By Request: Crime and Recession
Jerrod asks:
Matt, among those of us who (like you) appreciate big cities, I’ve heard some people fretting that we’re about to re-enter a time when economic conditions make cities so full of crime that they are nearly unlivable. How do we avoid that sort of thing happening again like it did for a while there in the 1970s?
I think this is worth worrying about. One thing we know about crime is that when wages and employment levels for low-skill workers are high, crime goes down. Another is that mass incarceration works — increase the number of beds in prison and the number of sentence-years handed out and the crime rate drops. But the first of these is the reverse of what happens in a recession, and the second we’ve already pushed well past the limit of cost-effectiveness (see here) and it’s inconceivable to me that you could actually push this far enough to compensate for the declining economy in the context of declining state budgets.
At the same time, when it comes to crime you have a lot of cyclical effects. Once a neighborhood reaches a “slum equilibrium” it becomes very difficult to pull out of it. People don’t walk around so there are no “eyes on the street.” Stores find it hard to stay in business, so there are few jobs. The most together families tend to move away. A general atmosphere of disarray may, itself, contribute to increasing levels of criminality (per “broken windows” theory), and as the neighborhood becomes poorer and less desirable it loses political clout which makes all the problems worse. The good news, such as it is, for cities is that there’s reason to believe that the coming decline will see more in the way of the slumification of the exurbs than it will re-slumification of “transitional” neighborhoods in comeback cities. For example, when I was growing up there were unsafe areas in the East Village that I think have now clearly passed into a safe “non-slum” equilibrium with plenty of businesses open and eyes on the street, where if real estate prices fall there are plenty of non-poor people who’d be eager to take up the slack.
But “things may be worse elsewhere” isn’t a responsible policy response for mayors and city councils. One thing these considerations underscore is the vital importance of state and local fiscal aid as probably the primary federal recession-fighting policy. You don’t want to see cities layoff off cops, eliminating overtime, and delaying new hires. What you want to see is just the reverse — hiring and salaries staying as they have been, and recruiting well-qualified officers getting easier as the private sector job market looks bleak. On top of that, you need smart police policies. William Bratton had a lot of success as Police Commissioner in Boston. Then again as Police Commissioner in New York. And then again as Police Commissioner in Los Angeles. Probably your can’t just hire him, but perhaps he could recommend someone. Ultimately, though, many cities (Washington, DC among them) really need to expand the size of their policy force if they want to increase the effectiveness of their policing and that’s hard to do in the current economic climate.
38 Responses to “By Request: Crime and Recession”
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January 3rd, 2009 at 9:50 am
Matt:
Did you mean Police force, or Policy force? I am starting to think this is a little game you are playing (i.e.- watch me completely botch a sentence and see how long before my reader’s throw up a comment).
January 3rd, 2009 at 10:02 am
Sometimes it’s the small things a child observes that form their attitudes toward civility and the law. I’m continually amazed by the daily slights and assaults on proper norms of behavior committed by adults with small children in tow. You are parked at a stop light and the car ahead unloads nearly a full garbage bag of refuse onto the street. Perfectly mobile, hale and hearty parents swoop into a handicapped parking spot near the front of a store and jog briskly inside. Shoppers with an overflowing cart of groceries get into the “12 item or less” lane and glare menacingly, daring the clerk to refuse service and insisting if confronted on nevertheless being checked out. Shoplifting, jaywalking, running red lights. Skipping work to get high or sleep in. Stealing cable service, driving off without paying at a gas station. All admittedly lesser infractions, no one physically harmed. Yet often done in full view of their children, instilling a sense that laws and rules mean nothing. And with so much serious crime to deal with how do you go about campaigning these assorted behaviors need monitored and punished? You can’t, not without being criticized as a nag and a scold. Kids watch adults and mimic them. Many of them are learning from some very poor role models.
