Key Findings

Gangs are expanding, evolving and posing an increasing threat to US communities nationwide. Many gangs are sophisticated criminal networks with members who are violent, distribute wholesale quantities of drugs, and develop and maintain close working relationships with members and associates of transnational criminal/drug trafficking organizations. Gangs are becoming more violent while engaging in less typical and lower-risk crime, such as prostitution and white-collar crime. Gangs are more adaptable, organized, sophisticated, and opportunistic, exploiting new and advanced technology as a means to recruit, communicate discretely, target their rivals, and perpetuate their criminal activity.

Fairly unbelievable.

But there have long been difficulties with the notion that unemployment causes crime. For one thing, the 1960s, a period of rising crime, had essentially the same unemployment rate as the late 1990s and early 2000s, a period when crime fell. And during the Great Depression, when unemployment hit 25%, the crime rate in many cities went down. Among the explanations offered for this puzzle is that unemployment and poverty were so common during the Great Depression that families became closer, devoted themselves to mutual support, and kept young people, who might be more inclined to criminal behavior, under constant adult supervision. These days, because many families are weaker and children are more independent, we would not see the same effect, so certain criminologists continue to suggest that a 1% increase in the unemployment rate should produce as much as a 2% increase in property-crime rates.

Yet when the recent recession struck, that didn’t happen. As the national unemployment rate doubled from around 5% to nearly 10%, the property-crime rate, far from spiking, fell significantly. For 2009, the Federal Bureau of Investigation reported an 8% drop in the nationwide robbery rate and a 17% reduction in the auto-theft rate from the previous year. Big-city reports show the same thing. Between 2008 and 2010, New York City experienced a 4% decline in the robbery rate and a 10% fall in the burglary rate. Boston, Chicago and Los Angeles witnessed similar declines.

This is a fascinating read.

Description: Reports of crime that have been verified.
Agency Name: San Francisco Police Department
Time Period: Last 90 days rolling
Frequency: Daily
Location of dataset: http://apps.sfgov.org/datafiles/download.php?file=sfpd_incidents
Format: KML, shapefile, CSV

I love that great cities such as New York and San Francisco are making this type of data available.

FBI crime reports have shown a steady decrease in crimes rates since 2008. In the annual report for 2009, released in September, reports of violent crimes dropped 5.3 percent and reported property crimes fell 4.6 percent.

Interesting. The first thing that comes to mind is *diversion*. XBox. Dancing with the Stars. Dexter. People are too busy doing nothing to commit crime. Make TV cheap enough for criminals to have it and the streets will be safer. I might just be in a cynical mood, though. ::

So people think it’s on the rise even though it’s on the decline. My question is why is it on the decline? I have a cynical answer: The would-be offenders are more occupied than they ever have been with television and video games.