Would be interesting to do a similar estimate for "white collar" crime -- getting screwed by a business partner, a contractor, an embezzling employee etc. Experiences like these caused me a lot of "trauma" in the sense of significantly lower trust and a more hostile disposition to new opportunities for several years. If you talk to entrepreneurs, some have something like PTSD about that one employee who screwed them and almost sank their business.
It would appear that crime (especially violent crime) is committed heavily disproportionately by a small number of offenders. Essentially an extreme "Pareto principle" at work.
A buddy of mine was mugged. He lost 60 bucks in cash, and had to spend an afternoon on the phone getting all his cards canceled, plus another day getting a new license.
He suffered no actual harm from identity theft, possibly because of these precautions, or possibly because his mugger didn't do that kind of crime, no way to know. The sum of the material harm he suffered was the 60 bucks, a bruise on his cheek and the time I described above.
I do not exaggerate when I say it transformed his entire personality. It's been more than 5 years since this happened, and it remains the foundational core of his worldview. If you knew him before and after the incident you'd swear that this was an evil twin situation.
Wow. If it's true that crime costs the US something like 12% of its GDP annually and that most of the cost is driven by violent crime, it might well mean that blacks in America, who cause anywhere between 50 and 70% of violent crimes every year, constitute a net wealth-destroying population even before taking the disproportionate burden they place on social welfare spending into consideration. I suppose, given the examples provided by countries like Rhodesia after "decolonization", where blacks destroyed more wealth than they created until the nation arrived at a new equilibrium at a much lower level of wealth, this wouldn't be all that surprising. The same process is currently underway in South Africa. At any rate. this would definitely put the question of whether blacks are owed reparations into perspective, and it might even raise the question of whether it would be fair, if we're pursuing "social justice" at the level of race groups, to require blacks to pay much higher taxes to offset the disproportionate burden they place on public finances.
I would argue that it is good to get people out of dense cities because in dense cities, birthrates are insanely low.
Places like Tokyo and Seoul are actually bad for their countries, sucking in millions smart people who then have very few kids. Seoul has a TFR of around 0.6 births per woman, far below replacement. Cities have been called IQ shredders for their countries. With fertility rates in collapse across the developed world, this is a callamity.
If crime drives people into the suburbs where they have more kids, isn't that a good thing?
To illustrate what I mean, DC has a TFR of around 1.0 while Montgomery County (DC suburbs) has a TFR of around 1.6, dramatically better.
Excellent post, to which I would add an additional consideration:
In the US, the annual violent crime victimization rate has hovered around 20 per 1000 residents (over age 12) for the past fifteen years or so. It was much higher in recent memory— nearly 80 per 1000 in the early 90s.
So, very naively, you would expect the average person living in a society roughly this violent to have an approximately 100% chance of being the victim of violent crime before they reach retirement age. It’s true that crime victimization is lopsided in the same way that offending is, but lifetime chances are high even with an extremely skewed distribution.
This also helps to explain why people are sensitive to small increases in the crime rate. In a given decade, if the victimization rate is 20 per 1000, then a 2-percentage-point increase in the (roughly analogous) violent crime rate doubles your decadal risk from 20% to 40%.
Since people are aware of the emotional and personal costs of crime, this is the kind of change that might be worth orienting your life around.
Years ago, a female receptionist in Binghamton, NY, was killed in her law offices shortly after 5 pm on a Friday. The city's downtown, like those in many Rust Belt cities, had been wobbling. The killing sparked an exodus to the suburbs of several law firms, insurance companies, and the like. Much later, it turned out that she was killed by someone who knew her. But by then the city paid a heavy price for the cost of that crime.
My wife and I would occasionally throw a few bucks to buskers or people who panhandled with interesting stories. In the Philadelphia subway near the Reading Market, a guy approached us with a tale of losing his wallet and needing a few bucks to get home. He looked at her t-shirt and went on and on about upstate NY and running aces in Ithaca, NY. He was practically a friend. He wore a button-down shirt and a tie. We gave him $20 and my business card. He promised to mail it back. Never happened.
The cost of that crime: We don't give money to anyone we encounter on the street.
I mostly agree with the article although I'm slightly sceptical that most people underrate crime (without having looked into it much, admittedly). Might it be the case that most people you associate with underrate crime, but most people in society do not? I'm thinking here of the tendency of politicians to emphasise their law-and-order credentials, the huge amount of media coverage that murders and other serious crimes receive, the fact that crime has usually ranked very highly in 'most important issue' surveys, the fact that opposition to immigration and accepting refugees is often largely due to the perception that immigrants commit crimes at a higher rate, etc.
I don't think the Pilsen / East Pilsen comparison is correct. Both of the properties you linked to are in the same police beat (1235) in the Sun-Times map. The area immediately north of there is mostly commercial, which may be why it shows a high rate of homicides per capita. Interesting piece, though.
Would be interesting to do a similar estimate for "white collar" crime -- getting screwed by a business partner, a contractor, an embezzling employee etc. Experiences like these caused me a lot of "trauma" in the sense of significantly lower trust and a more hostile disposition to new opportunities for several years. If you talk to entrepreneurs, some have something like PTSD about that one employee who screwed them and almost sank their business.
