The Daily Signal - Crime Is Rising, John Lott Explains Why

Episode Date: May 14, 2024

On today's episode of "The Daily Signal Podcast," John Lott explains why crime is rising across America and what the media is getting wrong in its reporting on the subject. Enjoy the show! Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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Nothing else is Rees. This is a Daily Sigma podcast for Tuesday, May 14th. This is Fred Lucas. I spoke with John Locke, president of the Crime Prevention Center, to discuss rising crime in the United States and media myths. Stay tuned for our conversation right after this. We're all guilty of it, spending too much time on the internet watching silly videos. But it's the 21st century, and maybe it's time for a change.

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So I think a key to the Wall Street Journal piece is in which you explain the sort of disparity between what's being reported out there is that there is a difference between the FBI Uniform Crime Reporting and the Bureau of Justice Statistics National Crime Victimization Survey. Can you explain to start off with why there's a contrast there and the difference between these two measures. Right. Well, as you say, there are two measures of crime. One is the FBI uniform crime reports.

Those are crimes reported to police. And then the police departments around the country send that information on a number of crimes reported to them to the FBI. So the FBI is just counting up the number of reported crimes. The problem is most crimes aren't reported. Normally, that's not a problem, in the last few years, it's created an issue.

And the second source is something called the National Crime Victimization Survey, which surveys 240,000 people each year in order to try to get a measure of both reported crimes and unreported crimes. So, for example, for violent crimes, we estimate that about 42% of violent crimes that report to police and about 32% of violent crimes that report to police and about 32% of property crimes that report to police. The problem is that the number of unreported crimes seems to have increased a lot over the last few years.

And there's a simple reason, I think, for that, and that is law enforcement in this country has collapsed. You look at arrest rates for violent crimes, let's say, in the largest cities, over a million. But this is true for all cities. And the five years before COVID, it was fairly flat, averaging about 44% of violent crimes resulting in arrest. It started falling in 2020, and by 2022, it was down to 20%. So it went from 44% of reported violent crimes being reported to police to only 20% of violent crimes being reported to police.

That's a huge change. I've never seen anything even remotely like that. in the 50 years or so that we've had the national crime victimization data, but that is just from the FBI data. And what we know is that when people don't think anything's going to happen, that the criminals aren't going to be caught and they're not going to be punished, people are less likely to go and report crimes to police. So what we've seen happen is that essentially law enforcement's collapsed.

People aren't going to the police as much as they were before. And so while reported crimes have gone down, the reported crimes that the FBI is collecting, total violent crimes and total property crimes have soared. Just give you a simple example. Well, 2022 is the last year we have the National Crime Victimization Survey data for. And between 2021 and 2022, while the FBI data showed a 2% drop in violent crimes reported, the National Crime Victimization Survey showed a 42% increase in total violent crimes that were occurring. Yeah, and this seems to be as much of a media story as anything, because we are

seeing news outlets, mainstream media news outlets, sort of trying to refute what the public can see with their eyes about rising in crime. Why do you think we have seen this from so many media outlets? Do you think it's all politics? You know, I can't get really into people's minds about why they're doing the types of things that they're doing. I mean, surely, I suppose, it helps out Biden. I suppose also it allows them to kind of push back again. against the concerns about the massive illegal immigration that we've been having to say that that hasn't had any impact on crime rates in the country or things have been improving

despite it. You know, I can't, who knows what the reasons are that they do this. But you're right, I mean, in headline after headline, an article after article, the mainstream media basically is saying that, crime is falling, but people are mistakenly believing that crime is increasing. And my own belief is, as I was explaining, I just don't think the media either understands

or wants to understand the crime data out there. So why, I'm just maybe come back to this point a little bit. Why do you think there is this decline between, in terms of of reported crimes leading to arrest? Well, I mean, I think arrest falling for multiple reasons. I think we had defunding the police. You know, Chicago cut the number of police by 400 in 2020. You had New York City cutting against police budget that year by $1 billion a year.

Those are big cuts. You've also seen huge numbers of retirements of police officers. So even in the last year or so, when they tried to reverse some of the cuts that they've had, you know, they've had to lower the quality of new officers coming in. And they've also, you know, have somebody that may have just been on the job for six months or whatever. That's not going to replace somebody who has 10 or 15 or 20 years of experience and knows much better how to go and deal with criminals that are out there. And so those are just a couple of the reasons.

Beyond that, you have these district attorneys who are refusing to prosecute violent criminals or people with property crimes for sure. And so you've kind of demoralized the police. They go and arrest somebody. And then nothing happens to the criminal. They're immediately released. And so the police officers begin to think, you know, what's the police officers? begin to think, you know, what's the point of going and arresting these guys?

