On the Accuracy of a Meme
File this under Politics and Idiocy.
I came across this meme (see picture, below). I don’t like it. I have some thoughts about it.
A silly political meme suggesting a correlation between politics and crime rates.
This meme (above) was immediately interesting to me, but not because it looked accurate or trustworthy. In fact, it looked interesting because it looked absurd. So I thought I'd pull a Ronald Reagan and "trust but verify." After an exhaustive Google search, I was finally able to figure out how to find "nyc crime rate by year" and I also found an official table of crime statistics through calendar year 2021 (the last complete year and last year for which information is fully available).
On this page (https://www.nyc.gov/.../crime-statistics/historical.page) I was able to find a link to this raw data:
The unsourced meme (which I found at the top of a Facebook thread about the recently concluded 2022 NY governor’s race) suggests some pretty harrowing increases in major felonies. I first assumed that the rate increases must be comparing 2021 to 2020, since that would be--I assume--the best, easiest, and most accurate way to show a change in crime rate.
According to the meme, rape increased 10.9%. However, according to the raw data I found at nyc.gov, 1491 over 1427 represents a 4.5% increase, LESS THAN HALF the rate suggested by the meme.
The meme suggested robbery was up 32.4%. But 13,831 over 13,106 is only a 5.5% increase, roughly a SIXTH of what was suggested.
Burglary is supposed to have increased 29.1%. But the statistics I found in the government's raw data shows over a 17.2% DECREASE. (This is a 46.3% swing in the OPPOSITE direction!)
And grand larceny, instead of being up 38.5%, shows an increase of 15.1%. This is alarming, to be sure, but somehow this is LESS THAN HALF of the increase suggested by the meme.
My first reaction to the actual statistics being so far off from the unsourced meme was that the meme must have used different years--comparing 2012 to 2020, say--but by using selective data in recent years, I could calculate even slower rises--or bigger drops--in crimes in those categories:
Comparing 2012 to 2020, rape DECREASED by almost 5%, robbery DECREASED by 35%, burglary DECREASED by almost 20% (and that number would increase to over 33%, if we compare 2012 to 2021), and grand larceny DECREASED by 16.5%.
I think the lesson I would take away from this interesting intellectual exercise is that statistics, even ignoring the potential for inaccuracies, should not be the single factor in determining the effectiveness of police, or politicians, or of overall safety in any municipality. Statistics can be misleading. They can be cherry-picked. There are many reasons why we should take them with huge grains of salt, especially if we are looking at comparing a calendar year like 2021 or 2022 even to a recent year like 2020, when New York City was under the stresses of dealing with a global pandemic, where virtually every person's behaviors, patterns, and interactions with other humans was affected wildly. A simplistic blaming of a political party is at best inauthentic, and possibly devious.
The quick lesson here is to see that these major felonies, while awful no matter how rare they may be, vary wildly year to year. It would be impossible to make any logical conclusion, especially a politically-motivated conclusion, when it comes to analyzing trends in crime, especially major felony offenses. The numbers just do not behave in a clean, linear pattern.
We do well to remember that in a multi-factorial issue like crime, to blame a political party in power during one window of time is absurd, given how many factors affect the stresses, dynamics, and other intricacies of a population.
Besides, if the assumed conclusion suggested by the meme is that the Democratic party is "soft on crime" (a cringe phrase without either definition or merit, but, admittedly, not in the meme, thankfully), two reminders may be useful here: one, there is no discernible correlation between political party (at least at the national level) and size of law enforcement--Presidents Clinton and Biden, for example, have demonstrated, in voice and in action, massive support for increasing law enforcement and financial support thereto; and two, empirical evidence suggests, over and over, that increasing the size of a police force, whose principal function as relates to crime is to deal with the aftermath of crimes already committed, does not correlate with the reduction of crime within that population. This of course is no slight to law enforcement; an increase in the number of firefighters does not correlate in a reduction of fires, and we likewise celebrate their contributions to our communities.
If there is one thing to agree with in the meme, it is that its own "crime statistics are shameful. This needs to end."
I trust that you, dear reader--and I thank you for your endurance--will agree that an unsourced meme citing major felony crime statistics, and drawing from those numbers to confirm a political bias, does not advance discourse, is likely to be wildly misleading, and it may even be an example of perpetuating the shameful practice of unnecessary fear-mongering that serves as a blight on civil discourse in this country.