[persistent]

Are you sure this isn't just a bias of yours? Urban areas in the United States have a lower rate of fatal injuries due to violence than do rural areas. Perhaps this is not what you meant by "violent crime"?

I know the output of these reports is difficult to interpret but see [1]. The top decile of per-capita violent deaths are rural counties, not urban ones.

1: https://wisqars.cdc.gov:8443/cdcMapFramework/output/m5886273...

[jcims]

It could be a bias of mine, but if averaged out over an entire county I don't think these are mutually exclusive. I'm talking about the 'rough parts of town' that are typically dominated by a minority population.

Try this:

Go find a crime map site, pick a big city and show homicides over the last year.

Then go to the racial dot map and see how it compares to the census of that locale.

http://demographics.virginia.edu/DotMap/

[its_the_future]

Are you sure socioeconomic status is not a better fit and that race is not just a proxy for it?

[jcims]

I’m not saying it’s specific races or some sneaky proxy for them, but the fact that there are different races at all likly plays some role. For example, I firmly believe if we had opposites millenia with regard to race these same patterns would emerge.

Now I have lost track of the exact scope of ‘socioeconomic status’, but i don’t think that being poor/uneducated/financially insecure explains it all either. West Virginia is the epitome of low socioeconomic status, but violent crime is relatively low.

My basic thinking is that these communities do not have a healthy, trusting relationship with law enforcement. The cause for that is complex of course, but the net effect ties back to the OP. If law enforcement isn’t a reliable or trusted resource, a community will fall back to vigilante/mob justice. Without the resources of a court and prison system to remove people from a community, that justice is going to come in the form of violence. This of course creates a negative feedback loop with law enforcement, exacerbating the problem.

On the upside, this problem might actually be easier to solve.

[duncan-donuts]

Idk, I’m kind of with you on this. I grew up in an area that was racially diverse and also shared a distrust of the police and legal system. Minorities in the United States are being shot and killed by police at an alarming rate. I’m not convinced that every urban community holistically decides they must take justice into their own hands, but I, anecdotally, grew up in a place where people do take matters into their own hands. Again, I’m not saying you’re onto something here, but I do know many people who would rather fight in the streets over fight in a court room.

[jcims]

I’m not very bright socially so it’s entirely likely I’m wrong.

With that, you don’t need to centrally ‘decide’ anything. I think folks would generally observe patterns and come to similar conclusions. Honestly it’s probably the same way the ‘blue code’ develops...theres no meeting, just patterns. It’s not an absolute model, police do get called (and fired) all the time despite this.

Doesn’t really matter what i think at the end of the day and im grossly oversimplifying most of it, but it is a handy framework that explains a lot for me.

[codyb]

I very much think socioeconomic status is more likely a better fit.

I have a feeling if you did the same test but instead of “crime” you did “wealth percentile” you’d probably end up with the same results in the United States though unfortunately.

Not a lot of well off minority neighborhoods throughout the country and the wealth disparity even with all the poor white people is very real.

[thaumasiotes]

> I very much think socioeconomic status is more likely a better fit.

Believe it or not, this exact question has been studied pretty intensively for decades.

The predictive value of race is much higher than the predictive value of socioeconomic status.

[floe]

Ah, then you should be able to provide some sources.

[nkurz]

I think this is an excellent analysis with sources: https://randomcriticalanalysis.com/2015/11/16/racial-differe...

His conclusion is that on a county-by-county level in the US, race is the strongest predictor of homicide rates, with rates of single-motherhood being next strongest. Poverty is a reasonable predictor, but weaker than these and several others.

I read this closely a couple years ago, but only skimmed it now to remind myself of the conclusions. I'd be interested to hear peoples' thoughts on whether his statistical techniques are appropriately applied. I recall it was was convincing to me at the time.

[mcbits]

What is the definition of "violence" for that chart? Specifically, does it include self-inflicted violence (suicide) and vehicular homicide (drunk driving)? If so, it is much less surprising.