And finally, you've had changes in the rules that police have to operate under. You have all sorts of reporting requirements where after they go and talk to somebody, they have to fill out forms, dealing with the race and sex and, you know, other characteristics of the person that they talk to as well as information about what they talk to them about, and where it was and why they talked to them and a whole bunch of other questions. And so you've effectively removed some of the police during hours of operation from being police officers

to going and dealing with this type of paperwork there. And that's effectively reduced the number of police officers that are out there. So, I mean, it's not too difficult to go and understand why there's been this huge drop in arrest rates. But as I said, to answer the main part of your question, as I've said that it's been well known for a long time, that when people don't think that the police are going to be able to arrest an individual and that they're not going to get punished, they figure, you know, what's the point of reporting these crimes? And in parts of the country, if you call up the dispatch, what will happen is they'll say, well, only if the criminal is actually there in the process of committing a crime, will they go and send out police? They'll go and they'll tell you, well, you can come down to the police station and fill out a report.

So they've just made it even more costly for people to report crimes. Simply calling up 911 doesn't result in a reported crime. the police have to actually fill out a report dealing with that. And so, you know, if you make it more costly for people to report crimes, they're also going to be less likely to do so. But, you know, just to give you one other statistic just to kind of give you an idea. If you look at arrests relative to total violent crimes, both reported and unreported, in the largest cities, you're talking about only 8 percent.

of all violent crimes result in arrest, and only 1% of property crimes result in arrest. And just so it's clear, arrest doesn't mean that the person's charged, arrest, you know, let alone prosecuted or convicted. And so for large parts of the country, criminals have really nothing to worry about. Yeah, and leveling up from a reporting a crime to arrest, in terms of, has there been a clear decline in from arrest versus prosecutions? Well, we really don't have the data on that. I mean, I believe that that's the case. but, you know, obviously there's a lot of anecdotal stories, and we've seen changes in terms of the rate that district attorneys in Los Angeles and Chicago and St. Louis and New York and many other places

have been refusing to prosecute people for a wide range of crimes, both violent and property crimes. I mean, people see that criminals are immediately, released. And on top of that, we've had changes in the bail system and other things, too. Would you say there's a clear correlation with the rise of progressive prosecutors and the rise of crime? Well, I mean, I think, you know, this isn't rocket science. If you make it so it's not risky for criminals to go and commit crime, they're going to go and commit more crime. I mean, maybe it's my bias as an economist. You raise the price of apples. People buy fewer apples. You

make it less risky for criminals to go and commit crime, you're going to see more crime that's going to be there. So incentives matter. And as I say, just looking at the arrest rates alone, law enforcement's collapsed. I mean, you go from 44% of reported violent crimes resulting in arrest to 20%. That's a huge change. And you made reference on the in your, whilst your journal piece to the Rasmeason survey that found more affluent people don't see a rise in crime, whereas moderate or low-income people are seeing this increase. Is that to be expected? Has that been a common trend in the past? People who are maybe in a gated neighborhood are more insulated from the problem?

Well, look, I think it's very clear that lower income individuals are much, much more likely to be victims of violent crime and property crime than wealthy individuals are. So it's not too shocking to see the disparities there in terms of the views. But you see particularly minorities, blacks and Hispanics, people who are. anything below $200,000 a year in income, though the poorer they are, the bigger, the fear that they've had, or concerns that they've had about increasing violent crime. But, you know, you look by both men and women are concerned. On average, the majority, the majority of all the races are concerned. The majority of people by all the age groups are concerned. It's just basically people making over $200,000 a year and people who have gone to graduate school are the ones who, you know, you don't have majorities of those groups, you know, believing that violent crime is increasing or concerned about it.

And you do write about how property crime arrests have plummeted. It does seem that this is something that the left does try to diminish. or try to say, well, this is only a property crime, which is that might not seem like a big deal, and unless it's your property being damaged or stolen. Is that sort of a way that people have tried to play with statistics to try to? It's fallen for both property and violent crime. I mean, the property crime arrest rates have plummeted even more. You know, people see the changes in places like California. and New York and other places with regard to how they're treating, you know,

different types of property crime. So I don't, you know, I don't think it's anything that, I mean, people see that, but it's been for all types of crime. What is the, I guess, in terms of the bigger picture, what is the solution here, I guess, both from my national policy standpoint, and a local state policy standpoint to turn this tide? Well, law enforcement and a criminal justice process is overwhelmingly a local issue.

Police budgets, policing policies are virtually always determined at the local level that's there. District attorneys are almost always elected locally. judges are almost always elected locally. And so, you know, it's not, if you're going to try to change it, you're going to have to change most likely the people who are elected locally in cities. But, you know, you look across the country and the places with the high crime rates are the places that have democratic control,

and it's had Democratic control for a while. Do you think the whole defund the police movement, though, was that pretty well on the dependency? I mean, we don't see a lot of politicians talking about that now, as they were in 2020. Well, I mean, they've tried to reverse it in many places to some extent. But, you know, the problem, as I was explaining before, was that you've lost guys who they've had 10, 15, 20 years of experience.

And you try to replace them with somebody who, let's say, has been on the job for six months or a year. You know, it's going to be a while before those new officers are going to be anywhere near as effective as the guys that you've lost. And to lower the standards for the new. Right. Okay, so it's just largely or recruiting matter as much as anything as well. Thanks so much for joining us.

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