Adam Toledo video released

[Trausti]

Not sure what your point is.

Here's my point. The government can massage statistics when it's convenient.

You claimed that crime went down during economically bad times. Feel free to support that claim.
Tom

Why Did Crime Fall During the Great Recession?

Everybody knows that crime rates rise in recessions. When legitimate work dried up, potential criminals found it more attractive to turn to illegal work. Indeed, neighborhoods with higher poverty often have elevated crime rates.

So the Great Recession should have produced a crime wave. Instead, the doubling of the unemployment rate did nothing of the sort to violent crime, which reached a 40-year low in 2010. What gives?

 

[ronburgundy]

Gun sales sky rocketed during the Obama Administration. That wasn't because of a response to violence and self-defense purchases. A good deal of firearm purchases is through paranoia, both of liberals and Big Bad Government.
What about a culture makes it violence prone? The US suffers from racial inequity and still refuses to deal with the existing problems from Jim Crow. This resultant poverty always leads to higher crime levels. And the NRA has helped ensure a steady flow of guns to those in poverty. The US economic engine has strained the workforce greatly, making it extraordinarily difficult to make ends meet, to get out of poverty. And there has been a great deal of animosity created by the GOP since Nixon to keep up barriers against African Americans, and ignore the ones that are keeping them back.

Crime rates dropped during the Great Depression and the Great Recession. Poverty does not lead to more crime.

Temporary reduction in income due a global economic downturn doesn't impact crime in the way that sustained lifelong poverty does. Just apply a millisecond of honest non-dogmatic though to the issue for once. Criminal behavior results from decisions that like all decisions is the product of a subjective cost/benefit analysis, which is determined by one's experiences that generate plausible alternatives. Do you think a person born into and lived their whole life in middle class but then has one bad year and loses their job and home is going to imagine the same plausible alternatives as a person born into and lived their whole lives in a family of joblessness, homelessness, and abject poverty? Within every single country and within every single cultural/racial group within each country, the poor are more likely to engage in crime (except for white collar crimes that are almost never prosecuted).

 

[Trausti]

Gun sales sky rocketed during the Obama Administration. That wasn't because of a response to violence and self-defense purchases. A good deal of firearm purchases is through paranoia, both of liberals and Big Bad Government.
What about a culture makes it violence prone? The US suffers from racial inequity and still refuses to deal with the existing problems from Jim Crow. This resultant poverty always leads to higher crime levels. And the NRA has helped ensure a steady flow of guns to those in poverty. The US economic engine has strained the workforce greatly, making it extraordinarily difficult to make ends meet, to get out of poverty. And there has been a great deal of animosity created by the GOP since Nixon to keep up barriers against African Americans, and ignore the ones that are keeping them back.

Crime rates dropped during the Great Depression and the Great Recession. Poverty does not lead to more crime.

Temporary reduction in income due a global economic downturn doesn't impact crime in the way that sustained lifelong poverty does. Just apply a millisecond of honest non-dogmatic though to the issue for once. Criminal behavior results from decisions that like all decisions is the product of a subjective cost/benefit analysis, which is determined by one's experiences that generate plausible alternatives. Do you think a person born into and lived their whole life in middle class but then has one bad year and loses their job and home is going to imagine the same plausible alternatives as a person born into and lived their whole lives in a family of joblessness, homelessness, and abject poverty? Within every single country and within every single cultural/racial group within each country, the poor are more likely to engage in crime (except for white collar crimes that are almost never prosecuted).

This explains why poor Asian immigrants have such high crime rates.

 

[Gospel]

Gun sales sky rocketed during the Obama Administration. That wasn't because of a response to violence and self-defense purchases. A good deal of firearm purchases is through paranoia, both of liberals and Big Bad Government.
What about a culture makes it violence prone? The US suffers from racial inequity and still refuses to deal with the existing problems from Jim Crow. This resultant poverty always leads to higher crime levels. And the NRA has helped ensure a steady flow of guns to those in poverty. The US economic engine has strained the workforce greatly, making it extraordinarily difficult to make ends meet, to get out of poverty. And there has been a great deal of animosity created by the GOP since Nixon to keep up barriers against African Americans, and ignore the ones that are keeping them back.

Crime rates dropped during the Great Depression and the Great Recession. Poverty does not lead to more crime.

Can you back that statement up with something more substantial than your personal opinions?
Tom

My gut feeling. American's elec presidents using that.

 

[TomC]

Why Did Crime Fall During the Great Recession?

