Abortion ... the wiki

Parthenon · Post by **Parthenon** » Sat Mar 10, 2012 4:03 am

How much of crime rates varying is just increases and decreases in reporting crimes and recording crimes? I've heard statistics along the lines of more than 90% of crimes go unreported some crimes are 80% higher than recorded.

If that changes over time so that between years it changes from 8838% of crimes go unreported to 9242% of crimes go unreported but with the exact same number of crimes, then the "crime rate" appears to have decreased by 507%.

erik · Post by **erik** » Sat Mar 10, 2012 4:18 am

If that's true at all then it's probably more accurate and relevant to stick to the biggies.

Murder, manslaughter, battery, robbery.

I imagine those biggies are much, much more likely to be reported than crap like vandalism and not subject to radical swings due to anything other than how often they actually happened.

Here. Check out some stats. It's pretty much across the board, including the most major crimes, dropping pretty steadily. I wonder if the internet or cell phones are creditable somehow in this.

I just watched an interesting TED Talk that was about cities and stuff. Some bits were that urbanization is on the rise, and that as the population of a city doubles there is a 15% rise in many different things per capita, including crime rates... which would imply that crime rates should be on the rise. Whups.

Koumei · Post by **Koumei** » Sat Mar 10, 2012 7:26 am

Parthenon wrote:How much of crime rates varying is just increases and decreases in reporting crimes and recording crimes? I've heard statistics along the lines of more than 90% of crimes go unreported.

...how would we know the statistic, if they were unreported?

Kaelik · Post by **Kaelik** » Sat Mar 10, 2012 7:52 am

Koumei wrote:
Parthenon wrote:How much of crime rates varying is just increases and decreases in reporting crimes and recording crimes? I've heard statistics along the lines of more than 90% of crimes go unreported.
...how would we know the statistic, if they were unreported?

?????

If there are ten murders every year, and one year 3 of them are reported, and the next year 7 of them are, then it looks like the murder rate grew drastically, when it didn't change, only the reporting rate.

So he's saying maybe we don't know the real statistic, and the statistic we do know is not real, because it's only the reported number.

Koumei · Post by **Koumei** » Sat Mar 10, 2012 8:33 am

Nonono, I mean, how do we arrive at the statistic of "90% of crimes go unreported"? Because the thing being measured here is "unreported crime", and I'm not sure how we'd measure that. Given the word unreported.

I get that some number is indeed unreported, and that depending on how big that number is, the statistics on crime could be massively skewed, but I'd like to know how people are figuring out how many unreported crimes there are.

Unless they're psychics.

Username17 · Post by **Username17** » Sat Mar 10, 2012 8:41 am

That is a question for Sociologists, of which I am not one. One of the most basic methods is looking at random samples of people really hard and finding out how many crimes they are the victim of and then compare that to the overall rate of crime reporting to the police and drawing analogies.

That is, if you interview the fuck out of one thousand people, you can get a much more accurate picture of how many crimes they are involved in than you can by just waiting for their share of crimes out of the 310 million total people to get written up by the police. And then if the numbers implied by your survey are radically different than the totals reported for society at large, you know you have a big problem. While if the numbers are close, you suspect you have a small problem.

-Username17

Parthenon · Post by **Parthenon** » Sat Mar 10, 2012 10:37 am

Turns out the 90% figure I was thinking of was based on the British Crime Survey we looked at in Psychology about 5 years ago, where it suggests that some crimes are around 80-90% higher than is recorded, not 80-90% are unreported. Sorry, that was extremely misleading.

EDIT:
So, I just found this article which talks about widespread and systematic corruption at the highest levels of the NYPD that has been going on for years- since at least 2007 and in all likelihood for years before. The NYPD has been conspiring to falsely report the crime rate to make it appear lower. They were specifically ordered earlier this year that: "they had to take crime complaints. They could not send victims to other precincts, discount them because they weren't totally cooperative, reclassify a crime, delay recording a crime, or reject a crime because they didn't think prosecutors would pursue a conviction."

