Monday, September 12, 2016

Moskos: "It Depends On What Your Definition of 'Rose' Is"

   Kidding!
   Crime is up in 68 of the 100 largest U.S. cities. (Not "a quarter" of them, as reported by the NYT.) Moskos:
Back in January, based on less data, I guessed that 2015 would see about 1,500 more murders than 2014. Gosh, am I a swamy? No, just somebody who can remove the ideological blinders long enough to use a calculator. I even offered an open $100 bet to anybody who said, "We don't know if homicides are up." Nobody put their money where their mouth was. Odd. It's like they didn't even believe what they were saying.

If we focused on the carnage instead of arguing about reality and methodology, you see, we'd have to consider the why? And then, perhaps, we'd notice that increased violence isn't really linked to any change in poverty or gun laws or even legitimacy. Perhaps we'd take note, as have Professor Rosenfeld and myself, that the cities where violence is most up are the cities where police have been, to put it mildly, in the news (or even charged criminally for no good reason). Perhaps crime is up because police are doing exactly what we're asking them to do: be less proactive and have fewer interactions with the public.

4 Comments:

Anonymous Anonymous said...

Best copy/paste link problem ever: http://(this%20is%20merely%20worth%20the%20same%20as%20a%20quiz,%20and%20i%27m%20just%20looking%20for%20you%20to%20say%20something%20fairly%20reasonable.%20don%27t%20stress%20about%20it.)/

Bein' a professor is the best, ain't it?

7:26 PM  
Blogger Winston Smith said...

Fixed, but all I get when I try the old link is what looks like some gibberish-y Google search results...what am I missing?

10:55 PM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

Once you strip the HTML special character codes out, the link reads: "this is merely worth the same as a quiz, and i'm just looking for you to say something fairly reasonable. don't stress about it", suggesting that, between blog posts, you are having to resort to ctrl-v calming of students who need A's.

5:36 AM  
Blogger Winston Smith said...

Oh heh, yeah, don't know how I didn't see that...

Yep...it's the best...

8:03 AM  

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