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A comment on Steady Decline in Major Crime Baffles Experts. Parent comment

Re:Steady Decline in Major Crime Baffles Experts by scottkduncan on Tuesday May 24, 2011 @11:39AM (#2580244)
The main lesson I took from watching The Wire is not to trust any statistics that come from police departments. When performance is evaluated on crime statistics and case closure rates, there are an awful lot of tricks one can pull to make one's performance look better no matter what the underlying trends are.

The second lesson I took from The Wire is that while robbing drug dealers for a living can be lucrative, the risk/reward calculus is slightly problematic.

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Re:Steady Decline in Major Crime Baffles Experts by ultrasaurus on Tuesday May 24, 2011 @12:14PM (#2580435)
That's why many studies only track the murder rate (it's hard to fudge). Just making people wait an extra hour before they can report a crime has a miraculous effect on the reported crime rate.
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