This is not likely to be a unique behaviour, which suggests that the crime rate statistics cannot be trusted- the idea that crime rates have consistently been going down since 2006 is most likely bullshit or at the very least nowhere near as much.

Lago PARANOIA · Post by **Lago PARANOIA** » Sun Mar 11, 2012 1:46 am

http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/com ... _blog.html

The URL pretty much says it all. Doonesbury is being pulled from several comic strips for satirizing the TVU nonsense.

As I said earlier in the thread, calling rape rape is ruder than the actual rape. Okay, I said genocide, but still. I fucking hate moderates sometimes.

ED: You know, speaking of the whole 'calling rape rape is ruder than actual rape' deal, one prevailing conservative attitude throughout this whole nightmare is the whole denial of the reality of 'state sponsored' rape. Both with tzor here and people on other boards and articles. Like you can walk them through the steps individually but they'll refuse to acknowledge the overall conclusion. So what gives?

A.) Social conservatives' sexual politics are so fucked up that rape only counts if it fits the sensationalist image of rape if it involves one or more of a black lower-class male strangers using physical force consummating in vaginal/penile penetration against a female. Anything that falls outside of that zone is a grey area and can be apologized for if necessary.

B.) Like how pro-lifers suddenly clam up if you ask them what punishments they want if abortion was actually illegal, causing these dummies to realize the whole of what they want overloads their brains like if they hit a bus transfer error. So their brains shut down and when it's safe they reboot to their old states like the previous conversation never happened.

C.) Supporters of this bill are actually evil and realize that they're evil, but they're also aware that being honest with their intentions is repulsive so they're relying on Hanlon's Razor and rhetorical ambiguity to have non-perverts cut them some slack.

erik · Post by **erik** » Sun Mar 11, 2012 1:54 pm

Parthenon wrote: EDIT:
So, I just found this article which talks about widespread and systematic corruption at the highest levels of the NYPD that has been going on for years- since at least 2007 and in all likelihood for years before. The NYPD has been conspiring to falsely report the crime rate to make it appear lower. They were specifically ordered earlier this year that: "they had to take crime complaints. They could not send victims to other precincts, discount them because they weren't totally cooperative, reclassify a crime, delay recording a crime, or reject a crime because they didn't think prosecutors would pursue a conviction."

This is not likely to be a unique behaviour, which suggests that the crime rate statistics cannot be trusted- the idea that crime rates have consistently been going down since 2006 is most likely bullshit or at the very least nowhere near as much.

I read through the article and no mention of murder rates being under-reported, even in what sounds like a thoroughly corrupt precinct. True?

I can see that this sort of behavior could be rewarded in any region and that as such, intentional manipulation of reporting could be more widespread than just that precinct or even state, but think it unlikely that its impact upon national level was registering starting in the mid-90's almost across the entire country simultaneously.

So I am still compelled to believe that there is something real happening to cause crime rates to drop since the mid-90's, nationwide.

Doom · Post by **Doom** » Sun Mar 11, 2012 3:48 pm

Well, the author of Freakonomics argued the reason for the dropping crime rates was the increasing rates of abortion...he couldn't exactly prove it, of course, but it's an interesting theory.

Funny thing is, I've heard it argued that crime rates are also exaggerated at times; there's only a finite amount of plundered loot (taxes) to go around, so by exaggerrating how bad the problem is, the tax-eating law enforcement division is strongly motivated to say crime is as bad as possible....even as they're also motivated to say they're doing something about it.

Considering the US has the most extensive set of laws on the planet, to the point that I can say with certainty that every single American reader of this post is guilty of violating some US law, it's probably best, as proposed above, to redefine "crime" to be some set of actual crimes with actual victims, rather than try to figure things out from the as-usual-bogus government definitions.

Username17 · Post by **Username17** » Sun Mar 11, 2012 4:12 pm

Doom wrote:Well, the author of Freakonomics argued the reason for the dropping crime rates was the increasing rates of abortion...he couldn't exactly prove it, of course, but it's an interesting theory.