Everybody knows that crime rates rise in recessions. When legitimate work dried up, potential criminals found it more attractive to turn to illegal work. Indeed, neighborhoods with higher poverty often have elevated crime rates.

So the Great Recession should have produced a crime wave. Instead, the doubling of the unemployment rate did nothing of the sort to violent crime, which reached a 40-year low in 2010. What gives?

The article went on

James Q. Wilson has four explanations: (1) More criminals in prison; (2) Better police tactics for finding and patrolling crime hotspots; (3) Better home security technology; (4) Fewer drugs, including lead in our blood and cocaine.

But you dismissed poverty as an issue, without saying why. And then quoted an article attributing the decline to modern security technology and environmental cleanup.

You might want to go back to the environmental cleanup part. Back in the 70s, environmentalists were demanding a reduction of lead in the environment. Unleaded gasoline, lead free paint, that sort of thing. They claimed that lead caused long term damage to human development.

They were right. Reducing lead in the environment, especially for developing children, did have a serious positive impact on child development. Violent crime has been dropping for a while. Ups and downs, but dropping overall.

Because environmentalists forced libertarians to be a bit more moral than they thought necessary.
Tom

 

[Trausti]

The article went on

James Q. Wilson has four explanations: (1) More criminals in prison; (2) Better police tactics for finding and patrolling crime hotspots; (3) Better home security technology; (4) Fewer drugs, including lead in our blood and cocaine.

But you dismissed poverty as an issue, without saying why. And then quoted an article attributing the decline to modern security technology and environmental cleanup.

You might want to go back to the environmental cleanup part. Back in the 70s, environmentalists were demanding a reduction of lead in the environment. Unleaded gasoline, lead free paint, that sort of thing. They claimed that lead caused long term damage to human development.

They were right. Reducing lead in the environment, especially for developing children, did have a serious positive impact on child development. Violent crime has been dropping for a while. Ups and downs, but dropping overall.

Because environmentalists forced libertarians to be a bit more moral than they thought necessary.
Tom

Right. Poverty is not a significant cause of crime. There are all these other factors; like more criminals in prison. The Occam’s Razor answer is that criminals are gonna commit crime because they are criminals. People without criminal propensity are not gonna go out and shoot people because the economy is bad.

 

[ronburgundy]

Why Did Crime Fall During the Great Recession?

Everybody knows that crime rates rise in recessions. When legitimate work dried up, potential criminals found it more attractive to turn to illegal work. Indeed, neighborhoods with higher poverty often have elevated crime rates.

So the Great Recession should have produced a crime wave. Instead, the doubling of the unemployment rate did nothing of the sort to violent crime, which reached a 40-year low in 2010. What gives?

What gives is that some people have zero interest in honest rational thought and engage in cherry picking to support their faith based dogma. Crime rates had been declining sharply for 15 years prior to the Great Recession, and that overall trend merely continued. Your "evidence" has zero relevance except to the strawman claim no one has ever made that poverty is the sole cause of all crime.

 

[Trausti]

Why Did Crime Fall During the Great Recession?

Everybody knows that crime rates rise in recessions. When legitimate work dried up, potential criminals found it more attractive to turn to illegal work. Indeed, neighborhoods with higher poverty often have elevated crime rates.

So the Great Recession should have produced a crime wave. Instead, the doubling of the unemployment rate did nothing of the sort to violent crime, which reached a 40-year low in 2010. What gives?

What gives is that some people have zero interest in honest rational thought and engage in cherry picking to support their faith based dogma. Crime rates had been declining sharply for 15 years prior to the Great Recession, and that overall trend merely continued. Your "evidence" has zero relevance except to the strawman claim no one has ever made that poverty is the sole cause of all crime.

But if poverty causes crime, then crime rates should NOT have continued to drop.

 

[laughing dog]

What gives is that some people have zero interest in honest rational thought and engage in cherry picking to support their faith based dogma. Crime rates had been declining sharply for 15 years prior to the Great Recession, and that overall trend merely continued. Your "evidence" has zero relevance except to the strawman claim no one has ever made that poverty is the sole cause of all crime.

But if poverty causes crime, then crime rates should NOT have continued to drop.

Assuming poverty did not increase and if poverty were the sole cause of crime, you'd have a valid point. Since poverty is not the sole cause of crime, you have no valid point about crime rates.

