8/16/2019 New York City Crime Risk is the Crime Rate in New York City Really Going Down

1/1

RESEARCHPOSTERPRESE NTATIONDESIGN© 2011

www.PosterPresentations.com

New York City Crime Risk:Is the crime rate in New York City really going down?

Table 1, which has been produced by NYPDCompStat and portrays the number of reportedfelonies in the past decade, depicts an overalldrop from 184,652 to 106,669, indicating thatthe number of reported felonies in New YorkCity has nearly halved itself in the t en-yearspan. However, an analysis of crime datainvolves the consideration of both felonies andmisdemeanors. Our paper investigates thestatistical basis of the claim that crime in NewYork City as a whole has significantly decreasedby considering the measurement andcategorizations of both misdemeanors andfelonies. We also seek to evaluate the validityand accuracy of the data presented.

Abstract

Argument

Discussion ConclusionFrom our research, we conclude that reported crimestatistics in New York City have been skewed for thepurpose of deceiving the public into believing that crimehas significantly decreased in New York City. Th e producer’sselective openness of data has manipulated the statistics tocreate the impression that the New York City governmentand police department have been efficient in reducingcrimes rates across the city. One could speculate that theseparation of reported felonies and misdemeanors is thecity government’s attempt to deceive the public intothinking that felonies and misdemeanors are unrelated.Thus, the separation of felonies and misdemeanors leadsthe public to believe that felonies represent all of crimes,creating the allusion that crime overall has droppedsignificantly. Additionally, former commissioner RaymondKelly’s investigation into CompStat represents thegovernment’s attempt at controlling public perception ofrisk in New York City through the appointing of “experts”.Their motives in conducting an investigation was to gain thetrust of the public, promote the efficacy of our Mayor andlaw enforcement in preventing the occurrence of crime,and raise financial support for our city’s government.

References

Nicholas Lung and Josephine Guo

Chart and Visual

The data (below) elides the risk of living in NewYork City by excluding reported misdemeanorsin the past decade. The producer of the datasetattempts to convey the idea that felonies andmisdemeanors are unrelated and that crime as awhole has decreased. Though government andauthority seek the guidance of “experts”, weargue that it is always for their own ends (in thiscase, to gain popular and financial support forour city’s government and law enforcement).

Baker, A., Goldstein, J. (2011, December 30). Police Tactic: Keeping Crime Reports Off the Books. The New York Times ,pp. A1.

Baker, A., Rashbaum, W. K. (2011, January05). NewYork Cityto Examine Reliabilityof Its Crime Reports. The New YorkTimes , pp. A1.

Board of Elections in the Cityof New York. (2005). Statement and Return Report for Certification: General Election 2005 – 11/08/2005, Crossover – All Parties and Independent Bodies : For Mayor (NYC). NewYork, NY: NYC Government.

Corman, H., & Joyce, T. (1990). Urban crime control: violent crimes in New York City. Social Science Quarterly, 71 (3), 567-584.

Corman, H., & Mocan, N. (2005). Carrots, Sticks, and Broken Windows*. Journal of Lawand Economics , 48 (1), 235-266.

ETERNO, J. A., & SILVERMAN, E. ( 2014).Overwhelming New Corruption Evidence of the NYPD’s Crime ReportManipulation. The New York City Police Department: The Impact of Its Policies and Practices , 71-87.

Green, S. P. (2000). Deceit and the Classification of Crimes: Federal Rule of Evidence 609 (a)(2) and the Origins of"Crimen Falsi". Journal of Criminal Lawand Criminology , 1087-1124. Henry, S., & Lanier, M. M. (1998).The prism of crime: Arguments for an integrated definition of crime. Justice Quarterly,15(4), 609-627.

Knowles, Scott Gabriel. The disasterexperts: mastering risk in modern America . Universityof Pennsylvania Press, 2012.

NewYork Police Department. (2013). The Report of the Crime Reporting Review Committee to CommissionerRaymondW. Kelly Concerning CompStat Auditing . NewYork, NY: Kelley, David N., McCarthy, Sharon L.