Some interesting comment here from Mugwump: https://mugwump.substack.com/p/do-longer-prison-sentences-work?utm_campaign=post&utm_medium=web&utm_source=direct
It would appear that crime (especially violent crime) is committed heavily disproportionately by a small number of offenders. Essentially an extreme "Pareto principle" at work.
A buddy of mine was mugged. He lost 60 bucks in cash, and had to spend an afternoon on the phone getting all his cards canceled, plus another day getting a new license.
He suffered no actual harm from identity theft, possibly because of these precautions, or possibly because his mugger didn't do that kind of crime, no way to know. The sum of the material harm he suffered was the 60 bucks, a bruise on his cheek and the time I described above.
I do not exaggerate when I say it transformed his entire personality. It's been more than 5 years since this happened, and it remains the foundational core of his worldview. If you knew him before and after the incident you'd swear that this was an evil twin situation.
Wow. If it's true that crime costs the US something like 12% of its GDP annually and that most of the cost is driven by violent crime, it might well mean that blacks in America, who cause anywhere between 50 and 70% of violent crimes every year, constitute a net wealth-destroying population even before taking the disproportionate burden they place on social welfare spending into consideration. I suppose, given the examples provided by countries like Rhodesia after "decolonization", where blacks destroyed more wealth than they created until the nation arrived at a new equilibrium at a much lower level of wealth, this wouldn't be all that surprising. The same process is currently underway in South Africa. At any rate. this would definitely put the question of whether blacks are owed reparations into perspective, and it might even raise the question of whether it would be fair, if we're pursuing "social justice" at the level of race groups, to require blacks to pay much higher taxes to offset the disproportionate burden they place on public finances.
I would argue that it is good to get people out of dense cities because in dense cities, birthrates are insanely low.
Places like Tokyo and Seoul are actually bad for their countries, sucking in millions smart people who then have very few kids. Seoul has a TFR of around 0.6 births per woman, far below replacement. Cities have been called IQ shredders for their countries. With fertility rates in collapse across the developed world, this is a callamity.
If crime drives people into the suburbs where they have more kids, isn't that a good thing?
To illustrate what I mean, DC has a TFR of around 1.0 while Montgomery County (DC suburbs) has a TFR of around 1.6, dramatically better.
Excellent post, to which I would add an additional consideration:
In the US, the annual violent crime victimization rate has hovered around 20 per 1000 residents (over age 12) for the past fifteen years or so. It was much higher in recent memory— nearly 80 per 1000 in the early 90s.
So, very naively, you would expect the average person living in a society roughly this violent to have an approximately 100% chance of being the victim of violent crime before they reach retirement age. It’s true that crime victimization is lopsided in the same way that offending is, but lifetime chances are high even with an extremely skewed distribution.
This also helps to explain why people are sensitive to small increases in the crime rate. In a given decade, if the victimization rate is 20 per 1000, then a 2-percentage-point increase in the (roughly analogous) violent crime rate doubles your decadal risk from 20% to 40%.
Since people are aware of the emotional and personal costs of crime, this is the kind of change that might be worth orienting your life around.
Years ago, a female receptionist in Binghamton, NY, was killed in her law offices shortly after 5 pm on a Friday. The city's downtown, like those in many Rust Belt cities, had been wobbling. The killing sparked an exodus to the suburbs of several law firms, insurance companies, and the like. Much later, it turned out that she was killed by someone who knew her. But by then the city paid a heavy price for the cost of that crime.
My wife and I would occasionally throw a few bucks to buskers or people who panhandled with interesting stories. In the Philadelphia subway near the Reading Market, a guy approached us with a tale of losing his wallet and needing a few bucks to get home. He looked at her t-shirt and went on and on about upstate NY and running aces in Ithaca, NY. He was practically a friend. He wore a button-down shirt and a tie. We gave him $20 and my business card. He promised to mail it back. Never happened.
The cost of that crime: We don't give money to anyone we encounter on the street.
The cost of crime is immeasurable.
I recall the late Mark Kleiman also gave some very high estimates for the total cost of crime in the US.
Robin Hanson has a proposal for what to do about it:
https://www.overcomingbias.com/2019/09/who-vouches-for-you.html
You could also include the share of the economy devoted to "guard labour". According to https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=3948013 this included nearly 30% of the US labour force in 2017.
I mostly agree with the article although I'm slightly sceptical that most people underrate crime (without having looked into it much, admittedly). Might it be the case that most people you associate with underrate crime, but most people in society do not? I'm thinking here of the tendency of politicians to emphasise their law-and-order credentials, the huge amount of media coverage that murders and other serious crimes receive, the fact that crime has usually ranked very highly in 'most important issue' surveys, the fact that opposition to immigration and accepting refugees is often largely due to the perception that immigrants commit crimes at a higher rate, etc.
I don't think the Pilsen / East Pilsen comparison is correct. Both of the properties you linked to are in the same police beat (1235) in the Sun-Times map. The area immediately north of there is mostly commercial, which may be why it shows a high rate of homicides per capita. Interesting piece, though.