Why you should be skeptical of soaring murder rates

I live in Washington, D.C., which has been experiencing something of a murder crisis of late. Total homicides are up 44 percent so far from 2014, and city officials are scrambling to try and do something about it. It's not just DC, either. In fact, other cities like Baltimore and Milwaukee have experienced even greater increases — 56 and 77 percent respectively. It's not good — but it's also no time to panic.

When it comes to crime, it's important to keep a clear head and not simply lash out blindly at a half-perceived trend.

First, when talking crime policy, it ought to be a given that the overriding goal is to decrease crime. This sounds obvious, but it often isn't. Policy during the great crime wave of the late 20th century was more about vengeance and hatred than actual safety. And as Mark Kleiman has written, very often there is a tradeoff between the two. Good social services have been shown in some cases to decrease crime much more effectively than harsh punishments. Even long sentences themselves can mean wasting scarce criminal justice resources on single offenders that would be better used spread out among many.

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This was a particular tragedy because later evidence strongly suggests that leaded gasoline was actually responsible for most of that great crime wave. (It sounds ridiculous, but lead poisoning leads to brain damage and lack of impulse control that tends to result in more criminal activity.) If America had reacted to the crime wave by thoroughly investigating all potential risk factors, instead of just blindly lashing out at evildoers, we very well might have prevented tens of thousands of murders, not to mention millions of assaults and thefts.

Second, it is far from clear that this murder spike in a few cities is actually a broader problem. New York and Philadelphia have only seen slight increases, and Boston had decreased slightly as of a month ago. In fact, we won't get a reliable overview until national survey data from the Bureau of Justice Statistics comes out around this time next year.

But even if data does show an uptick this summer, it could be a statistical fluke — a few months that turn out to be simply a one-off event. Even simple weather might be a partial explanation, as heat is associated with crime, and the 2015 summer has been considerably hotter than the last couple years in much of the country.

Worse, police departments are notorious for fiddling with crime statistics — sometimes to make their departments or political handlers look good, sometimes as a result of pressure to fit some data-driven crime initiative. As Chicago Magazine documented last year, police have extensive leeway to determine how a crime is classified — in one grim case, counting a death as not-murder even though the victim was found bound, gagged, and beaten. Many departments are angry at perceived disrespect from Black Lives Matter protesters (and others), so it's completely possible they could be jiggering the stats upwards to demonstrate their own value. Remember when the NYPD all but stopped certain patrols because they were mad at Mayor de Blasio?

Finally, whether this crime trend turns out to be real or not, it's worth being very skeptical in general of how crime is covered. For many years now, the media (particularly local television news) has followed an "if it bleeds, it leads" policy that obscures the actual crime trend. If there is a day of unusually low crime, it's ignored — but if it's the opposite, it gets wall-to-wall coverage. As a result, Americans have consistently reported for the last 30 years that crime is increasing, though the reality is the opposite. The symbiotic moral panic between the media and the political class was a huge part of the politics of crime in the 80s and 90s.

Despite all that, crime politics have definitely calmed down in recent years — otherwise there wouldn't be any Republican politicians calling for reduced prison populations. Hopefully that will allow some space for quality policy to deal with any actual crime increase — focusing on things like efficient social services, job creation, abolishing poverty, and swift and certain rather than harsh punishment.

But like Ed Kilgore, I worry that a spate of increased violent crime could start that whole fear machine back up again, sparking panic and reversing what progress has been made in criminal justice reform. So remember: Keep a cool head.