 

[ZiprHead]

Household Poverty And Nonfatal Violent Victimization, 2008-2012

Erika Harrell, Ph.D., Lynn Langton, Ph.D., Bureau of Justice Statistics, Marcus Berzofsky, DrPH, Lance Couzens, Hope Smiley-McDonald, Ph.D., RTI International

November 18, 2014 NCJ 248384

Presents findings from 2008 to 2012 on the relationship between households that were above or below the federal poverty level and nonfatal violent victimization, including rape or sexual assault, robbery, aggravated assault, and simple assault. This report examines the violent victimization experiences of persons living in households at various levels of poverty, focusing on type of violence, victim's race or Hispanic origin, and location of residence. It also examines the percentage of violent victimizations reported to the police by poverty level. Data are from the National Crime Victimization Survey (NCVS), which collects information on nonfatal crimes, reported and not reported to the police, against persons age 12 or older from a nationally representative sample of U.S. households. During 2012, about 92,390 households and 162,940 persons were interviewed for the NCVS.

Highlights:

For the period 2008-12-
Persons in poor households at or below the Federal Poverty Level (FPL) (39.8 per 1,000) had more than double the rate of violent victimization as persons in high-income households (16.9 per 1,000).
Persons in poor households had a higher rate of violence involving a firearm (3.5 per 1,000) compared to persons above the FPL (0.8-2.5 per 1,000).
The overall pattern of poor persons having the highest rates of violent victimization was consistent for both whites and blacks. However, the rate of violent victimization for Hispanics did not vary across poverty levels.
Poor Hispanics (25.3 per 1,000) had lower rates of violence compared to poor whites (46.4 per 1,000) and poor blacks (43.4 per 1,000).
Poor persons living in urban areas (43.9 per 1,000) had violent victimization rates similar to poor persons living in rural areas (38.8 per 1,000).
Poor urban blacks (51.3 per 1,000) had rates of violence similar to poor urban whites (56.4 per 1,000).

https://www.bjs.gov/content/pub/press/hpnvv0812pr.cfm

 

[TomC]

The article went on

James Q. Wilson has four explanations: (1) More criminals in prison; (2) Better police tactics for finding and patrolling crime hotspots; (3) Better home security technology; (4) Fewer drugs, including lead in our blood and cocaine.

But you dismissed poverty as an issue, without saying why. And then quoted an article attributing the decline to modern security technology and environmental cleanup.

You might want to go back to the environmental cleanup part. Back in the 70s, environmentalists were demanding a reduction of lead in the environment. Unleaded gasoline, lead free paint, that sort of thing. They claimed that lead caused long term damage to human development.

They were right. Reducing lead in the environment, especially for developing children, did have a serious positive impact on child development. Violent crime has been dropping for a while. Ups and downs, but dropping overall.

Because environmentalists forced libertarians to be a bit more moral than they thought necessary.
Tom

Right. Poverty is not a significant cause of crime. There are all these other factors; like more criminals in prison. The Occam’s Razor answer is that criminals are gonna commit crime because they are criminals. People without criminal propensity are not gonna go out and shoot people because the economy is bad.

You managed to dodge my whole point, by responding without using words like environmental and lead.
Tom

 

[Trausti]

Right. Poverty is not a significant cause of crime. There are all these other factors; like more criminals in prison. The Occam’s Razor answer is that criminals are gonna commit crime because they are criminals. People without criminal propensity are not gonna go out and shoot people because the economy is bad.

You managed to dodge my whole point, by responding without using words like environmental and lead.
Tom

Oh, dear. You mean to say that lead could cause cognitive impairment in children? And those children could grow up to be criminals regardless of the economy?

 

[Trausti]

Erika Harrell, Ph.D., Lynn Langton, Ph.D., Bureau of Justice Statistics, Marcus Berzofsky, DrPH, Lance Couzens, Hope Smiley-McDonald, Ph.D., RTI International

November 18, 2014 NCJ 248384

Presents findings from 2008 to 2012 on the relationship between households that were above or below the federal poverty level and nonfatal violent victimization, including rape or sexual assault, robbery, aggravated assault, and simple assault. This report examines the violent victimization experiences of persons living in households at various levels of poverty, focusing on type of violence, victim's race or Hispanic origin, and location of residence. It also examines the percentage of violent victimizations reported to the police by poverty level. Data are from the National Crime Victimization Survey (NCVS), which collects information on nonfatal crimes, reported and not reported to the police, against persons age 12 or older from a nationally representative sample of U.S. households. During 2012, about 92,390 households and 162,940 persons were interviewed for the NCVS.