Ruderman, W. (2012, June 28). Crime Report Manipulation is Common among NewYork Police, StudyFinds. The NewYork Times .

Seidman, D., & Couzens, M. (1974). Getting the crime rate down: Political pressureand crime reporting. Lawand societyreview, 457-493.

Table 1. Seven Major Felonies Offenses

Literature Review

DiscussionChart 1 . Misdemeanors vs. Seven Major Felonies

0

50000

100000

150000

200000

250000

300000

350000

400000

450000

500000

2000 2001 2002 2003 2004 2005 2006 2007 2008 2009 2010 2011

N u m

b e r o

f O

f f e n s e s

Year

Misdemeanors vs. Seven Major Felonies

Misdemeanors

Seven Major Felonies

OFFENSE 2000 2001 2002 2003 2004 2005 2006 2007 2008 2009 2 01 0 2 01 1

MURDER&NON-NEGL. MANSLAUGHTER 673 649 587 597 570 539 596 496 523 471 536 515

RAPE 2,068 1,981 2,144 2,070 1,905 1,858 1 52 5 1 35 1 1 29 9 1 20 5 1 37 3 1 42 0

R OB BE RY 3 2, 56 2 2 8 ,2 02 2 7, 22 9 2 5, 98 9 2 4, 37 3 2 4, 72 2 2 37 39 2 18 09 2 24 01 1 86 01 1 9 48 6 1 9 71 7

FELONYASSAULT 25,924 23,453 21,147 19,139 18,622 17,750 1 73 09 1 74 93 1 62 84 1 67 73 1 6 95 6 1 8 48 2

B UR GL AR Y 3 8, 35 2 3 2 ,7 63 3 1, 27 5 2 9, 11 0 2 6, 97 6 2 4, 11 7 2 31 43 2 17 62 2 07 25 1 94 30 1 8 60 0 1 8 72 0

GRANDLARCENY 49,631 46,329 45,771 46,751 48,763 48,243 4 66 25 4 49 24 4 42 42 3 95 80 3 7 83 5 3 8 50 1

GRANDLARCENYOF MOTORVEHICLE 3 5 ,4 4 2 2 9 , 53 1 2 6 ,6 5 6 2 3 ,4 1 3 2 0 ,8 8 4 1 8 ,2 4 6 1 57 45 1 31 74 1 24 82 1 06 70 1 03 29 9 31 4

TOTAL SEVENMAJORFELONY OFFENSES 184,652162,908154,809147,069142,093135,475128,682121,009117,956106,730105,115106,669

2005 Mayoral Election

Investigation by former NYPD Commissioner Kelly

Table 1, which has been prepared by the NYPD, featuresreported felonies in the past decade and reveals that thenumber of reported felonies has significantly decreased inrecent years. It is important to note, however, that crimestatistics involves the consideration of both felony andmisdemeanor offenses. Thus, chart 1, which incorporates bothreported felony and misdemeanor offenses, indicates that thenumber of reported misdemeanors increased specificallybetween the years 2005 and 2010. Let us examine thesignificance of these two years in relation to the changing trendof misdemeanors.

First, it is important to note that in 2005, former mayorMichael Bloomberg (Republican) was running for his r eelectionto office (Board of Elections, 2005). As reported, both thenumber of misdemeanor and felony offenses decreaseddramatically during his term as mayor. The overall decrease ofreported crime across the city alludes to the idea that MayorBloomberg in collaboration with the NYPD was successful indecreasing the overall crime rate during his term as mayor. Thedecrease in reported crime assisted Mayor Bloomberg ingaining popular support for the 2005 election and led to hisreelection as mayor. As a result, one can speculate that the

manipulation of crime statistics, as evidenced by the claims ofEterno and Silverman, is the government attempt to control thepublic’s perception of risk in New York City.

