48 Comments
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Helga's avatar

Your local soviet insists that more bread was produced this year than in every previous year combined, so you should not fret about the store shelves being empty.

I wonder who is lying, your local soviet, or the store shelves?

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Elimination Essays's avatar

This is poor work by Aporia's standards. Specific categories of crime, such as rape, gang activity, and acid attacks, have exploded in frequency across England over the past few years. Go read Licence to Kill by David Fraser.

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Noah Carl's avatar

There are no data on rape or gang activity that would allow us to make confident assertions about long-term trends. Data on sexual assault from the CSEW indicate no change in prevalence between 2005 and 2023.

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Graham Cunningham's avatar

The probity of UK crime data has to be viewed in the context of who gathered it. Any UK observer who has not picked up the extreme dysfunction of the UK police and CPS is just not paying attention. It is a craven clapped out bureaucracy and the salient point about such data as it does choose to gather is an indication of nothing so much as how craven and lazy it will be in its data gathering. To take just one example of many. Sharia law 'honour' reprisal and forced marriages are known to be rife (as has been reported to Parliament) but will not feature in this 'data'. Try touting this crime reduction 'success' fairytale around Rotherham, Telford, Oldham, Rochdale and see what the public reaction would be. There is something Kafkaesque about giving credence to the Criminal Justice System's self -serving data spin.

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Rob's avatar

Are these the same crime statistics which record many rapists as women? Think I will continue to believe my eyes, ears and brain, but thanks for the propaganda.

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Noah Carl's avatar

Of the three data series mentioned at the beginning of the article, only the homicide data are gathered by the police. The data on violent incidents are gathered by a survey company, while the data on violent injuries are gathered by hospitals and then compiled by a team of academics.

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A. Hairyhanded Gent's avatar

The data set from hospitals was the most convincing, to me.

I *do* believe that my current superficial belief that crime *in the US* is much higher may be skewed falsely upward. Part of this is that I've had two car thefts in the last 5 years, where I had had none in the previous 25+ years. The neighborhood is essentially the same--upper-middle.

But this is no real measure. However, the *perception* of lack of safety is very high, and perhaps part of it comes from the very visible homeless population, which any observer would probably agree appears to disregard most social norms, including property crime.

I do think that you may have a broad point, though. Statistically it may be down. And yet one *must* be aware of what appear to be threats to one's life and property, and personally, when ostensibly crime rates were much higher (again, here in the US) I had much less concern and no real personal experiences with crime. Now that it's ostensibly down, I'm pretty nervous and I have had personal losses, and ultimately I'm responsible for my own safety and must also rely on my instinctive reaction to visual/actual threats, so...

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Realist's avatar

"Britain’s violent crime decline is evident in both police-recorded data on homicides and estimates of violent incidents derived from the Crime Survey of England and Wales – as shown below.¹"

Why anyone in the West would believe their government data is beyond me.

Noah, you keep going out of your way to support the belief that crime is falling in Britain. You are happy with the crime rate and the inflow of immigrants...we get it. There are plenty of Brits who are not satisfied with the situation.

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Jeremy Wickins's avatar

I'm not saying you are wrong, but whose statistics would you accept? Anecdote is not data, whether it is posted on social media or not.

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Realist's avatar

"I'm not saying you are wrong, but whose statistics would you accept?"

Independent with no allegiance to the government.

But I really don't care. If Noah and the Brits are happy with their crime and immigration situation, that sounds good to me.

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Noah Carl's avatar

I've written numerous articles and tweets criticising mass immigration.

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A. Hairyhanded Gent's avatar

Yes, I agree. In my judgement you have good credibility.

FWIW...

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A. Hairyhanded Gent's avatar

When it comes to crime that realistically *could* threaten me or my family, to hell with statistics. I'll trust my gut unapologetically. My own survival, and that of my family, are ultimately up to me, and I'll trust my own judgement on this, thank you.

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Jeremy Wickins's avatar

I agree that is the standard we'd all like, but any source will be regarded as suspicious by some people because of the researchers, or the funding, or because the findings don't meet with preconceived ideas - look at the recent Cass Report. As of this point, have seen no reason to doubt official stats, but it would indeed be good to have team of independent researchers to verify them.

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Realist's avatar

As I said, I really don't care. I live in the United States, and I am damn well aware of the problems of low-IQ immigration in this country. I am also aware of the high black crime rate.

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Jeremy Wickins's avatar

I completely understand. Each country has its own set of problems. Thank you for taking time to respond.

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A. Hairyhanded Gent's avatar

You know, though, when it comes to perceived personal threat, one is foolish not to err on the safe side. Here in the US I'm told that the crime rate is actually down, and yet I've had two cars stolen in the last 5 years, and none the previous 25.