Highlights:

For the period 2008-12-
Persons in poor households at or below the Federal Poverty Level (FPL) (39.8 per 1,000) had more than double the rate of violent victimization as persons in high-income households (16.9 per 1,000).
Persons in poor households had a higher rate of violence involving a firearm (3.5 per 1,000) compared to persons above the FPL (0.8-2.5 per 1,000).
The overall pattern of poor persons having the highest rates of violent victimization was consistent for both whites and blacks. However, the rate of violent victimization for Hispanics did not vary across poverty levels.
Poor Hispanics (25.3 per 1,000) had lower rates of violence compared to poor whites (46.4 per 1,000) and poor blacks (43.4 per 1,000).
Poor persons living in urban areas (43.9 per 1,000) had violent victimization rates similar to poor persons living in rural areas (38.8 per 1,000).
Poor urban blacks (51.3 per 1,000) had rates of violence similar to poor urban whites (56.4 per 1,000).

https://www.bjs.gov/content/pub/press/hpnvv0812pr.cfm

That just shows that people in poverty are more likely to be victims of crime; not that their poverty causes them to commit crime.

 

[ZiprHead]

Erika Harrell, Ph.D., Lynn Langton, Ph.D., Bureau of Justice Statistics, Marcus Berzofsky, DrPH, Lance Couzens, Hope Smiley-McDonald, Ph.D., RTI International

November 18, 2014 NCJ 248384

Presents findings from 2008 to 2012 on the relationship between households that were above or below the federal poverty level and nonfatal violent victimization, including rape or sexual assault, robbery, aggravated assault, and simple assault. This report examines the violent victimization experiences of persons living in households at various levels of poverty, focusing on type of violence, victim's race or Hispanic origin, and location of residence. It also examines the percentage of violent victimizations reported to the police by poverty level. Data are from the National Crime Victimization Survey (NCVS), which collects information on nonfatal crimes, reported and not reported to the police, against persons age 12 or older from a nationally representative sample of U.S. households. During 2012, about 92,390 households and 162,940 persons were interviewed for the NCVS.

Highlights:

For the period 2008-12-
Persons in poor households at or below the Federal Poverty Level (FPL) (39.8 per 1,000) had more than double the rate of violent victimization as persons in high-income households (16.9 per 1,000).
Persons in poor households had a higher rate of violence involving a firearm (3.5 per 1,000) compared to persons above the FPL (0.8-2.5 per 1,000).
The overall pattern of poor persons having the highest rates of violent victimization was consistent for both whites and blacks. However, the rate of violent victimization for Hispanics did not vary across poverty levels.
Poor Hispanics (25.3 per 1,000) had lower rates of violence compared to poor whites (46.4 per 1,000) and poor blacks (43.4 per 1,000).
Poor persons living in urban areas (43.9 per 1,000) had violent victimization rates similar to poor persons living in rural areas (38.8 per 1,000).
Poor urban blacks (51.3 per 1,000) had rates of violence similar to poor urban whites (56.4 per 1,000).

https://www.bjs.gov/content/pub/press/hpnvv0812pr.cfm

That just shows that people in poverty are more likely to be victims of crime; not that their poverty causes them to commit crime.

So the middle and upper classes are going to the ghettos to commit crimes?

 

[Trausti]

That just shows that people in poverty are more likely to be victims of crime; not that their poverty causes them to commit crime.

So the middle and upper classes are going to the ghettos to commit crimes?

Do all the people in the ghetto commit crime, or just a few? Why that few? Most are victims. Maybe people with criminal propensity are not capable of maintaining a middle-class lifestyle (duh) and thus prey on the poor in their own neighborhood.

 

[ronburgundy]

The article went on

James Q. Wilson has four explanations: (1) More criminals in prison; (2) Better police tactics for finding and patrolling crime hotspots; (3) Better home security technology; (4) Fewer drugs, including lead in our blood and cocaine.

But you dismissed poverty as an issue, without saying why. And then quoted an article attributing the decline to modern security technology and environmental cleanup.

You might want to go back to the environmental cleanup part. Back in the 70s, environmentalists were demanding a reduction of lead in the environment. Unleaded gasoline, lead free paint, that sort of thing. They claimed that lead caused long term damage to human development.

They were right. Reducing lead in the environment, especially for developing children, did have a serious positive impact on child development. Violent crime has been dropping for a while. Ups and downs, but dropping overall.

Because environmentalists forced libertarians to be a bit more moral than they thought necessary.
Tom

Right. Poverty is not a significant cause of crime. There are all these other factors; like more criminals in prison. The Occam’s Razor answer is that criminals are gonna commit crime because they are criminals. People without criminal propensity are not gonna go out and shoot people because the economy is bad.

