New York Citys Violent Crime Rate Change Between 1965 to 2010 - Report Example

Name Instructor Course. Date Introduction. Violent crimes can be defined as an act in which an individual breaks the law by threatening or the actual use of violent force upon the victim. In such crimes, violence is only used as a mean s to an end in the perpetrators actions for instance robbery. In the United States, Department of Justice (Bureau of Justice Statistics) and the Federal Bureau of investigations (Uniform crime Report) categorize violent crimes into five principal categories. That is murder, robbery, simple assault, forcible rape and aggravated assault. With demographic figures of over nineteen million people, New York City is prone to violent crimes. This was the trend in the early nineties until the second half of the century. However, recent statistics based on the findings of Bureau of Justice Statistics the average rate of violent crime victimization in the United States as a country has been declining significantly. The total decline is by more than two thirds within the period of almost two decades, (years 1994 and 2009). By the year 2009, the sentenced prisoners who were involved in violent crimes in the federal prisons accounted for about 8% of the population in the federal prisons. (J. Dorris). New York City’s violent crime rate change between 1965 to 2010. From the year 2005, New York City has had the lowest crime rates compared to the twenty five largest cities in the United States. There have been several instances in the past that had made New York be unsafe as a city and susceptible to violent crimes. These include the crack epidemic in the 1980’s and early 90s (Prager 2006). In the 2002, New York City ranked 197th among U.S cities with populations of more than one hundred thousand in terms of crime. Also, violent saw a decrease of more than three quarters from 1993 to 2005. This is significant considering the whole nation was experiencing increased crime rates in general. This has put many sociologists and criminologists at task to explain this dramatic, rapid and unexpected rapid decline in crime in New York City. They have however not come to a consensus. Some are accrediting this success to the new tactics that have been adopted by the New York police Department which involve the critical and extensive use of the broken window theory and Comp Stat. However, there are other factors which have contributed to this change. They include demographic changes, economic changes and various legislations (John et al 2006). Hypothesis According various standards theoretical framework, individuals engage in criminal whether violent or non violent based on various factors. These factors include the expected payoffs, tastes, costs that are incurred in the criminal activity, the possibility of return to legal labor market and legal activities, chances of apprehension, possible conviction and punishment. For the rapid decrease of crime in New York, researchers and various scholars have come up with a number of economically related theories to explain the situation. One of such is a crucial theory which is based on the relationship between unemployment and crime. The economic theory of crime makes the assumption that people make rational choices on either legitimate activities or criminal activities as a main source of economic prosperity. Comparison is therefore made between the economic gain from legitimate work versus the gains an individual will derive from violent or property crime. This is a conclusion made after accounting for crime-related costs for instance incarceration is made. This theory goes ahead to predict a positive correlation between unemployment and property crime that is, increase in the rates of unemployment will result to increase in both property and violent crimes. This has been proven to be true in New York. According to statistics, the employment rates and general poverty rates in the city have significantly improved since the year 1965. This has resulted to adequate wealth to individuals who are now able to own property and accumulate wealthy without involving themselves s in violent crimes. The raise in the Gross Domestic Product of New York city has also enabled many individuals to adopt better security systems for their homes. This has ensured that they are well taken care of. The increase of such security has also reduced the crimes rates significantly. According to the economic model, the reason for this positive correlation between unemployment and crime rate is that during periods when there are fewer opportunities for legitimate income, people may turn to illegal activities. On the other hand, incase more jobs are available, the risks of committing a crime are clearly outweighed by the opportunity for legitimate work. There is a second theory which factors both the motivation to commit crimes as well as the opportunities available to commit these crimes. This theory concurs with the economic theory of crime. This is in predicting that the unemployment rate is positively correlated with the crime rates due to a significant increase in criminal motivation. However, the theory simultaneously predicts that unemployment may be negatively correlated with the property crime rate. This is for the sole reason that during periods of increasing unemployment, there may be limited criminal opportunities. This is mainly because there is a significant chance that the potential targets/victims may also be unemployed and thus better able to guard their property. This is proven by the Bureau of Labor Statistics. As such, the result of this is violent crimes as force will have to be used to commit these crimes. There are multiple macroeconomic indicators that serve as estimates of economic strength. They include the consumer price index or real earnings. During the most recent economic downturn, many people referred to the unemployment rate and the high proportion of home foreclosures as proxies for economic health. New York has shown significant stability for sustainability. Other theories revolve around demographics and the relation to the crime decrease in New York City. There was a significant prosperity and an aging population in the 1990s which resulted in the decline of violent crime in New York City. The aging population cannot easily engage in violent crimes. On the other hand, ethic divisions and population