Crime Rate Statistics and Lies

Violent crime has risen again. The year 2006 was a much better year than 2005 in many respects, but slightly more people per 100,000 were the victims of violent crime. It might seem like a meaningless clarification, but there are always many people eager to demonstrate their knowledge of America's rising population by pointing out that absolute crime numbers are almost guaranteed to rise along with the population.

The total rise in violent crime wasn't very large, only on the order of 1-2%. But the situation in individual locales can be much different. For example, throughout the state of Texas crime rates are down pretty uniformly. But the city of Houston is a highly notable exception. In the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina, a huge mass of the city of New Orleans relocated to Houston, and many are probably going to stay permanently. The city of New Orleans had a great deal in common with a cesspool long before broken dikes literally made the comparison true. New Orleans' diaspora has completely remade the distribution of crime throughout the South. In particular, the drug trade was significantly altered by supply disruptions. What could have been a boon for law enforcement turned into a debacle as small scale dealers moved to Houston and shared best practices with their regional suppliers. After an immediate outburst of shootings that had all the hallmarks of outright warfare, the organized crime movements in the city retrenched and forged a newer, stronger drug corridor to the rest of the nation's interior.

Houston's problem is a chronic shortage of police officers. At a time when Houston's aging police force suffered attrition through simple retirement, the city continued to grow. Even today, the city of Houston is probably 25% below the accepted number of officers per thousand. Houston's problem is that police officers in general have become harder to find. Young police officers get the most dangerous beats and insufficient backup these days. And the war in Iraq stripped many young men and women who otherwise would have become police officers out of the system.

The real failure of crime rate statistics is that they provide an easy way for politicians and police chiefs around the country to hide the obvious: the only real way to lower crime is to put more officers on the street. Rudy Giuliani's lauded "broken window" crime fighting tactic is ultimately a red herring. There have been countless fads and new techniques in law enforcement over the past few years, but the only solution that generalizes to every community is adding more police officers.

The real question is why so many politicians waste their time on gimmicks and refuse to put more officers on the streets. No politician has ever been voted out of office for being to tough on criminals, yet countless appeasers get tossed out of office every year. Don't let the statistics lie to you, crime rates are caused by a multitude of interacting forces that can't be controlled easily. Except by hiring more police officers.