At a meeting with leaders of the National Sheriffs’ Association on Tuesday, Donald Trump made a false claim about the U.S. murder rate, a statement that he has repeated several times in the past. The comment came as he was touting the importance of meeting with local sheriffs, something he emphasized given that, as he claims, the murder rate is the highest that is has been in 47 years. But when you look at official FBI data, almost the opposite is true.

Here’s the president’s full statement according to a White House readout of his remarks:

And yet the murder rate in our country is the highest it’s been in 47 years, right? Did you know that? Forty-seven years. I used to use that — I’d say that in a speech and everybody was surprised, because the press doesn’t tell it like it is. It wasn’t to their advantage to say that. But the murder rate is the highest it’s been in, I guess, from 45 to 47 years.

So, is President Trump right? Is the murder rate at a multi-decade high? If you look at it literally, his claim is false on its face; the murder rate actually remains near historic lows. But if you dig deep enough, there is something unusual about the recent change in the murder rate.

First, let’s take a look at his actual claim. In 2015, the most recent year with available data from the FBI, the U.S. murder rate was 4.9 murders per 100,000 people. The highest murder rate in the last 47 years–the date range selected by President Trump–was in 1980, which had a murder rate of 10.2 per 100,000 people. Put simply, the highest murder rate in the past several decades was more than twice as high as the murder rate in 2015. While it is possible that the murder rate increased slightly in 2016, there is absolutely no evidence that went up by more than 100 percent, which it would need to do for the president’s claim to be true.

Here’s a graph showing how the murder rate has changed over the past 50 years:

With a few exceptions–notably 2015–the murder rate has trended downward for more than two decades. Despite a recent increase in murders, the murder rate remains near the lowest point that it has been in half a century.

Now let’s also take a brief moment to look at where this data comes from, and why it’s the best available to tell us about U.S. crime rates. Each year, the FBI publishes its annual Crime in the United States report, which is created through an extensive collaborative effort between the FBI and nearly every law enforcement agency in the United States. The report includes data from more than 18,000 agencies that cover nearly 98 percent of the U.S. population. This report is the most authoritative collection of crime data in the United States, detailing every criminal offense known to law enforcement.

While the actual claim that Donald Trump made on Tuesday–and also something that he frequently alluded to during the course of his campaign–is false, there is something noteworthy about the 2015 data. Namely, there was a significant increase that year compared to the previous year, a jump of about 11 percent. This single year increase is by far the largest in recent years. But despite that, 4.9 murders per 100,000 people is still lower than the 2009 rate.

Now that doesn’t mean that the recent jump in the murder rate is insignificant, but when it comes to addressing the problem, it may be more helpful to look at what is happening in individual cities. In fact, the number of murders did not increase in every city in 2015, there was significant variation between them. Law Street has an interactive map showing exactly how murder rates changed in America’s largest cities.

While Trump’s claim about the murder rate in the United States is incorrect, if you dig deep enough there is something noteworthy about recent crime statistics. This would be particularly true if the recent increase becomes a trend. It is important to note that the issue with Donald Trump’s claim isn’t just a matter of semantics–what he said is quite different from what actually appears to be important from the most recent crime statistics. Making claims that wildly overstate the number of murders in the United States is not conducive to addressing something that might be a very serious problem if it becomes a persistent trend.

Kevin Rizzo

Kevin Rizzo is the Crime in America Editor at Law Street Media. An Ohio Native, the George Washington University graduate is a founding member of the company. Contact Kevin at krizzo@LawStreetMedia.com.

The post President Trump Continues to Make False Claims about the U.S. Murder Rate appeared first on Law Street.

Much of the discussion surrounding the size of the U.S. prison population fails to take into account the role of crime rates. Research has found that certain policies lead to harsher punishments for crimes and that these policies can vary between states. A key example is the use of strict sentencing laws and prosecutors’ growing tendency to seek felony charges for crimes, both of which have been used to explain the massive growth in the number of American prisoners over the past several decades.

Underlying all of this is the idea that certain policies are responsible for high rates of imprisonment, meaning that some states are more punitive than others. But we haven’t been able to measure how exactly this varies between states and what is responsible for the change. A new report from the Pew Charitable Trusts attempts to solve this dilemma. Researchers at Pew created a new calculation called the punishment rate, which looks at the connection between crime rates and incarceration levels to determine which states tend to punish criminals more than others based on the frequency and severity of crime.