Our speculation is justified by the fact that six years after themayoral election (2011), former NYPD Commissioner RaymondKelly responded to the accusations of crime report manipulationfrom individuals such as former NYPD captain John Eterno andProfessor emeritus Eli Silverman and created the CrimeReporting Review Committee to investigate the legitimacy andvalidity of data produced by CompStat (Baker and Rashbaum,2011). CompStat is the NYPD’s crime statistics reportingsystem. Data inputted into CompStat is used for theexamination of crime patterns and trends across the city. Afterthe analysis of data, top NYPD officials, which include chiefs,deputy commissioners, and Borough commanders developstrategies to prevent the occurrences of crime. (Kelley andMcCarthy, 2013). Commissioner Kelly’s investigation of thevalidity of statistics produced by CompStat represents anattempt by the government to control the public perception ofrisk via the enrollment of “experts” (Knowles, 2012). From the

graph, we see that as the number of reported misdemeanorsbegan to fall again in 2010, the number of reported feloniesstarted to slowly rise. Thus, our observation supports Eternoand Silverman’s claim that department heads have pressuredpolice officers into recording felonies as misdemeanors,suggesting that former Commissioner Kelly’s investigation intothe validity of crime statistics discouraged further manipulationof data (Eterno and Silverman, 2014).

Overall, evidence suggests a selective openness (separatingfelonies and misdemeanor data) of statistics is an overallattempt of a government to manage the public’s perception ofrisk and create the impression that New York City has becomea safer place to live in, a process, Knowles (2012) notes, playedout in many other times and places. Adjusting the crime datagives the impression that t he public’s contributions andexpenditures in the criminal justice system have led to asignificant decrease in crime across NYC, in line with Cormanand Joyce who claimed that, “The criminal justice system will bemore productive given greater resources, depending on thelevel of crime that exists” ( Corman and Joyce, 1990, p.568-569). Consequently, it suggests that the government’s attemptat managing public perception of risk through the manipulationof statistics is to increase financial support for the city’sgovernment.

• Because there are no set standards of classification, it is important to note that thecategories of crime are indefinite and subject to change at any time. As a result, therecatergorization of felonies versus misdemeanors in New York City directlyinfluences the dataset. Green for instance claims that crimes are often categorizedbased on their level of severity, “harmfulness”, “moral wrongfulness”, and“culpability” (Green, 2000). Henry and Lanier, on the other hand, state that“definitions of crime…emerge from six basic traditions: legal, moral, consensus, rule -relativism, political conflict, power, and social harm. The legal definition of crimerefers to acts prohibited, prosecuted, and punished by criminal law” (Henry, andLanier, 1998, p.611).

• Seidman and Couzens assert that police have the ability to manipulate statistics andreduce the number of crimes by taking advantage of the fact that there are varyingdefinitions for the categories of crime. Thus, the varying definitions for crime in boththe national and local level leads to the misclassification of crime and the portrayal ofunreliable statistics (Seidman and Couzens, 1974).

• With regards to the significant decrease of violent crime in New York City from 1990-1999, Corman and Mocan state, “Many attribute NYC’s crime reduction to specificpolicies carried out by Mayor Rudolph Giuliani’s administration with its ‘get tough’approach to crime fighting. The most prominent of the policy changes was theaggressive policing of lower- level crimes, a policy that has been called the ‘brokenwindows’ approach to law enforcement” ( Corman and Mocan, 2005, p.235-236).Thus, the steady increase of misdemeanor offenses from 2005 to 2010 may beattributed to the “broken windows” approach of policing.

• According to crime statistics provided by the NYPD, felony offenses have steadilydecreased over the past decade. Eli B. Silverman, criminologist and Professoremeritus at John Jay College, and retired New York Police Captain John A. Eternohave questioned the validity and legitimacy of reported statistics (Ruderman 2012).

• Eterno and Silverman claim that “the NYPD manipulates the seven major feloniesreported to the FBI (changes to the definitions of these crimes by the FBI do occur”(Eterno and Silverman, 2014, p.73).

• “Our own members tell us that they have been conditioned to write crime complaintsto misdemeanors rather than felonies because of the abuse they receive fromsuperior officers worried about their careers” ( Eterno and Silverman, 2014, p.74-75).

• Baker and Goldstein are in agreement with Eterno and Silverman and reported that“crime victims struggle to persuade the police to write down […] an official report”and claim that officers are pressured by the department to keep statistics low (Bakerand Goldstein, 2011).