Wrong. Occam would be ashamed to be associated with such a stunningly stupid comment. There is a mountain of evidence that poverty is a major causal factor in crime. Your theory that crimes are a result of an internal propensity regardless of context is incapable of explaining most of the data, or even of explanation the simple correlation between crime and poverty. You would need to add assumptions that there is also a propensity to be poor and that there is some other unknown factor causing the two propensities to covary.

BTW, this Danish study showed that "being subject to a sudden and unexpected mass-layoff is found to increase the probability that an individual commits a crime". Individual persons who lost their jobs were significantly more likely to have crime conviction within 7 years after being laid off, but not within 7 years prior to their job loss. The study focused upon job losses by people who'd held the job for a long time and were laid off as part an unexpected mass layoff having little or nothing to do with any personal issues related to the job. Thus, their data rules out a mere criminal disposition and rules out that it's a mere correlation between traits of criminality and traits that lead to job loss, and shows that the job loss not related to personal traits is causality antecedent to the criminality.

And note (as the authors wisely do) that this causal impact of job loss on crime occurred even within a Danish society where people who lose their job get lot's of social and economic support. Thus, the causal impact which "suggest substantial overall impacts of job loss on crime", and thus would be expected to be much stronger in societies with less help for the unemployed and poor.

 

[ronburgundy]

That just shows that people in poverty are more likely to be victims of crime; not that their poverty causes them to commit crime.

So the middle and upper classes are going to the ghettos to commit crimes?

Do all the people in the ghetto commit crime, or just a few? Why that few? Most are victims. Maybe people with criminal propensity are not capable of maintaining a middle-class lifestyle (duh) and thus prey on the poor in their own neighborhood.

Do all people who smoke die of lung cancer? No. Therefore, by your logic, smoking plays no causal role in the development of lung cancer.

 

[Trausti]

Right. Poverty is not a significant cause of crime. There are all these other factors; like more criminals in prison. The Occam’s Razor answer is that criminals are gonna commit crime because they are criminals. People without criminal propensity are not gonna go out and shoot people because the economy is bad.

Wrong. Occam would be ashamed to be associated with such a stunningly stupid comment. There is a mountain of evidence that poverty is a major causal factor in crime. Your theory that crimes are a result of an internal propensity regardless of context is incapable of explaining most of the data, or even of explanation the simple correlation between crime and poverty. You would need to add assumptions that there is also a propensity to be poor and that there is some other unknown factor causing the two propensities to covary.

BTW, this Danish study showed that "being subject to a sudden and unexpected mass-layoff is found to increase the probability that an individual commits a crime". Individual persons who lost their jobs were significantly more likely to have crime conviction within 7 years after being laid off, but not within 7 years prior to their job loss. The study focused upon job losses by people who'd held the job for a long time and were laid off as part an unexpected mass layoff having little or nothing to do with any personal issues related to the job. Thus, their data rules out a mere criminal disposition and rules out that it's a mere correlation between traits of criminality and traits that lead to job loss, and shows that the job loss not related to personal traits is causality antecedent to the criminality.

And note (as the authors wisely do) that this causal impact of job loss on crime occurred even within a Danish society where people who lose their job get lot's of social and economic support. Thus, the causal impact which "suggest substantial overall impacts of job loss on crime", and thus would be expected to be much stronger in societies with less help for the unemployed and poor.

Ah, so the mass layoffs during the Great Recession led to a crime spike by those who lost their careers. But W suppressed the data, or something.

 

[ZiprHead]

That just shows that people in poverty are more likely to be victims of crime; not that their poverty causes them to commit crime.

So the middle and upper classes are going to the ghettos to commit crimes?

Do all the people in the ghetto commit crime, or just a few? Why that few? Most are victims. Maybe people with criminal propensity are not capable of maintaining a middle-class lifestyle (duh) and thus prey on the poor in their own neighborhood.

So it has to be all or nothing for the correlation to be valid?

What color is the sky in your world?

 

[ronburgundy]

Right. Poverty is not a significant cause of crime. There are all these other factors; like more criminals in prison. The Occam’s Razor answer is that criminals are gonna commit crime because they are criminals. People without criminal propensity are not gonna go out and shoot people because the economy is bad.

You managed to dodge my whole point, by responding without using words like environmental and lead.
Tom

Oh, dear. You mean to say that lead could cause cognitive impairment in children? And those children could grow up to be criminals regardless of the economy?

Lead exposure is itself causally impacted by poverty. So, that is just one of the countless ways in which poverty causes crime.