Scott Alexander at Astral Codex Ten:
Last year, the US may have recorded the lowest murder rate in its 250 year history. Other crimes have poorer historical data, but are at least at ~50 year lows.
This post will do two things:
- Establish that our best data show crime rates are historically low
- Argue that this is a real effect, not just reporting bias (people report fewer crimes to police) or an artifact of better medical care (victims are more likely to survive, so murders get downgraded to assaults)
More here.
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