TLDR; police lose a lot of funding if they don’t send data on extremely grave crimes. Hate crime data submissions really don’t influence police funding.

Long Answer:

Underreporting of crimes is a huge issue. I don’t want to downplay this at all. We really have terrible crime data, and it’s something most laypeople don’t understand. You should know all crimes are self-reported by the police.

But, generally index crimes, eg. murder, forcible rape, robbery, larceny, assault, car theft, are decently accurate. Murder, robbery, and theft are considered to be essentially right all the time for a variety of reasons. (You can’t hide a body forever).

But what’s the big reason we should trust these types of crime? Well, the federal government provides major grants to police conditional on them sending those types of crime records to the FBI to tabulate and analyze. If you don’t send the data, you don’t get the money. Police really care about funding. These grants account for major portions of funding.

That doesn’t mean those records are perfect. Prior to 1960, crime data are essentially useless because the federal government did little to encourage submission. Even after, forcible rape tends to be understated because women weren’t inclined to report crimes.

But what about other types of crimes? Non-index crimes including hate crimes aren’t tied to major sources of FBI funding. That’s not to say the FBI doesn’t care. It’s just that police departments really aren’t trained or equipped for the paperwork necessary. What ends up happening is that only a few departments send hate crime data. Those tend to be really skewed. You may have San Francisco PD sending in data that suggest hate crimes are rampant, San Diego PD saying it’s non-existent, and then really prejudiced counties in Alabama and Mississippi saying there were 0 hate crime incidents (clearly not true). Everything in between is missing. Those data are neither representative nor accurate. Garbage in leads to garbage out. Making any assessments on hate crime data is so cavalier that you’d be a fool to do so.

Economist here. Thought I would shed some light on this.

Stijn Van Nieuwerburgh isn’t really an urban economist. His research focuses on macroeconomics and macro finance. That is a very unique field that is only tangentially related to urban economics.

Ed Glaeser, who appears in the article by way of comment, is the OG urban economist. He is the authority on cities. His comments are likely truer, FYI. He knows the history and econometrics of cities better than anyone. Trust him.

The article misses some major points that economists (like me) are focused on. It’s pretty odd actually. I’ve outlined those below.

Housing

We need more housing. We need more housing. We need more housing. We need more housing. Virtually all economists agree that exclusionary zoning, rent control, and community boards are bad for cities and the US economy. We simply need to build more. It doesn’t matter if it’s “luxury” or “affordable.” Such distinctions actually aren’t very helpful and focusing on them is a colosal waste of time.

Public Services

We need to spend more on public infrastructure and services, including police. Yes, police can do bad things. Yes, qualified immunity should be nixed. But, we’re one of the least policed nations in the world and it causes huge blight issues for us. We need to increase spending on cops to attract better people to the job. Who takes a job for $30k that involves hitting people from time to time and could lead to death? Not your best and brightest.

On that point, NYC needs to get its act together and rehabilitate the subways and bus system. We also need to implement congestion pricing. Sorry car owners; you are clogging our streets, wasting our time, and making it inconvenient to live and work here.

We need to spend more money (not on McKinsey to conduct studies) on trash collection and storage. It’s an embarrassment that the wealthiest city in the world has a rat and garbage problem.

Crime

Also, I just want to get this on paper that crime data from 2020-2022 is a puzzle. The records from 2020 show an increase in certain types of crime in certain locations. We don’t have a good answer to that. The records from 2021 are incomplete because the FBI transitioned to a new data system. Insights form that source are pretty much useless. Most crime focused economists consider 2021 a lost year in data. We’ll see if 2022 is better.

How bad are the crime records from 2021? We have no clue how crime really changed from the past year. Depending on some sources, including those reported by the NY Post, crime actually fell (which it did essentially continuously from 1990 onward; we are in a very low crime period historically speaking).

That gets me to hate crimes. Hate crime data are really bad. You should never trust a hate crime statistic you hear. The police essentially are not required to report hate crimes. So the data are not representative and show extreme bias.

Follow Ups

I won’t be responding to comments especially since angry life-long NYers who would rather live in a dying squalor filled city and don’t understand their city’s focal point as a locus of growth and innovation are the only ones who contend with my points. You want to live in a disgusting place where it takes 45 minutes to commute? May I introduce you to Houston? It’s warm there, too!