andydh96 t1_je0ttky wrote on March 28, 2023 at 4:28 PM

Reply to comment by NetQuarterLatte in New Yorkers overwhelmingly support bail changes ahead of state budget deadline: Poll by Grass8989

You either didn't ready my comment carefully or purposely misinterpreted it, so I'll make it easier for you.

I said bail reform is not the SOLE CAUSE of crime increase -- that's easy to see from crime stats nationally that likewise show increases in non-bail reform states and locales. But neither did I say that COVID was the sole cause -- that too would be disingenuous and an overly-simplistic conclusion (same as your stance which seems to be only blaming bail reform). Effects can have multiple causes -- this is why statistical analyses exist to calculate how much of the increase we can attribute to one factor versus another.

I would suggest against looking at global crime statistics, its like comparing apples and oranges (besides the fact that reported data for many countries are unreliable). Too many different variables across countries makes the comparison far less useful than comparing among states for making policy decisions based off those statistical trends.

NetQuarterLatte t1_je1oi53 wrote on March 28, 2023 at 7:40 PM

The gist is that you were trying to associate covid and crimes.

I get that you’re saying it’s not the sole cause, but even if factually true (your statement would still be technically true if Covid was not a cause at all), it’s still misleading in the overarching context of the conversation.

Even in the US, Covid didn’t hit every city at the same time. The staggered manner in which Covid hit US locations can be used to show a causal relationship of Covid and Crimes, if that exists. However there’s basically no evidence of that.

In fact, NYC got Covid waves earlier than most cities. But even in 2022 we had crimes still rising in NYC faster than other big cities like LA, Chicago and Miami.

andydh96 t1_je26v7v wrote on March 28, 2023 at 9:35 PM

I'm sorry but objectively speaking, what you are saying isn't fully accurate. COVID shut down the national economy. As is typically the case when the economy and employment rates decline, crime goes up and COVID and its short term effects were no exception. Making it sound like we should be beyond COVID is a bit of an over-simplification -- yes in theory we are beyond the pandemic stage but we are still suffering from indirect effects particularly with the economy, supply-chain issues, etc. I think sane minds can agree the economy still hasn't recovered fully. Just because we aren't dealing with something in our faces doesn't mean its effects aren't there. The timing of the COVID waves too isn't really relevant - neither NYC nor the rest of the country operates within its own bubble, just not how society or economies work. When NYC shut down first, it still had ripple effects across the country despite the virus not being nationally widespread yet.

On an aside, I also question the validity of your statement about our crime rates increasing at a larger rate compared to other large US cities but I don't have hard statistics to support my skepticism. Care to link for my own education?

NetQuarterLatte t1_je36b3j wrote on March 29, 2023 at 1:53 AM

Here's a comparison of the increase in violent felonies across those cities during 2022 compared to 2021: https://imgur.com/a/YbvYifw

If your hypothesis linking of Covid to crimes depends on the economy, you can look at the economy directly. Poverty in the US dropped to 20-year lows (https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/PPAAUS00000A156NCEN) during Covid. That puts a dent in the supposed link between economics and crimes nationwide.

But crimes, in NYC at least, climbed to 20-year highs for some crimes.