January 3rd, 2009 at 10:22 am
I think all parts of our country see an increase in crime during economic hard times, but the problem is that the already accepted level of crime in urban areas starts out a lot higher than in less urban areas. It only takes a little more crime to get to the non-acceptable level and then things fall off a cliff. The ordinary, acceptable level of crime experienced in many urban areas would be considered a crime wave out here in non-urban America. For example, there are many years where my city has no murders. One can safely walk anywhere, at any hour, without the slightest worry. Since there is so little crime there are a lot more non-criminals than criminals, so it is a lot harder for criminals to get a foothold and do stuff without getting caught. In other words, we just don’t have the criminal infrastructure that urban areas have in abundance.
January 3rd, 2009 at 10:30 am
I know Boston best, so that’s what I’ll talk about. I’m not worried about a new Combat Zone popping up and Downtown being full of porn shops again. But I am a little worried that some of the parts of Dorchester that have gotten nice-ish in that last few years might start getting a little ugly. Somerville might be just fine, but maybe East Boston gets rough. There are neighborhoods on the margins all over the city, so it’s not clear to me that the negative consequences of the recession are primarily going to be a problem for the exurbs.
January 3rd, 2009 at 10:38 am
Doesn’t the importance of reducing unemployment among ex convicts suggest that we should be careful about raising the minimum wage. Minimum wages may price ex-convicts out of the employment increaing recidivism. Now days congress almost always includes tax cuts for business along with its minimum wage increases. Why not keep the minimum wage where it is and give those tax subsidies directly to workers in the form of an increased and renamed EITC. Increasing the EITC permanently should probably be part of the stimulus package. It does increase the deficit in the long term, but it is good policy anyway.
January 3rd, 2009 at 10:39 am
Did you mean Police force, or Policy force?
I’m pretty sure Matt meant “Policy Force.” In time of recession, it is important to increase the number of pundits and other “public intellectuals” so that the National Bloviation Reserves do not drop below critical levels.
January 3rd, 2009 at 10:43 am
Sadly, look to those neighborhoods with the highest % of immigrant populations to be the neighborhoods where crime will sky-rocket. These cohorts are likely going to be the most effected by the downturn and lack the social networks, safety-net, as well as social-structure to whether this.
Often, their children are already highly susceptible to gang activity, and this is only going to reinforce those urges.
Also – any neighborhood (I live in one ~ Uptown in Denver) where there are two distinct groups living together (poorer original residents and newer, younger professionals) will likely fall again. As Yglesias said, one you hit a certain level of success as a neighborhood (i.e. – Downtown Crossing area in Boston or LoDo in Denver), there is likely no going back, as the infrastructure (i.e. – porn shops, abandoned houses) are no longer available to allow the neighborhood to easily return to its seedier roots.
January 3rd, 2009 at 10:45 am
sorry – I meant “weather”, not whether.
Also – please do not infer my post to knock on immigrant neighborhoods. I feel for these people, as most of them are good people, who lack the education and social capital to overcome what we are about to go through.
January 3rd, 2009 at 10:46 am
It’s worth pointing out– it’s taken as gospel by many, but it simply isn’t the case that we know for sure that economic downturns produce higher crime rates.
January 3rd, 2009 at 10:48 am
Craig, maybe this is already done somewhere, but why not pay companies to hire people on probation, parole or otherwise saddled with a criminal record? I’ve always felt criminals pay over and over again for their crime; a prison sentence, fines or community service never really bringing them back to “zero” and able to make a fresh start. Sure, banks won’t hire embezzlers nor school systems sexual predators. Still, some sort of incentive to give these people a new start on life is preferable to a sink or swim ultimatum as they’re pushed out the prison gates. Pay bonuses to corporations for lending a helping hand. Better people work when willing than continually turned away at the help wanted window.
January 3rd, 2009 at 10:50 am
James Gary,
thanks for the clarification. I figured he meant Policy Force for the same reasons you identified. Plus, what America really needs is not those who will be out there on the front lines, protecting us from the disorder that ensues in severe downturns, but rather, we need a bunch of twenty-something snot-nosed kids [who have little life experiences aside from waking up around 11:00 AM every morning in order to attend their 1:00 Philosophy class in some ivy-covered building] telling us as how bad crime is getting and posting to a web-site.
