{"id":26965,"date":"2021-12-21T19:15:23","date_gmt":"2021-12-21T19:15:23","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/cjstudents.com\/?p=26965"},"modified":"2021-12-21T19:15:23","modified_gmt":"2021-12-21T19:15:23","slug":"what-could-actually-make-bay-area-crime-go-down-studies-have-fascinating-theories","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/cjstudents.com\/index.php\/2021\/12\/21\/what-could-actually-make-bay-area-crime-go-down-studies-have-fascinating-theories\/","title":{"rendered":"What could actually make Bay Area crime go down? Studies have fascinating theories"},"content":{"rendered":"

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Ask residents in the San Francisco Bay Area what their most pressing regional concern is right now, and a large percentage of them will likely say crime<\/a>. High-profile robberies, endless car and garage break-ins and the general sense of unease that comes with it all has crime top of mind for many locals.\u00a0<\/p>\n

And an escalating region-wide conversation around crime has led to a lot of conflicting opinions on what can be done about it.<\/p>\n

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Modern criminologists, scholars and law enforcement agencies have been analyzing crime trends and prevention techniques for decades. Much of the research centers on the 1990s, when the United States experienced a drastic drop in crime. That drop has held steady, and America has yet to see anything like the catastrophic crime rates of the 1970s and 1980s; according to FBI data, the violent crime rate fell a further 49% between 1993 and 2019.<\/p>\n

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The FBI charts violent crime rates nationwide; rates have been rising in California since a low in 2014.<\/p>\n

<\/span>FBI data<\/span><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

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“These declines occurred essentially without warning,\u201d \u201cFreakanomics\u201d co-author and economist Steven D. Levitt wrote in his 2004 study \u201cUnderstanding Why Crime Fell in the 1990s<\/a>.\u201d “Leading experts were predicting explosions in crime in the early and mid-1990s, precisely the point when crime rates began to plunge.”<\/p>\n

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Because of the disparity between the chaotic 1980s and declining rates of the 1990s, the two decades are particularly instructive for people looking to see what actually impacted public safety. There\u2019s little everyone agrees on \u2014 although some data points correlate, it\u2019s very difficult to assign causality to something as broad and complex as \u201ccrime\u201d \u2014 but the theories are fascinating. Here\u2019s what a number of prominent researchers have found does and doesn\u2019t seem to alter crime rates.<\/p>\n

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What doesn\u2019t work?<\/strong><\/p>\n


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Buoyed by Malcolm Gladwell\u2019s \u201cThe Tipping Point,\u201d the broken windows theory is one of the most famous modern policing axioms. The theory goes that minor quality-of-life issues, like vandalism, jaywalking and loitering, create an unsafe environment where all crime is more prevalent. Former New York City Mayor Rudy Giuliani\u2019s \u201czero tolerance\u201d approach famously focused on policing these types of misdemeanors, and he credited it with NYC\u2019s historic turnaround in the 1990s. “Obviously murder and graffiti are two vastly different crimes,\u201d he told the press in 1998. \u201cBut they are part of the same continuum, and a climate that tolerates one is more likely to tolerate the other.”<\/p>\n

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But despite its fame, there\u2019s little evidence the broken windows theory actually works. For one, Giuliani took office in 1994; Levitt points out that crime in New York City (and nationwide) had already begun its decline several years prior. A 2003 National Bureau of Economic Research study<\/a> found that while misdemeanor arrests went up 70% in New York City in the 1990s, very few of those offenders ended up with jail time. \u201cFurthermore, an increase in misdemeanor arrests has no impact on the number of murder, assault and burglary cases,\u201d the study asserts.<\/p>\n

Levitt agreed. Although NYC was the nation\u2019s most well-known example of being \u201ctough on crime,\u201d Levitt said similar drops were seen in cities that weren\u2019t employing the same tactics. “The universality of these gains [in public safety] argues against idiosyncratic local factors as the primary source of reduction,\u201d he wrote.<\/p>\n

A 1997 National Institute of Justice brief<\/a> came to similar conclusions. The research arm of the US Department of Justice \u2014 hardly a bastion of liberal law enforcement policy \u2014 reviewed over 500 scientific evaluations of crime prevention methods around the country. Among the methods it listed under \u201cwhat didn\u2019t work\u201d were: “neighborhood watch programs organized with police,\u201d gun buybacks, adding jail time to misdemeanors that would normally result in just probation, “increased arrests or raids on drug market locations\u201d and arresting juveniles for \u201cminor offenses.\u201d<\/p>\n

The brief was particularly critical of arresting young people for small crimes. Studies showed arresting minors increased the likelihood they would be “more delinquent in the future than if police exercise discretion to merely warn them.\u201d<\/p>\n

Police being courteous toward suspects correlated with improved outcomes across age groups, the National Institute of Justice analysis found. “Policing with greater respect to offenders reduced repeat offending in one analysis … and increased respect for the law and police in another,\u201d it cited.\u00a0<\/p>\n

What does work?<\/strong><\/p>\n

So what do academics and law enforcement researchers believe actually impacts crime rates? The majority of studies agree that when cities add more police officers, crime tends to go down. The National Bureau of Economic Research study notes that NYC increased its police force 35% in the 1990s, which Levitt cites as a more important factor in lowering crime than heavy-handed policies around petty misdemeanors. The National Institute of Justice found in its studies that adding more patrols to \u201chot spots\u201d also helped.<\/p>\n