WRFH/Radio Free Hillsdale 101.7 FM - The Hillsdale Interview: Robert VerBruggen

Episode Date: February 13, 2024

Robert VerBruggen is a fellow at the Manhattan Institute where he provides policy research, writes for City Journal, and contributes to special projects and initiatives in the President’s office. He joins WRFH to discuss a recent research brief on crime, titled "The 'Red' vs. 'Blue' Crime Debate and the Limits of Empirical Social Science."

This is Radio Free Hillsdale 101.7 FM. I'm Lillian Farrell. With me today is Mr. Robert Verbrugan, fellow at the Manhattan Institute. What did your analysis conclude about the safety of red and blue states? Sure. Well, basically what we looked at was

there's this ongoing debate where conservatives are saying that there's a problem in blue cities, especially since 2020, when we saw this great increase in the murder. Right? Whereas liberals have countered that red states have higher crime rates than blue states. And the first thing we do is show that both of these things are true.

If you look at the county level, for example, blue areas are more violent than red areas. They have more homicides per capita. But if you flip and look at the states instead, you see that red areas are more violent, have more homicides per capita. So the first thing we do is confirm what both sides of the debate has said. It's sort of an interesting example to us of how you, how. how you can make a fairly minor tweak to a statistical analysis to a study that you're doing and make the result completely flipped just by looking at states versus counties. So that's really interesting in itself.

But then the next step we take is to start introducing some control variables into the analysis. We look at, you know, for example, the demographics of different places and how urbanized they are and all those sorts of things. And what we find is that when you add control variables to both of those kinds of analysis looking at states and looking at counties, you can make the, the, the, the, the, the, relationship actually disappears so that neither blue nor red areas are any more violent than the other. So it's a very complicated area of research for criminologists and so on, but it's also sort of just an example of partisan mudslinging and the incentive to tweak things so that you get what

you want to, what you want the numbers to say. That's really fascinating. So did your findings change at the local level when you are conducting the studies in regards to crime rates? Yeah, I mean, basically, if you just do the raw, what we call this like an uncontrolled analysis, or just a raw comparison, you see that if you look at counties, blue counties are indeed a lot more violent than red counties. And if you look at states, you find that red states, you know, particularly in the south where a lot of the nation's highest murder rates are, are more violent than blue states. So it's a really a striking example of how you can make the data to say completely opposite things,

either Republican or Democratic areas are more violent just by switching which level of analysis you look at, whether you're looking at the states or looking at the counties. This is Radio Free Hillsdale 101.7 FM. I'm Lillian Farrell, and I'm talking with Mr. Robert Verbrugan. What role did social characteristics of populations have in the study? Yeah, it makes a really big difference, is the bottom line. If you start controlling for the income of different places, you know, that, you know, For example, Republican states tend to be a lot poorer because the Republicans control the South.

The South is poorer than the rest of the country. And also controlling for racial demographics because, you know, unfortunately, there's a really big racial gap in homicide. So that that explains a lot of what's going on here is that when you break things down by states versus counties, you're breaking down along very different demographic lines, and that's why you get these results. And when we control for those demographics, we have, in our model, neither red nor blue areas at state or county level, are more violent because we've taken account of those things that are driving the differences. When observing crime rates in the years following 2020, did you see political movements such as the defund the police movement affect crime rates in particular states or counties?

I did an earlier report with a different colleague of mine named Christos McReedis following the 2020 homicide spike that looked at that. And basically, yeah, there was obviously in 2020, first 30 of the pandemic and the year doesn't get off to a great start in terms of homicide rates. But then in the summer, the murder of George Floyd, the defund the police movement, all the riots and civil unrest, that's when crime really skyrockets within the year of 2020. And we did find that if you look at specifically at the increase, the increase was a bit more dramatic in more left-leaning areas, possibly because those kinds of movements had more traction there. So that's sort of an interesting part of the dynamic here in terms of trends over time, as opposed to just the argument

over whether red states or blue states are more violent in general. Why do you think there was such a heavy focus on state-level homicide rates in the media when such findings are not fully representative of the safety in particular regions? Well, I think there was a report by, I think, Tick, called Third Way, that sort of launched this sort of argument that, you know, Republicans are saying, you know, they're criticizing all these Democratic policies, but Republicans have their own policies, you know, they're especially point to gun control, you know, that are, that they say are bad for crime. and they use state-level homicide raises the way of illustrating that.

So that report got picked up by a lot of people. The governor of California has cited it. California actually put out its own report that was kind of drawing in a similar vein. So basically, when Democrats have to talk about crime, they want to make it about gun control. And when Republicans want to talk, have to talk about gun control, they want to make it about, you know, prosecution and policing policy, you know, where they have more, you know, more aggressive crime control stances than the Democrats do. So it's an interesting example of sort of the partisan debate shifting what we're focused on in the data. This is Radio Free Hillsdale 101.7 FM. I'm Lillian Farrell, and I'm talking with Mr. Robert Verbrugan.

Is the misrepresentation of crime rate data dangerous for voters in particular as we head into the 2024 election cycle? Yeah, I mean, I would say that, you know, knowing what I know about social scientists, science, and, you know, of course, my co-author is an economist at Harvard. He knows a lot more than I do. But even knowing what I know about social science and having participated in these debates and having run some numbers on that, I think a lot of people don't fully appreciate how easy it is to make numbers say what you want them to say. So when somebody sees statistics, if they see numbers, if they see a study that someone has put together, they often put too much credence in it without thinking through, you know, where did these numbers come from, how is the analysis run?

And these are things that you really have to kind of dig into and know a lot about it to really understand why the results say what they say and why you should trust them. Did you find a correlation between any particular political policies and lower crime rates in certain regions, whether that be pertaining to gun control or police funding? That's not something that our analysis looks at. Our analysis is focused on just controlling for the very basic stuff, the demographics and the income and so on. But certainly there's a lot of other research. There's a huge literature on gun control, obviously. There's a huge literature on policing and prosecution strategies. I mean, I think that the example of New York in the 1990s is,

a great example of, you know, where policy really makes a difference because they decided to, you know, really use their police force to control crime and keep track of where crime is and send police where the crime is. And that was very, very effective. But those aren't things that are in our new studies specifically. This is Radio Free Hillsdale 101.7 FM. I'm Lillian Farrell, and I'm talking with Mr. Robert Verbrugan. What precedent does this research set for future studies evaluating Republican and Democratic geographic regions? I mean, I think that, Our big message is that if we're going to keep doing this, if we're going to keep having this sort of mudslinging debate about which party is worse, which we don't think is the right thing to discuss. We'd much rather talk about concrete policies that either Democrats or Republicans could implement if they work.

But if we're going to keep having this discussion, we need to find, you know, more advanced ways of looking at it. You could do, you know, a study where you look at, you know, states that change hands. The state that changes hands from the Republicans to the Democrats. Does it have lower or higher crime after that? You can look at switches like that as sort of an experiment. There's more that you could do to keep drilling into this question. But our big message is that this is the wrong question. We should be focusing on policies and encouraging both parties to enact good policies

rather than sitting here about mudsling over who, you know, whether Democrats or Republicans are more violent. What would you advise to those looking to be aware of objective research in a world in which data is often misrepresented? I mean, that's a tricky question because I think most people aren't going to, you know, take the time to sit down and read all the original studies because that takes a great deal of time. My best suggestion would be to find, you know, outlets, find publications, find journalists who you can trust and follow their work and not simply accept anything that pops up in your Twitter feed or your Facebook. Our guest has been Mr. Robert Verbrugan, and I'm Lillian Farrell on Radio Free Hillsdale 101.7 FM.