[kapitza]

Society's tolerance for crime is bizarrely irrational. There will be about 800 murders in Chicago this year -- yawn.

Now imagine if 800 Chicagoans were killed by radiation leaks from a nuclear plant. "Well, you can't have electricity without plutonium. Do you want to turn everyone's lights off?" Or if 800 African-Americans were lynched Emmett Till style by KKK thugs. "Regrettable, but what are you going to do? And don't white people have legitimate complaints?"

Even murder rates can be fudged -- turn the homicide into a "death investigation":

http://www.chicagomag.com/Chicago-Magazine/May-2014/Chicago-...

Another point to keep in mind when you see these too-good-to-be-true stories is that criminal subcultures are actually quite conservative. When laws and policies change, it takes time for people to collectively figure out what they can get away with. This makes crime rates a lagging indicator -- we're still experiencing the positive effects of the crime crackdown of the '90s, not just in incarceration rates but in cultural behavior.

The mid-'60s were another period when social scientists realized that punishment was a medieval anachronism. It took 10-20 years to see the full effects of these policies, and another 10 for the political backlash to get started. It seems like we're due for another round of this pendulum.

[emmelaich]

> Society's tolerance for crime is bizarrely irrational.

   In 1940, a survey was taken of teachers asking them
   to list the five most important problems in school.
   They were: (1) talking out of turn; (2) chewing gum;
   (3) making noise; (4) running in halls; and (5) cutting
   in line.

   Fifty years later, the survey was repeated. The 1990
   list was substantially revised: (1) drug abuse;
   (2) alcohol abuse; (3) pregnancy; (4) suicide;
   (5) rape.

From http://www.aei.org/publication/defining-deviancy-up/, Charles Krauthammers corollary to Pat Moynihan's Defining Deviancy Down. http://www2.sunysuffolk.edu/formans/DefiningDeviancy.htm

Still good reading and still controversial after all these years.

[burkaman]

There is much more to that article than the introduction, but in case anyone is wondering why Krauthammer doesn't cite a source for those surveys, it's because they're not real: http://www.snopes.com/language/document/school.asp, or search "Discipline List" here http://ece.dallasnews.com/archive/

A bit later in the article, Krauthammer really succinctly sums up a major flaw in his own argument:

> As part of this project of moral leveling, whole new areas of deviancy–such as date rape and politically incorrect speech–have been discovered. And old areas–such as child abuse–have been amplified by endless reiteration in the public presses and validated by learned reports of their astonishing frequency.

Yes, perhaps the reason rape seems so much more common is that people in the 1940s didn't understand what rape is. Apparently some people still don't.

[kapitza]

Yes, perhaps the reason rape seems so much more common is that people in the 1940s didn't understand what rape is.

I want to order a time machine and send you back to have a conversation with your great-grandparents, for whom you seem to have so little respect.

Sure, the "list" isn't real. People wouldn't have been passing it around in the '70s if it hadn't reflected the actual experience of living in the '40s, which many, many people at that time remembered well.

A time machine is not actually available. Your great-grandparents are probably dead. But you can still go read a bunch of books from the amazing, wonderful, astoundingly different, and yes -- not at all perfect -- world that they lived in. Chronological chauvinism is not a healthy emotion.

[eli_gottlieb]

> Your great-grandparents are probably dead. But you can still go read a bunch of books from the amazing, wonderful, astoundingly different, and yes -- not at all perfect -- world that they lived in.

My great-grandparents were crossing the Atlantic to flee pogroms. My grandfather did similar, but lost the rest of his family who didn't leave Europe in the 1910s and 1920s when the 1930s and 1940s set in. There was this little thing while my grandmother was young called, "the Holocaust".

Fuck the violence, authoritarianism, and chauvinisms of the past. Today is far better.

[pm90]

While facts like that may seem rather startling at first, I don't think they necessarily reflect a degradation of society and values (the obvious implication); rather, it is a simple indication that society and culture have changed a lot, and our existing system of incentives and laws have not been able to deal with it. e.g. the natural reaction to this is to increase police presence, be stricter and harsher in punishments etc. But the root causes remain unchanged: rise of single parent homes, the failure of the war on drugs, economic inequality, changing views w.r.t marriage, children getting mature faster etc.

I guess my point is that we need to have a more holistic approach to resolving this issue than to simply be harsher with punishments and policing.

[alpsgolden]

It seems like we're due for another round of this pendulum.

I fear this too. As someone who now lives in a city that suffered enormously from the 70s crime rise, and benefited greatly from the 2000s decline in crime, the prospect of another crime wave makes me wonder if I should hold off on buying a house.

[michaelbuddy]

ask your local trustworthy agents and your local police whether you should buy.

[iamdave]

What's with the downvotes to this? If there's something to be debated I would have liked to read it because this comment, I don't disagree with.

[sdenton4]

There's a wide variety of explanations for the crime drop, including from increased educational attainment, overall better economic situation, and lead poisoning caused by leaded gasoline subsiding.

Attributing it solely to crackdowns in the 90's is pretty disingenuous; crime had been falling before Giuliani, and in a broad array of cities which hasn't instituted tough on crime policies.