Joe Biden is personally responsible for yet another American woman's death

submitted by iamonlyoneman from themidwesterner.news

sorted by:
top
newinsightfulfun
you are viewing a single comment's thread.

view the rest of the comments →

[–]ActuallyNot 2 insightful - 1 fun2 insightful - 0 fun3 insightful - 1 fun -  (4 children)

Did homicides actually decrease, or did cops just stop reporting them to the FBI?

13%? Almost certainly a drop in homicides. But the CDC will confirm.

Do you have some data that suggests a drop in reporting?

[–]weavilsatemyface 1 insightful - 1 fun1 insightful - 0 fun2 insightful - 1 fun -  (3 children)

The CDC tracks homicides the same way the FBI does: by asking the states to please send them a report on how many homicides they want to admit occurred. So it is vulnerable to exactly the same issues of non-reporting and misclassification.

Do you have some data that suggests a drop in reporting?

Specifically, no, but the FBI stats are not high quality and shouldn't be taken as gospel.

There are just under 18,000 independent law enforcement agencies across the USA. That's not 18,000 offices or branches, that's 18,000 independent agencies with their own chain of command, their own administration standards, their own computer systems, their own decision makers, and every single one of them can decide for themselves whether or not to submit crime stats to the FBI or CDC, and if so, how much effort they are willing to put in to ensure the stats are even half-way true.

[–]ActuallyNot 2 insightful - 1 fun2 insightful - 0 fun3 insightful - 1 fun -  (2 children)

You're claiming that the recent drop on homicides may be due to a massive drop in reporting to the FBI.

Reporting to the CDC is independent of that, so it would add to the confidence in the data if it also shows the decrease.

Specifically, no, but the FBI stats are not high quality and shouldn't be taken as gospel.

The 13% decease is likely due to a drop in homicides of about that though.

There are just under 18,000 independent law enforcement agencies across the USA. That's not 18,000 offices or branches, that's 18,000 independent agencies with their own chain of command, their own administration standards, their own computer systems, their own decision makers, and every single one of them can decide for themselves whether or not to submit crime stats to the FBI or CDC, and if so, how much effort they are willing to put in to ensure the stats are even half-way true.

Which would be approximately the same one year to the next. And there's nothing to suggest that of our did change there would be a bias towards less reporting of homicides in 2023.

[–]weavilsatemyface 1 insightful - 1 fun1 insightful - 0 fun2 insightful - 1 fun -  (1 child)

Reporting to the CDC is independent of that

You have a funny understanding of what "independent" means.

The data is coming from the same source, so it's not independent. If a certain department becomes extra vigilant and conscientious at reporting crime, that will be reflected in the figures they submit to both the FBI and the CDC. (Chances are they'll submit the exact same figures to both -- why do the work twice when you can do it once? Cops never have enough time for all the paperwork they have to do.) And vice versa -- if they're under-reporting crimes, they're going to under-report to the CDC too.

Even though this is a quarter of a century old now, it's worth reading this paper.

Which would be approximately the same one year to the next.

Thanks for proving that you don't read the links I give. If you did, you would know that 2022 had a huge drop in reporting due to the FBI reducing the number of different systems that local LE could use to upload data to them. In 2020 there was a spike in homicides. So yes, crime stats do vary a lot from year to year.

The claimed 13% fall in homicides in 2023 has not been audited by the FBI yet, but even if it is legit, much of that fall is probably return to the mean following the 2020 spike.

Crime stats are hard to collect for many reasons, and large US cities like New York, Chicago, Philly etc have a long history of fudging their numbers. Even for murder -- there's a lot of leeway for LE to classify killings as "death by misadventure", suicide, lawful killing (e.g. self-defence or justifiable homicide) instead of murder -- or vice versa. Cops' bosses can lose their jobs if the number of unsolved murders is too high. They're probably not just inventing homicide numbers from thin air, but a little tweak here, a little tweak there, and before you can say "unreliable data" your stats are worthless.

When people talk about police killing black men, everyone acknowledges that police shootings are under-reported. But those same people suddenly treat police stats as super-reliable when they have an axe to grind that crime rates are falling.

[–]ActuallyNot 2 insightful - 1 fun2 insightful - 0 fun3 insightful - 1 fun -  (0 children)

The data is coming from the same source, so it's not independent.

No. The FBI's UCR system gets their data from law enforcement organizations.

The CDC's NVDRS links data from coroner/medical examiners, toxicology, and death certificates.

If you did, you would know that 2022 had a huge drop in reporting due to the FBI reducing the number of different systems that local LE could use to upload data to them.

You realize that 2023 isn't 2022, right?

And I note that that your information is out of date.

Second, the FBI decided to accept information in the old reporting format where necessary. As a result, the 2022 annual report now includes data from more than 85 percent of agencies (70.4 percent using the new system and 12.9 percent using the old system), covering 93.5 percent of the population.

but even if it is legit, much of that fall is probably return to the mean following the 2020 spike.

No, that would have happened in 2021. A 13% reduction from 2022 to 2023 would only be regression to the mean if there was a spike in 2022.

a long history of fudging their numbers.

So long as the history is long, the estimate of the trend is still good.

everyone acknowledges that police shootings are under-reported.

So long is they're consistently under-reported, the FBI statistics are still good for estimating the trend.