January 3rd, 2009 at 10:52 am
Freddie,
Can you provide us with evidence of when crime went down even as unemployment increased in the modern era?
January 3rd, 2009 at 10:56 am
“One thing we know about crime is that when wages and employment levels for low-skill workers are high, crime goes down.”
So are you in favor of restricting unskilled immigration to take that downward pressure off of the wages of unskilled American workers?
January 3rd, 2009 at 10:58 am
Steve,
I completely agree about the life-sentence we give former convicts. Often the recidivism rate is often because the lack of opportunities and lack of hope they can pull out of the poverty that likely will haunt them the rest of their lives.
If the courts/boards have determined them safe enough to leave prison, then that should clear their records from public scrutiny, and allow them the same opportunities as others. They have paid the price, now give them the opportunity to return to normal society. It is double-jeopardy, especially for non-violent offenders.
January 3rd, 2009 at 11:04 am
“If the courts/boards have determined them safe enough to leave prison, then that should clear their records from public scrutiny, and allow them the same opportunities as others. They have paid the price, now give them the opportunity to return to normal society. It is double-jeopardy, especially for non-violent offenders.”
So do you think that Michael Milken shouldn’t have been banned from the securities industry for life?
January 3rd, 2009 at 11:41 am
When unemployment is approaching 10% the sheer numbers and variety of people looking for work creates a “buyers market” for employers seeking to hire. In such an atmosphere there is little incentive to choose anyone except the cleanest (in terms of personal history), most dutiful and least risky job seekers. Without help or incentives ex-cons don’t stand a chance. Hence they rob and steal to get by. That hand you won’t offer in help can’t grip your every dollar and possession tightly enough to avoid them being taken from you.
January 3rd, 2009 at 12:14 pm
I always saw the collapse of America’s inner cities in the 70’s as a result of lack of will on the part of the political class. Minority leadership took control with vague and misty notions of equality and allowed the criminal element to run rampant. Unfortunately, the people that suffered the most were minorities. As this leadership matured, and Guiliani showed that large cities were governable, the quality of life in our cities improved with a few notable exceptions (Detroit). I do not subscribe to the notion that because a neighborhood is poor and immigrant that ergo it must be crime ridden.
January 3rd, 2009 at 12:32 pm
FYI… picture is of the abandoned hulk of the old Michigan Central train station in good ole detroit. It’s one of the most amazing pieces of urban archeology in the world. Every time I’ve been there, there were always people there taking pictures and marveling at the ruins. It was featured in the Transformers movie. If you’re in detroit, I recommend making a slum-tourist visit to the place. And when you do, check out the new hipster coffee shop that has opened in front of it.
January 3rd, 2009 at 12:34 pm
Also, great history and interior shots of the building can be found here. I swear, the govt. should buy this site and make it a historical monument or something. It’s breathtaking in person.
January 3rd, 2009 at 1:21 pm
well, at least the east village will survive.
we can thank god for that.
January 3rd, 2009 at 1:32 pm
Brian, those are amazing pics. I’d love to go check it out some time.
January 3rd, 2009 at 1:35 pm
I fear “slumification” of marginal neighborhoods is being driven much more by foreclosures than crime: Cleveland seems to be ground zero for this, with plenty of historically successful neighborhoods slipping dangerously into abandonment.
The lead poisoning theory of the 1960s-90s crime wave is actually quite compelling. If it’s true, we are probably not in danger of that level of violent crime happening again.
January 3rd, 2009 at 1:37 pm
Isn’t it entirely understandable that after
eight years of rule by the Bush gang people
feel free to ignore the rule of law? The
entire message of America to the world has been
“The rules don’t apply to us.” We are now
reaping what we’ve sown. Funny how the Bible
thumpers never seem to have read the Bible.
January 3rd, 2009 at 1:57 pm
Well, it’s always a blind-men-and-elephant day when the under-40s start thinking about history.