density significantly changed. There was the presence of different races in New York and this changed the attitudes and perceptions of the populations. This changed the violent crimes rate scene. Predominantly, male African Americans are associated with violent crimes. They also account for the bigger population in jails all across American. The presence of different races and dominance of the female gender helped stabilize this situation. According to Saridakis (2004), violent crimes are a result of many factors circumnavigating social and demographic variables. These factors include the rate of imprisonment, income inequality, alcohol consumption, racial composition, male youth and unemployment. According to the national statistics, the number of police in New York has significantly increased. As such, better policing has been put in place. Presence of police officers has been known to significantly reduce crimes. The increase of the number of law enforcement officers without change of tactic does not result into the dramatic decrease of violent crime levels as experienced in New York for over three decades. Over time, enormous amount of media attention has been more focused on the policing strategies that have instituted in New York City. The new crime attack approach involved increased enforcement of nuisance activities like aggressive panhandling. It also involved better use of technology to identify crime “hot spots.” Community policing is also another strategy that was adopted. In this strategy, the police work more closely as allies with communities as opposed to the tradition of only responding to emergency calls. This was targeted at gang violence and drug cartels. Between 1991 and 2001, the New York City police force grew by about 45 percent. This is a massive growth as the national police growth is only a third this percentage. As such, the decrease in crime in New York can be attributed to the increase in the number of law enforcers and the change in police tactic. Rosenfeld (2007) examines the relationship between macroeconomic conditions and rates of common crime. The focus is on the Index of Consumer Sentiment and its impact on regional robbery, motor vehicle theft, larceny and burglary in the United States. This was between the years1970 and 2003. The conclusion was that consumer sentiment had a significant influence on robbery and property crime rates. They also found that the consumer sentiment accounted for a large percentage of crime declines during 1990s, so that the collective economic perceptions should be paid attention to in the future research on crime rates. With population satisfaction with the economy and the various services they were being offered, the rates of crime significantly reduce to manageable levels. According to Levitt (2004), there are four primary factors and six secondary factors that led to the decline of crime in New York. This is based on the statistics of the 90s. The six factors are the strong economy of the 1990s, better policing strategies, changing demographics, gun control laws, increased use of capital punishments and laws allowing the carrying of concealed weapons. The four critical factors are the increasing number of police, the rising number of the prison population, the ebbing of the crack epidemic and the formulation of the legislation that led to the legalization of legalization of abortion in the 1970s. While the population in the United States' prisons and jails was rapidly expanding, the incarceration in New York rose by 15% only. This was experienced in the first seven years of the decade and the number was clearly under its 1990 rate by the year 2000. By 2007, the rate of incarceration in New York was down 28%. As such, what had been regarded as high-risk populations of New York City did not change. Neither did it increase nor the number of offenders locked up did. As a result, robbery, burglary and murder dropped by over80%. This is strange in America, a nation that for a long period of time has long believed that criminal offenders will keep offending unless they are locked up. With the decrease in the number of offenders, the city of New York demonstrated a high decrease in crime. Methodology The data to be used in this study will be population and statistics samples. The data is from official government databases. This includes data from the Federal Bureau of Investigations and the government’s Bureau of Statistics. The data is authenticated and verified to be true. As such it is reliable and can be used for analysis. The data will include demographics from New York City sampled from the year 1965 through to the new millennium. The data include the economic statistics of the city and the poverty levels. The employment levels of the city will also be considered. The demographics will include the ratio of the poor, the middle class and the rich in the city. The ethnicity of the people will also be considered. In the year 2009, the risk of being killed in New York City was estimated to be less than a fifth of its 1990 rate. The risk of being robbed was less than a sixth the former rate while the risk of car theft had surprisingly declined to 1/16th of its 1990 level. As such a crime equation has to be derived to calculate the various factors contributing to the crime rates in the city. The crime-supply equation can be written follows. CR =f (POL, ARR, POV, Q), In this equation, CR represents for criminal activity, POL shows the size of the police force, ARR represents crime arrests, POV represents legal-market opportunities, proxied by poverty, and Q is drug use. Excluding the drug-use variable, this equation is one of the variants of the model used in the economics of crime. (Corman 2000). However, the drug use cannot be ignored, this is because drug use is attributed to most of the violent crimes in New York City. The existence of the Crack epidemic in the late 80s significantly contributed to the crime rate in the city of New York. This therefore makes drug use one of most important factors in the evaluation of the crime rates in New York City. The sample of the data will be based on the amount of the data and the accuracy that is needed. As such as many samples as possible will be needed including opinions of the public about the crime rates. The opinions will be both personal and groups. The sampling should be done within a limited time frame in order to