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A comment on Crime in New York City Plunges to a Level Not Seen Since the 1950s. Parent comment

Re:Crime in New York City Plunges to a Level Not Seen Since ... by junkscience2017 on Thursday December 28, 2017 @07:37PM (#16026469)
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crime_in_Detroit

"Detroit has the second highest murder rate in the United States"

violent crime is down everywhere in the US, so it is still useful to see the relative ranking to other cities

https://www.statista.com/statistics/191219/reported-violent-...

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Re:Crime in New York City Plunges to a Level Not Seen Since ... by benbenolson on Thursday December 28, 2017 @07:39PM (#16026488)
Yeah, if I were him, I definitely wouldn't use Detroit as an example of a low crime rate.
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Re:Crime in New York City Plunges to a Level Not Seen Since ... by Avshalom on Thursday December 28, 2017 @07:46PM (#16026526)
"In 2015, Detroit had its lowest number of criminal homicides in 40 years"

is the point.

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Re:Crime in New York City Plunges to a Level Not Seen Since ... by DrScump on Thursday December 28, 2017 @08:37PM (#16026837)
Their current population is half that of 40 years ago. Rates matter more than absolute numbers.
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Re:Crime in New York City Plunges to a Level Not Seen Since ... by junkscience2017 on Thursday December 28, 2017 @07:53PM (#16026570)
most cities are reporting this trend
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Re:Crime in New York City Plunges to a Level Not Seen Since ... by bluedino on Thursday December 28, 2017 @07:55PM (#16026577)
Except Chicago isn't, which was the whole point of bringing up Detroit
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Re:Crime in New York City Plunges to a Level Not Seen Since ... by danso on Thursday December 28, 2017 @08:28PM (#16026788)
And yet that specific metric for Detroit -- "lowest number of criminal homicides in 40 years" -- is virtually useless as it doesn't account for Detroit's massive population decline.

Via the FBI's UCR tool which has data from 1985-2014: https://www.ucrdatatool.gov/Search/Crime/Local/RunCrimeJuris...

Unfortunately I can't deeplink to pages so here are screenshots:

https://imgur.com/a/LGgJh

- Detroit having ~300 homicides is very good compared to the ~400 homicides it had in 2000. However, that doesn't quite match up to its population decline. The homicide rate in 2000 was ~41.6 per 100K, compared to 43+ in 2014 (and 2015 and 2016 I think).

- Meanwhile, Chicago's 2014 homicide rate was 15.2. In 2015, it was 17.5. And in 2016, it jumped to 27.8 [0]

That jump is a huge jump compared to historic trends. But still a relative low for Chicago when considering 1990-forward. According to the Tribune's homicide tracker, the number of homicides in 2016 was 792 [1]. In 2017, it's tracking to be 664 homicides, which would be a rate of ~23/100K. Still not great but seems too early to say that Chicago is on an unchanging course of increasing crime. And it doesn't make much sense to argue but what about Detroit? when comparing Chicago to NYC.

https://imgur.com/a/LGgJh

[0] http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/data/ct-homicide-spikes-c...

[1] http://crime.chicagotribune.com/chicago/homicides

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Re:Crime in New York City Plunges to a Level Not Seen Since ... by tasty_freeze on Thursday December 28, 2017 @10:45PM (#16027342)
It is a two year trend. Sure, it needs to be explained, but it isn't like some Chicago is some hellhole as it is often portrayed by certain media outlets and politicians. If you look at the 2014 crime statistics, Chicago has a lower crime rate than Minneapolis. Chicago was like #20 in crime rate.
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