To start with, the collapse of the inner cities did not begin in the 70s. In the 50s and 60s the cities were ruled by political mobocracies, combinations of businessmen with unionized public employees and the local papers. Crime was “low” because tolerance polices and bribery were pandemic.
In Seattle in the 50s, for example, about the only thing you could do that was illegal was jaywalking. Hookers were in storefronts, all the gambling had made payments and was “tolerated”, bootleg and underage liquor and drugs were ignored, even the gay people (still illegal at that time to be gay) were “tolerated” as long as they made their payments.
Meanwhile, the businessmen took what they wanted, and weren’t we surprised in the 70s to find out how much that was. They simply built on public land, or, in extreme cases, paid $25-$100 to lease entire city blocks. The Fire Dept, City Light, and the police acted as a bloc to elect City Council reps, enforce the After-Sunset rules, maintain their privileges, and, with the Building Department, hand out illegal building permits to their supporters and harass people who didn’t go along with this entirely corrupt process.
With the building of the freeways, the calculus changed. The goal became to blockbust the cities, scaring the white people into moving to the suburbs, and making the inner cities into free-fire zones for business, where they could build and pollute with no pesky good-government types looking over their shoulders.
But moving into the 70s the calculus changed again. By then so many businesses had failed in the cities that there was no longer any reason (from the viewpoint of the white power structure) to keep them afloat. OTOH, the Civil Rights Act and the emergence of Black Power had made it necessary to crush the political hopes of the remaining inner-city dwellers.
These are just some of the larger elements you need to keep in mind to understand “crime” in the big city. The craziest urban slum in America today is squeaky-clean compared with the average city street in the 60s. You have literally never been safer.
Just one more example- in about 1962, two Seattle police officers shot two unarmed black men in the back, killing them. After about four days, the PD announced the officers had fired in self-defense.
That was life in the “good old days”.
January 3rd, 2009 at 2:13 pm
I think that serial catowner’s point about the role of organized crime and race relations in understanding the fate of cities in teh 50s-70s is worth thinking about. Another important factor in the decline of cities was the marriage of organized crime with dealing highly addictive drugs, which created highly desperate addicts that would do anything to pay off their dealers.
To understand the changing relationship of slums and cities in poor economic times, it might be worth examining the socioeconomic geography of cities in poorer countries — for example Mexico, Argentina, Brazil. There the true slums are shantytowns that surround the cities themselves — while I doubt things would get so bad in the US that there would not be the resources to provide even basic plumbing to areas in the country, that could be one way to view the slumification of the exurbs.
Matt’s most salient point–and where it matches up with serial catowner–is in understanding the development of slums as resulting from the loss of political clout. Wherever political power remains is where neighborhoods will stay safe — and the economic, institutional, and policy driven reasons that determine the distribution political clout are those to examine in understanding how areas evolve during a downturn.
January 3rd, 2009 at 2:57 pm
Can you provide us with evidence of when crime went down even as unemployment increased in the modern era?
I know it’s just one data point, but the lead story in the Jan. 1st L.A. Times was on how the crime rate declined in L.A. in 2008:
http://www.latimes.com/news/local/la-me-socalcrime1-2009jan01,0,5329164.story
January 3rd, 2009 at 5:21 pm
I actually wrote a piece about this for my j-school in NYC…it seems that there’s no consensus around the idea that poor economic conditions directly lead to increased levels of crime (though there’s a certain logic behind that line of thinking that appears to make sense).
January 3rd, 2009 at 7:01 pm
Ironically, we’ve just passed through a time “when economic conditions make cities so full of crime that they are nearly unlivable”. That is to say, the mortgage bubble, in all its reeking glory, made a house that sold for $100k a decade ago sell for $500k last year.
During the 70s, with WASP culture in full exodus, living in the city was cheap. And great things happened, as minority and marginalized cultures bought older houses and restored them, in a sense buying older cities and restoring them in the process.
The crime issue was vastly overblown. Undoubtedly there were bad sections of town where you shouldn’t go. There were places like that before- one tip my father gave me was that when you see the biggest cops on the force walking their beats in pairs, you know you’re in a bad section of town.