[tptacek]

From CDC: a violent death is defined as a death resulting from the intentional use of physical force or power, threatened or actual, against oneself, another person, or a group or community

[ravar]

Against oneself, so it includes suicide.

[persistent]

I believe it does, yes. "All Causes". The problem with excluding it is there's not enough underlying data to get WISQARS to cough up a county-level breakdown. Explore it yourself by starting at https://wisqars.cdc.gov:8443/cdcMapFramework/

[parsnips]

Great, now run the numbers on per capita per square mile and get back to us.

[twic]

What on earth does "per capita square mile" mean?

[parsnips]

Comparing urban and rural and using per-capita numbers is a fallacious argument. You must control for land area. For example a square mile that is labeled “urban” vs square mile labeled “rural” the numbers per-capita tilt homicides way in favor of urban areas... and its not even close.

https://crimeresearch.org/2017/04/number-murders-county-54-u...

[jcwilde]

I fail to see how "per capita per square mile" is a useful measure.

_Anything_ measured in that way would show densely populated area vastly outnumbering rural areas, perhaps with the exclusion of things that essentially don't exist in cites, such as "number of farms per capita per square mile".

The measure appears to be concocted specifically for Lying With Statistics™.

[parsnips]

Should proximity to potential assailants not be taken into account?

[csande17]

The "murders per capita per square mile" metric really gets to the heart of the question on every American's mind: what percentage of face-to-face interactions are murders?

[hinkley]

I think I'm hung up on the same thing, chief.

Why per capita per square mile instead of per capita? Why do the miles enter into it? Because of more interactions? I'd like to see just the numbers per capita. I suspect they're fairly close.

[parsnips]

Because violent felonies such as homicide proximity is the requisite factor in victimhood. ie The victim must be located near the killer.

Given 1 homicide in 100k for 100sq miles called "rural" vs 1 homicide in 100k for 5 sq miles called "urban", your odds of being in proximity of a homicide are much higher in the urban area. 20 times more likely.

[adamson]

I live in lower Manhattan, and there have been many shootings within a mile of me in the past year, even a few within two blocks of me, but because the per-capita numbers are so low, I'm pretty unconcerned about being shot, and so it doesn't really bother that I'm near the shootings. I don't really see how standardizing by (people * area) does you any good in capturing public safety, or even perceived public safety

[ryanpetrich]

Being further away from killers that I'm equally likely to be victims of isn't any more comforting.

[fenomas]

> Because violent felonies such as homicide proximity is the requisite factor in victimhood

This doesn't stand up. Crime statistics are measured after the crimes happen; whatever effect might be due to proximity has already taken place.

Consider: in your example you say two places have equal per-capita homicide rates but one is 20x denser. It follows that the denser area will have 20x more people "in proximity" to any given homicide, and therefore that P(victim|proximity) must be 20x lower compared to the rural place.

The way you've done the math only makes sense if everyone "in proximity" of a homicide was equally likely to be a victim, but given equal per-capita rates that can't be the case.

[nickpsecurity]

Although I don't know, I do know that distance or location matters a lot. Statistically, one can avoid murder easily just by location. Sometimes not even very far away from hotspots.

https://crimeresearch.org/2017/04/number-murders-county-54-u...

[tom_]

Per capita per square mile.

[persistent]

Why?

[parsnips]

because your narrative is false when accounting for land area/population density.

[Causality1]

Considering he referred to minority concentrations in urban cities compared to the rest of the city, I believe the bias would be on your part since he didn't bring up rural areas at all.

[hinkley]

Americans have a real problem with proportions.

If you put a million people in a city and 100 of them die of a flu, everyone screams epidemic. You spread those same people out over all the small towns in a state, and 200 of them die, it's just fine.

Because, I suspect, we often associate statistics with a location rather than a cross section of society. We think "someone in my town was murdered", not "the murder rate is 1/250,000".

[fastball]

I think this is a problem of humanity, not a problem of Americans.