"Who you gonna believe: me, or your lyin' eyes?"

Many thanks to Richard Pryor...

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Jeremy Wickins's avatar

I'm not going to disagree at all. Firstly, nationwide statistics don't say anything about local conditions. Secondly, security is a combination of reality and feeling.

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A. Hairyhanded Gent's avatar

Yes, exactly.

I try hard to keep it real as I can, but ultimately I'll go with what has kept me alive all these years.

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Ronbo617's avatar

I believe the issue is the right wing argument that violent immigrant crime is avoidable simply by not allowing mass immigration. Certainly highlighting that proves their point.

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A. Hairyhanded Gent's avatar

Yes. There are two separate issues here. One is minimizing crime in a stable society, which is basically a timeless concern. The other is to use crime stats to support a political agenda, pro or con immigration and/or some minorities. This is a transient concern.

We've got to separate the two issues to make any substantial progress with either.

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Noah Carl's avatar

As mentioned in the article, several large immigrant groups (notably Indians, Chinese and Arabs) commit violent crime at much lower rates than White British.

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Ronbo617's avatar

Understood, and I am familiar with your stance on immigration and perhaps I was being pedantic, but since you mentioned RW social media in your article, I was defending the reasonable RW emphasis on immigrant criminality *in general*. Politicians won't read your article and parse out low crime immigrants from high crime immigrants- they'll use it as justification for more, tf I wanted to challenge any generalization. Obviously, your article is read in America and things are quite different here - Hispanics are over represented in prison. Actually, I'm not sure RW explicitly accuses all immigrants as per capita more dangerous than natives (imo, they certainly do not, especially re E. Asians), but their overall assessment seems logical to me.

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GeorgeWashingtonJr's avatar

I think his point is, even if all immigrants combined only committed a single crime last year, that crime wouldn't have happened if no immigrants had been allowed into the country. Of course, this assumes that the crimes committed by immigrants wouldn't be committed by native-born criminals instead if immigrants weren't present. If you think of crime as a transaction, if the conditions are there to facilitate it, the transaction will be carried out one way or another.

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Noah Carl's avatar

My article deals with crime rates. If groups with below-average crime rates increase as a share of the population, then the overall crime rate falls – all else being equal.

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GeorgeWashingtonJr's avatar

I understand that. I was only relating the anti-immigration view. We say that the overall crime rate is lower because immigrants reduce the average. They point to a single crime committed by an immigrant and say "that crime wouldn't have happened if he hadn't been allowed into the country." I'm not sure how to counter that, other than to say that we're talking about statistics, not individual crimes. No one is saying we should reduce the crime rate even more by expelling all native-born citizens.

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Current Resident's avatar

"Even Muslims commit crime at only slightly higher rates than White Britons when adjusting for age."

Why would you adjust for age? If the cohort is younger on average than others, it would explain why they over index for violent crime (>2x). If it is important, why are the other groups not adjusted for age (e.g. Indians, Chinese)?

Overall, it was an interesting article. I hadn't really considered the move away from cash, didn't know that Brits are now drinking less, and found the section about the effectiveness of incarceration convincing.

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A. Hairyhanded Gent's avatar

Yes, liquor store hold-ups were fairly common in the US when I was younger, in the 50s-90s, e.g., but I seldom hear of any, and I've surmised that this is because of payment with charge cards is a much higher percentage, hence no cash to be had.

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Rob's avatar

Are these statistics from the same Govt /Elite which had proof of the 'safe and effective' Covid 'vaccines'? Please excuse my cynicism of any thing they say which sounds unlikely.

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GeorgeWashingtonJr's avatar

We've seen the same drop in violent crime in the US, for many of the same reasons. One additional factor here was the nationwide legalization of abortion in 1973. Violent crime peaked around 20 years later, then began falling, very likely due to the fact that unwanted children, who may have been more predisposed to crime, weren't here when they otherwise would have started reaching their prime criminal years.

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A. Hairyhanded Gent's avatar

And we need to factor in that during that same time frame we had three strikes and mandatory sentencing in many jurisdictions.

It's a muddy picture, enough so that those who want to use crime, increasing or decreasing, to bolster a preferred social agenda, can find support for their diverging beliefs.

It's a strange world we live in, huh?

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GeorgeWashingtonJr's avatar

That probably had an effect as well, along with “broken window policing” and ending the use of tetraethyllead as a gasoline additive.

What’s interesting is that several European countries experienced a similar drop in crime over the same period despite not enacting these policies.

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A. Hairyhanded Gent's avatar

WRT to lead as a contributing factor to crime, this is the first I've heard of it. On the face of it I can see a circumstantially connection, maybe, but is there a demonstrated causal connection?