Read More: The Punishment Rate: A New Way to Look at the U.S. Prison System

The Pew Charitable Trusts study ranks states based on their punishment rates to see which are the most punitive. The researchers found that as incarceration rates rose dramatically between 1983 and 2013, so too did punishment rates but that increase varied widely among  states.

The map below shows the Pew Charitable Trusts’ calculations for the change in punishment rates between 1983 and 2013. Darker red colors indicate a greater positive change.

If reading on mobile, use landscape view for best results or open the map in a new tab.

As the map indicates, Colorado experienced the largest change in its punishment rate between 1983 and 2013, going up 417 percent over the 30-year period. While all states saw their punishment rates increase over this period the increases were more modest in some–in states like North and South Carolina the punishment rate went up by less than 20 percent.

It’s important to note that the punishment rate measure does have its drawbacks, most notably the fact that it can’t account for drug-related imprisonment in its crime rate weighting–meaning that states with strict drug laws but low levels of other crimes are rated as more punitive because such crimes aren’t accounted for in the crime rate statistics. This is because the FBI data used to measure crime rates does not track every crime that can be punished with jail time. The researchers acknowledge this but argue that the measurement still provides insight into the larger trends at play and will hopefully prompt states to take a closer at whether their policies lead to excessive punishment for certain crimes.

While the map above highlights the states that saw the largest changes in their punishment rates, it’s also interesting to look at where each state currently stands. Pew Charitable Trusts ranks each state based on its punishment rate in 2013, the most recent year with the necessary data available. See the chart below for the full rankings by state.

If on reading mobile, use landscape view for best results.

When it comes to the rankings, most states with high punishment rates also have high incarceration rates, meaning that the imprisonment rate is often a good way to determine how punitive many states are. However, the researchers did find several outliers. In their report, the researchers find 17 states whose punishment rate ranking differs from their incarceration rate ranking by more than 10 spots, illustrating a punishment mismatch. They conclude:

Connecticut, New Jersey, New York, Pennsylvania, South Dakota, Vermont, Virginia, West Virginia, Wisconsin and Wyoming each ranked much higher in their punishment rates than in their imprisonment rates. In other words, these states punished crime significantly more than their imprisonment rates show. The opposite was true for Alaska, Arkansas, Georgia, South Carolina, Tennessee, Nevada, and New Mexico.

These findings show that simply looking at the incarceration rates does not provide the full picture when it comes to how punitive a state is. A state may have a high rate of incarceration, but that might also be related to relatively high levels of serious crime. Looking at punishment rates help us understand which states have policies that tend to be more punitive, and hopefully, this will lead policymakers to determine whether such punishments are truly appropriate.

Kevin Rizzo

Kevin Rizzo is the Crime in America Editor at Law Street Media. An Ohio Native, the George Washington University graduate is a founding member of the company. Contact Kevin at krizzo@LawStreetMedia.com.

The post Which States are the Most Punitive When it Comes to Crime? appeared first on Law Street.

A recent slowdown by New York Police Department officers has ignited a debate over what the role of police officers should be and to what extent policing should focus on minor crimes.

According to the New York Post,

There were just 1,191 parking summonses handed out between Dec. 29 and Jan. 4 — down nearly 93 percent from the same period last year, when 16,008 of the dreaded orange envelopes were slapped on windshields

The NYPD slowdown involved a nearly complete abandonment of enforcement for low-level crimes like parking tickets and public order offenses. While slowdowns can have many different causes, it appears that the recent one in New York is a result of the rising tension between police officers and Mayor Bill de Blasio.

The New York Post also reported that the slowdown will cost the city roughly $10 million per week in lost ticket revenue. Doug Turetsky, of New York’s Independent Budget Office, put that number in context by comparing it to the city’s $77 billion annual budget; however, if losses continued over a long period of time the effects would be notable.

The Associated Press further noted that only one arrest was made and zero tickets were issued for low-level offenses on New Years Eve, a day when roughly one million people flock to the city. Despite this dramatic decrease in enforcement, there was actually a modest decrease in the number of reported serious crimes over a two-week period when compared to the same time span one year earlier.

Recent activity suggests that the NYPD slowdown is coming to an end and may have even stopped completely. Commissioner Bratton threatened to take away sick days and vacation time until ticket and arrest numbers returned to normal levels. While the slowdown may be over, it renewed the debate over the underlying policing theory present in many American cities.

Broken Windows Policing

Although the NYPD slowdown can have important implications for the NYPD and New York City, it has also called the Broken Windows style of policing into question. Behind the Broken Windows theory is the idea that disorder leads to both fear and more crime. The theory was first established by professors George L. Kelling and George Q. Wilson in an article they wrote back in 1982. They argued that the proactive enforcement of laws pertaining to lower level and often very visible crimes, like breaking windows, will restore order to public places and prevent additional crimes.

