[npunt]

Whenever the high crime rates in the 70s-90s is brought up I like to remind folks this was likely an aberration with a specific environmental cause (lead), rather than representative of human nature.

This [1] is an eye-opening roundup of ~25 major studies that support the lead-crime hypothesis, including comparisons across countries & cultures. The evidence is pretty overwhelming and certainly changed my perspective on human nature, which for me had previously been influenced by both growing up around the violence in CA in the 80s-90s and the media culture that depicted and sensationalized it.

If you walk away from this thinking 'oh, humans are a lot less violent than I thought they were', you might find other beliefs built on top of that assumption also follow. These types of perspective shifts in life are rare, and very powerful.

[1] https://www.motherjones.com/kevin-drum/2018/02/an-updated-le...

[Gibbon1]

Now consider the lead politics hypothesis. If lead exposure lead to brain damage that resulted in the murder rate tripling, what is that doing to civic politics? Because while that generation has mostly aged out of the higher crime demographic. It's smack in the middle of the voter demographic.

[doliveira]

Never had thought of that consequence. Quite a disturbing thought indeed.

[qes]

> It's smack in the middle of the voter demographic.

Not just voters, large portions of our representatives are also from that demographic.

[npunt]

Yep, this is a worrisome thought.

[dionidium]

Unfortunately, homicide rates in some U.S. cities are nearing (and in some cases eclipsing) their early 90s highs. As I often do, I’ll use St. Louis as an example here, because it’s the city I happen to be most familiar with, but this is happening all over. I completely bought the story you’re telling and never thought we’d ever see homicide rates matching the gang-war carnage of early 90s St. Louis, but we’re blowing past those rates, in fact.

That’s not to say the lead story is bunk, but, sadly, I don’t think you can draw the conclusion that those earlier rates were uniquely aberrant.

https://www.officer.com/command-hq/technology/computers-soft...

Edit to add this link: https://www.vox.com/2020/8/3/21334149/murders-crime-shooting...

Don’t get too focused on St. Louis, in other words; as I said, homicide rates are up all over the country.

[npunt]

My point was that if you baselined how good or bad you thought humans were by the crime rates in the 80s, you'd come away thinking humans were way more violent than they are. I think the same holds for 2020 - if you assess human nature by how people act when they're in the midst of a global pandemic, you'd come to the same incorrect conclusion.

Another way to put it is that much of our behavior is dictated by our environment, and if we create an environment where extreme chemical, biological, psychological, and economic stressors are kept at bay, then humans are just not prone to a great deal of violence.

[dionidium]

> I think the same holds for 2020

The homicide rate in St. Louis bottomed out in 2003 at a rate of 21.8 per 100k. By 2014 it had more than doubled to 49.9. By 2015 it had nearly tripled to 59.3 per 100k. (It’ll end this year in the 70s per 100k). The rates have been rising for a long time. It’s not just 2020.

And the trend is similar in other cities.

Source: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crime_in_St._Louis

[npunt]

Homicides nationwide are well off of historic highs [1].

The Vox link you previously posted shows the large spike (+~30%) being 2020 related.

The 21.8/100k you cite for St Louis in 2003 was also abnormally and suspiciously low, as 2002 and 2004 were in the 30s/100k. I wouldn't baseline anything off a single local outlier that's 50% off from other years. Perhaps a statistical / data collection anomaly? You can see in 2004 the rate was about 35/100k, while in 2013 it was 38/100k, a scant change.

You can see that data in context within a chart in this NYT article from 2015 [2] which discusses some possible factors in St Louis' persistently high crime. 2014 and onwards is likely skewed considerably by the Ferguson unrest, and it sounds like St Louis might still be dealing with that alongside other factors.

Outside the local context, none of this data at a macro scale looks like the trend we see in the 70s-80s that the lead-crime hypothesis seeks to describe though. Crime nationwide has indeed been growing slightly since 2015... to hypothesize about why we're seeing this, I'd guess it's largely due to loss of opportunity and rising income inequality leading to poverty and desperation, which our recent economic policies have only been worsening. But I'm absolutely no expert in the subject, just trying to figure things out like you are.

[1] https://www.macrotrends.net/countries/USA/united-states/murd...

[2] https://www.nytimes.com/2015/02/11/us/st-louis-puzzles-over-...

[dionidium]

It’s surprisingly hard to find good charts, but I stumbled across this thread today:

https://twitter.com/Crimealytics/status/1343955297073770496?...

These charts very clearly show an uptick in the nationwide homicide rate starting in 2014. It then levels off. And then there’s a big jump again this year.

This is entirely consistent with my claim that rates are way up nationwide and that they started going up before 2020.

[npunt]

Thanks for the followup, just seeing this now. I think perhaps we're not on the same page about the central hypothesis.

1. Is nationwide crime up 2019 -> 2020? We agree, yes it is, and quite a bit! This link, as well as previous ones show that. My hunch is covid and its economic fallout is likely the primary factor.

2. Is nationwide crime up in the last 10 years? We agree, they are somewhat.

3. Are local crime rates in St Louis up? Sure, but thats a bit besides the point I was originally making, which was related to nationwide crime and the lead-crime hypothesis, as local factors can add noise to analysis.

4. Do recent nationwide crime trends look anything like the massive bump in nationwide crime the lead-crime hypothesis seeks to explain, thus potentially invalidating the hypothesis? This is the question I was asking. I believe recent crime trends do not invalidate it.

As I stated before, "none of this data at a macro scale looks like the trend we see in the 70s-80s that the lead-crime hypothesis seeks to describe". Later [1] in the tweet thread you just posted, the author shows a chart of murder stats going back to 1960. It shows a massive bump in the 70s-80s (up to 10 murders per 100k) followed by a sharp drop through the 90s (down to fewer than 6 murders per 100k). This has not been replicated since, ergo, current crime trends are not sufficient to refute the hypothesis.

[1] https://twitter.com/Crimealytics/status/1343955297073770496

[oblio]

> Unfortunately, homicide rates in some U.S. cities are nearing (and in some cases eclipsing) their early 90s highs.

In 2020. Year of infamy.