropping every year since the early 90s.

• Reported violent crime rate in the U.S. 1990-2013 | Timeline

[marothisu]

Originally Posted by jonnynonos

Really? Across so many cities? I wasn't aware.

On the top of my head, cities like Baltimore, Milwaukee, Indianapolis, New York City, and Philadelphia are having increases in crime this year from years past. As Vlajos has said that most cities in the country are seeing a long term downward trend and have been for awhile.

[NOLA101]

Originally Posted by marothisu

On the top of my head, cities like Baltimore, Milwaukee, Indianapolis, New York City, and Philadelphia are having increases in crime this year from years past.

The crime rate in NYC in 2015 is roughly 5% lower than in 2014.

http://www.nyc.gov/html/nypd/downloa...en-us-city.pdf

[marothisu]

Originally Posted by NOLA101

The crime rate in NYC in 2015 is roughly 5% lower than in 2014.

http://www.nyc.gov/html/nypd/downloa...en-us-city.pdf

You're right. I was thinking of homicides - 208 YTD for 2015 versus 190 in 2014 (9.5% increase). Rape also increased. Good to see the burglary numbers go down so much.

[18th&BlueIsland]

Originally Posted by homenj

I know one thread said that you cannot post about Chicago crime stats so I do not know if I can post this because it is about crime in Chicago but I want to focus on whether the crime rate is exaggerated in Chicago instead of the stats. Mods, I do not know if I am allowed to do this.

But do you think when people talk about Chicago's crime rate it is blown out of proportion or do people have credibility when they talk about how Chicago is so crime ridden?

Crime rates, by definition, are based strictly on actual crime data. The only way they could be exaggerated is if significant numbers of non-existent crimes are being included in the data, which is unlikely.

The exaggeration comes not in the crime rates or data, but in how the media selectively presents (or completely ignores, as is increasingly the case in recent years) the data when it doesn't fit their narrative. For example, the data show
that Chicago in recent years has had a lower number of murders than it has had at any other point in the past half century, and a significantly lower murder rate than many other U.S. cities. The media doesn't exaggerate those rates-- if they did, it would be easy to point out that they are lying-- they just ignore them entirely, because it wouldn't fit their narrative to report them. Their narrative is based on what will attract viewers and sell advertising to maximize profits, because that's how businesses work. Fear sells more advertising than good news does.

So that's where the "exaggeration" comes from, if you want to call it that. For those of us who choose to examine the data rather than the sensationalistic media narrative, there is no exaggeration.