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GeorgeWashingtonJr's avatar

There is a strong correlation.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lead%E2%80%93crime_hypothesis

There are certainly many factors that contribute to the crime rate, and it's difficult to conduct a regression analysis to determine which one has the greatest effect. And as you pointed out, people view this through their preferred social agenda. A pro-lifer who is told that outlawing abortion will increase the crime rate would just say to lock up more criminals.

There was a spike in murders in the US at the end of the COVID period as more people spent more time outside the home, however, recently it has fallen to pre-pandemic levels. So temporary conditions can have an effect along with long-term policies.

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Haybard's avatar

Collapse in testosterone is the real cause

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Anatoly Karlin's avatar

It's important to push back against wrongness regardless of how said issue is presumed to align with ideological camps. Kudos to Noah Carl.

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משכיל בינה's avatar

Modern technology, absent some absolutely crazy thing like BLM, leads to most forms of crime declining even if the police are becoming more incompetent.

An example of this happened to me about 20 years ago. Our house was robbed. The police did nothing to investigate, obviously, but we found some blood near where the thieves had smashed the window and they took a swab. A year later, a local yoof was picked up for drug dealing; they did a blood test, put it into the system and it made a match. Case cracked with essentially zero police effort.

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Sebastian AB's avatar

Nice analysis

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Paolo Giusti's avatar

tl;dr build more prisons.

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Alfredo Behrens's avatar

Crime rates may follow Solar Activity. Please take a look at the alternative explanation in the link below. There, you may find an interpretation for the awful increase in homicide rates up to the 2003 egregious peak, and the subsequent decline. https://www.walshmedicalmedia.com/abstract/solardriven-geomagnetic-disturbances-impact-homicide-rates-in-europe-and-the-usa-121346.html

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A. Hairyhanded Gent's avatar

FWIW, during the recent solar activity that resulted in rare viewings of the northern lights farther south, I'm convinced that one of my LED clock displays was affected.

:^)

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random mover's avatar

"Meanwhile, the fraction older than 60 (a group that perpetrates virtually no violence) increased by three percentage points."

With all their wailing about January 6, the US Democrats seem to be implying this is the most violent/dangerous group. We all know they're being disingenuous.

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Realist's avatar

Noah, here is someone who adamantly disagrees with you.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PtQnXI2EGqo&t=1s

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Baro Franco's avatar

paul joseph watson is ab uneducated youtuber with no understanding of any kind of crime methodology or basic statistics, you can be agaisnt inmigration for cultural reason since muslims dont respect wester values and would rater have their sharia law implanted in society, but their crime rate is highly overepresented by right wing media, even among blacks you have to be carefull since some groups lije nigerians are less likely to comit crime compare to caribeans

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Realist's avatar

"paul joseph watson is ab uneducated youtuber with no understanding of any kind of crime methodology or basic statistics, you can be agaisnt inmigration for cultural reason since muslims dont respect wester values and would rater have their sharia law implanted in society, but their crime rate is highly overepresented by right wing media, even among blacks you have to be carefull since some groups lije nigerians are less likely to comit crime compare to caribeans."

I would say the Muslim and black crime rates are underrepresented in left-wing media

If Noah and the other Brits are happy with the crime rate and immigration situation, that is fine with me. I don't care.

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Realist's avatar

"paul joseph watson (sic) is ab (sic) uneducated youtuber with no understanding of any kind of crime methodology or basic statistics, you can be agaisnt (sic) inmigration (sic) for cultural reason since muslims (sic) dont (sic) respect wester values and would rater (sic) have their sharia law implanted in society, but their crime rate is highly overepresented (sic) by right wing media, even among blacks you have to be carefull (sic) since some groups lije nigerians (sic) are less likely to comit (sic) crime compare to caribeans (sic)"

You are obviously oblivious to the irony of you calling Paul Joseph Watson uneducated.

I have noted the numerous grammatical mistakes you made in your comment.

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Baro Franco's avatar

i was on my cellphone while riding the train when i wrote it, and i usually dont use the automatic corrector, its pretty clear that my mistakes were because of bad touches on the screen rather than bad spelling , also english is my third language, spanish being my native one and portuguese being the second pretty normal to do mistakes on foreign languages,compare to watson and probably you who only know english, and before you say something, i am agaisnt muslims inmigration,they are ignorants that don't contribute to the system in the case of europe, the usa at least requirements and their muslim population is usually well educated and commit less crime than the local population

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Baro Franco's avatar

and yes before you say something, i made mistakes in this pragraph, you can get the main idea out of it, you don't require to write like an english scholar on the internet

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