Put in their words:

The unchecked panhandler is, in effect, the first broken window. Muggers and robbers, whether opportunistic or professional, believe they reduce their chances of being caught or even identified if they operate on streets where potential victims are already intimidated by prevailing conditions. If the neighborhood cannot keep a bothersome panhandler from annoying passersby, the thief may reason, it is even less likely to call the police to identify a potential mugger or to interfere if the mugging actually takes place.

New York City was actually a primary testing ground for the Broken Windows style of policing. The strategy came to New York in 1993 under the tenure of Commissioner Bill Bratton, first  appointed by Mayor Rudy Giuliani. Bratton later returned to New York to once again act as Commissioner under de Blasio in 2014. Broken Windows is frequently attributed to the city’s dramatic decline in crime during the 1990s.

Kelling stands with his theory in light of the recent debate. In an interview with the New York Daily News he argued that while it is unlikely that one week-long slowdown will have a meaningful impact on crime numbers, he did caution about long-term effects. Kelling continued to argue that maintaining order will meaningfully constrain the crime levels in the city, but also acknowledged that the maintenance of order is not intended to punish people. Kelling argued that the underlying principle of Broken Windows remains strong, but policing methods may still be updated to fit the present circumstances.

New York’s Crime Decline

Between 1990 and 2012 New York City’s violent crime rate per 100,000 people has decreased by nearly 75 percent and the total number of murders went from 2,245 in 1990 to 335 in 2013. While most cities in the United States experienced significant decreases in their violent crime rates since the 1990s as well, New York has far outpaced the national average and has continued that downward trend in recent years.

Before you ask, there was also a decrease in the actual number of broken windows over the past several years (and yes, there is data on that).

Although it is impossible to determine whether or not Broken Windows policing caused this decrease–many factors typically impact a city’s crime level–it is likely that policing played a role. Despite this correlation, many are calling for the end to Broken Windows as a modern policing philosophy. It has long been criticized for its effects on minorities, which tend to be the target of many ‘order-related’ arrests, but the recent death of the unarmed Eric Gardner at the hands of the NYPD has sparked further protest.

The Policing Debate

While it is unfair to claim that Broken Windows policing caused the death of Eric Gardner, such a policing strategy will increase the number of times minorities are stopped by the police. Arresting people for committing crimes like selling loose cigarettes, the act which precipitated Gardner’s encounter with police officers, will simply increase the likelihood that altercations occur in the future.

Supporters of Broken Windows argue that it is not the underlying theory that causes tragedies like Gardner’s death, but rather it is the training and tactics that officers employ that lead to abuse. As a result, people call for police reforms that would improve tactics and training; however, evidence may also suggest that police reform may not adequately address problem. Last summer the NYPD ended its controversial stop-and-frisk policy due to complaints that it disproportionately violated the rights of the poor and minority populations, yet problems persist.

Despite the removal of stop-and-frisk as an important policing tactic, situations Gardner’s encounter with the police still occur and continue to disproportionately affect minorities. The Broken Windows theory sought to reduce public fear by bringing order to public places; however, it has also helped create a different kind of fear among minority populations, which is developing into increasingly more hostile attitudes toward the police. In a series of polls asking people whether or not they believe the police treat blacks and whites equally, a significant gap between white and black perception emerges. The most recent poll suggests that a majority (52 percent) of white respondents have a “great deal of confidence” that both races are treated equally; among black respondents that number dipped to just 12 percent.

Distrust and fear toward the police has led to hostile interactions between minority populations and law enforcement officers. Supporters of the Broken Windows theory of policing may be right when they argue that enforcing order can reduce crime rates and fear among the general public; however, attention must also be paid to the additional implications that aggressive policing of low-level crimes may have.

What is the role of Broken Windows policing when many of the broken windows have been fixed? Crime in New York City has experienced massive declines over the last two-and-a-half decades, and according to its crime statistics is now a pretty safe city relative to its population size. Creating order may serve an important role in reducing crime, but when crime has already decreased by such an extent should it be enforced as aggressively as it was in the 1990s?

Kevin Rizzo

Kevin Rizzo is the Crime in America Editor at Law Street Media. An Ohio Native, the George Washington University graduate is a founding member of the company. Contact Kevin at krizzo@LawStreetMedia.com.

The post NYPD Slowdown Ignites Debate Over Broken Windows Policing appeared first on Law Street.