ensure the authenticity of the data. The data collected has both strengths and weaknesses. Some of the strengths of the data include the fact that the opinions of the people reflect the reality on the ground. The demographic statistics are accurate as they are base on the census conducted. The economic condition of the city and the employment rates are also accurate. This is because they are based on actual data that is collected from the financial and economic institutions. The disadvantages of the data include the fact that most of the data comes from governmental institutions. According to many people in the public, data that comes from the government is edited to please the crowds. As people don’t trust the data the statistics may be biased. The other disadvantage is getting some of the data from the security institutions. There are many protocols to be followed and also some of the criminal activities and data are classified for high level government officials only. As such the analysis may not be 100% accurate and reliable. The data will be analyzed using comprehensive software like Stata and SPSS. As such results will be accurate depending on the data obtained. There are independent variable and dependent variables. As such this data will be separated and amassed accordingly. The data will be presented in forms of graphs and tables. This will give visual aid and make understanding of the statistics easier. Year Population Violent crime total Violent crime rate Percentage change of violent crime 1965 18,073,000 58,802 325.4 - 1970 18,190,740 124,613 685.0 111.9% 1975 18,120,000 155,187 856.4 24.5% 1980 17,506,690 180,235 1,029.5 16.1% 1985 17,783,000 165,365 929.9 -8.3% 1990 17,990,455 212,458 1,180.9 28.5% 1995 18,136,000 152,683 841.9 -28.1% 2000 18,976,457 105,111 553.9 -31.2% 2005 19,315,721 85,839 444.0 -18.33% 2010 19,378,102 75,977 392.1 -11.5% Conclusion The arithmetic consideration of the decline of crime is astounding. However, the recent reaction by the public to the epidemic of public safety in New York is rather complacent. In some sense, it is understandable. This is because crime statistics only command attention of the public when citizens are worried about crime. This is the same way people only think about doctors when they are feeling unwell. Procedurally, official crime statistics are generated and verified by the law enforcement authorities. It is the same police departments that are highly praised when crime rates fall and severely blamed when they increase. As such, many observers greet optimistic and tremendous news from police statistics as untrustworthy. They claim that these are just pronouncements by an interested party (The New York Times, September 9, 2010). Levitt also came to a conclusion that the so-called experts to media offered misleading information to the public on the reasons why crime rates fall. However, it is evident from national statistics that there has been a rapid decrease in crime rate in New York since 1985.as such new York City has become a safe and low crime urban environment. This is according to American standards. This has been due to factors like increasing the number of law enforcement officers, fighting of the trade of crack cocaine, demographic changes, economic changes and change of police tactics. These can be verified and implemented in other cities as well. References Wallman, Alfred Blumstein (2000) The Crime Drop in America. New York: Cambridge University Press (2000). Conklin, John E. 2003. Why Crime Rate Fell. Boston. MA: Allyn and Bacon. Thomas, Robert, Cooter, Ulen. 2011 Law and Economics. Boston, MA: Prentice Hall Press Corman Hope and Naci H, Mocan. 2000. “A Time- Series Analysis of Crime, Deterrence, and Drug Abuse in New York City.” The American Economic Review. 90(3):584-604. Doris J. James (2004) Profile of Jail inmates 2002. United States Bureau of Statistics. Gainsborough, Jenni and Marc, Mauer. 2000. “Diminishing Returns: Crime and Incarceration in the 1990s.” The Sentencing Project. 9(1):1-8. Greenberg, David. 2001. “Time Series Analysis of Crime Rates.” Journal of Quantitative Criminology. 17(4):291-327. Johnson, Bruce D., Andrew Golub, Eloise Dunlap (2006). "The Rise and Decline of Hard Drugs, Drug Markets, and Violence in Inner-City New York". In Blumstein, Alfred, Joel Wallman. The Crime Drop in America. Cambridge University Karman, Andrew (2000). New York Murder Mystery: The True Story behind the Crime Crash of the 1990s. New York: New York University Press (2000). Karmen, Andrew (2000). New York Murder Mystery: The True Story Behind the Crime Crash of the 1990s. NYU Press. Levitt, Steven D. 2004. “Understanding Why Crime Fell in the 1990s: Four Factors that Explain the decline and Six that Do Not.” Journal of Economic Perpectives. 18(1): 163-190. Lin, Zhiqiu, and Augustine, Brannigan. 2003. “Advances in the Analysis of Non-stationary time Series: An Illustration of Co integration and Error Correction Methods in Research on Crime and Immigration.”Quality and Quality. 37(2):151-168. Rosenfeld, Richard and Robert, Fornango. 2007. “The Impact of Economic Conditions on Robbery and Property Crime: The Role of Consumer Sentiment.”Criminology. 45(4):735-769. Saridakis, George. 2004. “Violent Crime in the United States of America: A Time-Series Analysis between 1960-2000.” European Journal of Law and Economics. 18(2): 203-221. Scott R. Maggarda, Brian K. Payneb and Allison T. Chappella. 2012.“Attitudes toward capital punishment: Educational, demographic, and neighborhood crime influences.”The Social Science Journal. 49(2):155-166. Skogan, Wesley and Kathleen Frydl, eds. (2004) Fairness and Effectiveness in Policing: The Evidence. Report of theNational Research Council Committee to Review Research onPolice Policy and Practices. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press Tullock, Gordon. 1997. “Does Punishment Deter Crime” Pp. 75-86 in Neil O. Alper and Hellman Daryl A, Economics of Crime: A Reader. Needham Heights, MA: Simon & Schuster Custom Press.  Vollaard, Ben. 2005. “Police Numbers Up, Crime Rates Down: The effect of police on crime in the Netherlands, 1996-2003.” CPB Netherlands Bureau for Economic Policy Analysis. Document No. 75. West, Heather; Sabol, William (December 2010). Prisoners in 2009. Bureau of Justice Statistics. Zimring, Franklin E. (2007). The Great American Crime Decline. NewYork: Oxford University Press. Read More