> The homicide rate in DC in 2023 was about 40 per 100k. That's about the same as Haiti in 2023.
Cherry picking. Urban core vs. rural population. Post-pandemic peak in a highly disrupted workforce vs. a nation that didn't see significant covid unemployment. Focusing on one particular statistic that happens to be extremely bad in the US (and worse in the south) due to 2FA nutjobery. Also I'm frankly pretty dubious that you have good numbers for Haiti anyway.
Show a chart, basically[1]. DC's violent crime rate is around one third of where it was in the 90's. The contention I responded to that it was notably bad is simply incorrect.
> Cherry picking. Urban core vs. rural population.
The GP elsewhere in the thread pointed out that in like-to-like comparisons of Washington, DC against peer world cities, it fares really poorly in violent crime.
> Post-pandemic peak in a highly disrupted workforce
I doubt that the people who are committing crimes were disrupted from the workforce.
> DC's violent crime rate is around one third of where it was in the 90's
Both things can be true: DC used to be worse in violent crime, and today's violent crime is still unacceptably high.
DC is part of the United States, which has high levels of income inequality and easier access to guns than any other advanced country. The drug war keeps pulling people in because we have a lot of unhappy people buying, and economically marginalized young people. In other countries, you have better medical care (fewer people buying fentanyl on the street because they can't get legal chronic pain treatment), and if people don't have easy access to guns the homicide rate is lower because while there are people just as mad at the world they're getting in fist or knife fights rather than shootouts which are more likely to be lethal and affect more people. Yes, people still get seriously hurt but if all you're looking at are homicide stats you really need to think about how those are affected by technological changes which greatly increase lethality.
In particular for DC, note also that Republicans have blocked for many years efforts by DC's government to restrict the supply of guns and the lack of a national strategy means that someone who can't buy a gun in DC goes a few miles away to Virginia. In most other countries, you don't have the option of even a short walk offering access to very different laws. This also shows up in the crime stats: in my neighborhood there've been a couple of fatal shootings over the last decade – and in every case both the perp and victim were people from Maryland who came over the border to do a drug deal because they can switch jurisdictions in 5 minutes and thus confuse a police response.
> if all you're looking at are homicide stats you really need to think about how those are affected by technological changes which greatly increase lethality.
Funnily enough, academic work suggests the exact opposite, that the homicide rate in this country could be 5x higher were it not for advancements in trauma care[0]. Inner-city hospitals are applying battlefield medicine techniques and saving lives, turning homicides into aggravated assaults.
> we have a lot of unhappy people buying, and economically marginalized young people
The state of West Virginia, which has more guns and a higher share of unhappy, economically marginalized young people than Virginia, has a lower homicide rate than its eastern neighbor.
Ultimately, we likely disagree on "the root cause of crime", as it were. I don't believe that more aid for the poor or reducing income inequality will materially reduce violent crime rates, because by and large people do not commit violent crime in order to escape poverty. Instead, people are poor for a lot of the same reasons that they commit crime: they have poor impulse control, high time preference, and little consideration for those around them. We have not yet figured out a way to apply money to people in such a way to change these undesirable behavioral patterns, so I am against spending more of the taxpayer's money in this fruitless endeavor. The ways that do work have fallen out of favor in society.
I believe what will make a material impact is lengthier sentences and more pretrial detention; that is, policy must favor the rights of the law-abiding majority over the rights of repeat criminals.
Cherry picking. Urban core vs. rural population. Post-pandemic peak in a highly disrupted workforce vs. a nation that didn't see significant covid unemployment. Focusing on one particular statistic that happens to be extremely bad in the US (and worse in the south) due to 2FA nutjobery. Also I'm frankly pretty dubious that you have good numbers for Haiti anyway.
Show a chart, basically[1]. DC's violent crime rate is around one third of where it was in the 90's. The contention I responded to that it was notably bad is simply incorrect.
[1] Here, I'll do it: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crime_in_Washington,_D.C.