Conversely, I’ve stood on Flatbush in Brooklyn, watching the drug lookouts on each end of a block with a precinct house in the center. Presumably the cops there weren’t letting that give them any ulcers.
In general, though, for a variety of reasons you won’t be finding great real estate bargains in the city on this go-round. But, as noted, there may be some great opportunities in decaying suburbs, if you know how to make opportunity work for you.
January 3rd, 2009 at 7:52 pm
Seems I spoke too soon. In Chicago, for example, it may be possible to find housing bargains, as a result of extensive spot-zoning by aldermen in response to political contributions they received- which resulted in extensive unsustainable development.
Chicago Tribune series starts here.
January 4th, 2009 at 4:39 am
Immigration has already gone down as economic growth rates have gone down.
The 70s and 80s in many ways were unique. The post-Roe v. Wade generation wasn’t old enough yet to be criminals. Crack’s ill effects were at their most socially salient, with more crack addicts on street corners looking like crap and thus acting as a warning to potential users not to use crack. Instead, women in the 1980’s and 1990s were more likely to give birth to children they actually wanted once abortion became legal, thus lowering the absolute number of potential criminals. Everybody over the age of 7 knows crack is shit and crystal meth has too much stigma as a redneck drug to make many inroads into cities. Drugs like marijuana are know easier to get from semi-legal sources in states like Massachusetts and the failure of the drug war is recognized by everyone (except politicians), meaning politicians have relatively fewer incentives compared to previous generations of politicians to be “hard on drugs,” as more people realize how such policies will likely make the problem worse. Without selling drugs, gangs have less income to buy guns.
January 4th, 2009 at 12:53 pm
Re: Instead, women in the 1980’s and 1990s were more likely to give birth to children they actually wanted once abortion became legal, thus lowering the absolute number of potential criminals.
I’m not sure why this follows, and indeed the opposite seems more likely. Akerlof argues, convincingly, that the legalization of abortion led to more children born out of wedlock. Once abortion was legal, men no longer had reason to take responsibility for the children they fathered. By undermining the traditional understanding that men would have to marry the girl if she got pregnant, legalized abortion led to a higher rate of illegitimate births in the long term.
I understand that Yglesias and his hipster crowd don’t like to hear these facts, as they might put a damper on their lifestyle. Unfortunately, they happen to be true.
As for the broader question, no serious measures to combat crime can be successful unless they A) reverse the decline of manufacturing industries in urban areas, and provide worthwhile and rewarding jobs to the unemployed, and B) tip the balance of power back towards policemen and prosecutors, instead of towards criminals. Conservatives will not tolerate the former, and liberals (for the most part) will not tolerate the latter. I don’t notice that China has much of a problem with violent crime, probably because criminals know that if they commit crimes, they will be shot- and quite rightly so.
January 4th, 2009 at 1:49 pm
Re: A) reverse the decline of manufacturing industries in urban areas, and provide worthwhile and rewarding jobs to the unemployed, and B) tip the balance of power back towards policemen and prosecutors, instead of towards criminals.
I agree with A, footstomping and cheering.
I think B has already been done, hence the huge fraction of our population that is incarcerated.
January 5th, 2009 at 12:43 pm
There are some assertions made in this post and in the comments that are common but not entirely accurate. First, the idea that immigrants are more likely to commit crimes than native-born citizens. Andrew Karmen, author of New York Murder Mystery: The True Story Behind the Crime Crash of the 1990’s dispels this myth in Chapter 6. There are fewer immigrants within the prison population than there should be, if you were to go by the share of immigrants to the total population. In New York City in 1998, immigrants made up 36% of the general population but only 13% of the prison population.
Second, as others have noted, there is no consensus around the theory that crime rates are directly related to poverty rates or unemployment rates. There is a relationship between an individual’s employment/income/poverty and their likelihood of committing crime; criminals are much more likely to be unemployed and/or have low incomes. However, the relationship does not extend to national or local poverty rates and unemployment rates.
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