I really hate the Freakonomics guy. He makes absolutely no attempt to argue the counterfactual on any of his batshit crazy ideas. It means that he's completely full of shit often enough that he discredits the things he's right about with the skeptical, and fills the heads of the credulous with crazy. His thing on how "all we had to do" to stop global warming was titanic geo-engineering projects that are completely conjectural and would seriously risk "destroying the planet" was so nutty that it defies rational discourse.

You can make a compelling case for improved access to abortion services leading to lower crime levels. But Freakonomics did not do it.

Considering the US has the most extensive set of laws on the planet, to the point that I can say with certainty that every single American reader of this post is guilty of violating some US law, it's probably best, as proposed above, to redefine "crime" to be some set of actual crimes with actual victims, rather than try to figure things out from the as-usual-bogus government definitions.

Yeah, did you know that I am in violation of the DMCA by digitally distributing After Sundown even though I am the copyright holder? Yes, I am copyright infringing myself. That is an actual crime, which I am guilty of.

This is why I prefer to talk about violent crime, because we can all pretty much agree on what it is. I'm willing to discuss property crime, but it leads to some stupid on the edges with intellectual property and shit. Straight victimless crime is just a maelstrom of stupid all the way down. In Saudi Arabia there are a lot of copies of Salman Rushdie's The Satanic Verses, which means there is a lot of unreported crime, because ownership of that book is illegal there.

But things are easier to compare with violent crime in general and with murder in specific. Either a dude is dead or they are not, barring crap like the Earl of Lucan. It is over all much easier to evaluate those statistics for accuracy or compare them between different times and places.

I do not believe that "total crime" statistics mean much of anything. If they include things like sodomy and blue law violations they mean less than nothing. A higher "crime rate" would just correspond with the government being more repressive and have nothing to do with whether actual criminality as I understand it was high or low.

-Username17

Kaelik · Post by **Kaelik** » Sun Mar 11, 2012 4:31 pm

erik wrote:I read through the article and no mention of murder rates being under-reported, even in what sounds like a thoroughly corrupt precinct. True?

I can see that this sort of behavior could be rewarded in any region and that as such, intentional manipulation of reporting could be more widespread than just that precinct or even state, but think it unlikely that its impact upon national level was registering starting in the mid-90's almost across the entire country simultaneously.

So I am still compelled to believe that there is something real happening to cause crime rates to drop since the mid-90's, nationwide.

You are apparently compelled by your stupidity. Of course the article about what the police do with reported crimes doesn't talk about unreported crime. Because it's unreported. Just because the article doesn't talk about unreported crime doesn't automatically mean all crime is reported.

Look, it is factually true that some crime is unreported. There are a bunch of people who die of natural causes or go missing. Unless your contention is that no one has ever murdered someone and disposed of the body and gotten away with the crime, or murdered someone in a way that looks like natural causes, and gotten away with it, then you have to admit that some murders are unreported.

Now, there is no compelling evidence that the violent crime rate has drastically reduced because of reporting changes. But the fact that an article about reported crime doesn't specifically say that unreported crime exists is not a good reason to believe that.

erik · Post by **erik** » Sun Mar 11, 2012 5:05 pm

Something happened in the mid-90's. Either nationwide the rate of unreported crimes has been soaring spontaneously and coincidentally across the entire country, or the rate of crimes has been dropping for some other reason across the entire country. It is likely some mix of those two, and I suggest that by far the weight is on the latter than the former.

I think we have a deal Kaelik.
You can call me stupid for believing some as of yet unknown cause has dropped crime rates across the entire country at once.
I can call you a paranoid nut for believing that there was a coordinated or coincidental drive to suddenly and dramatically begin under-reporting crimes to a much greater degree than the norm across the entire country at once.

[edit: I should note that I stake much of my belief on that the reported murder rate in particular has been dropping. Either less murders are happening or they aren't, that's a bit more cut and dry. I really doubt even the NY 81st precinct is failing to investigate or report murders.

And if murder rates are truly dropping, at about the same rate of many other crimes, it lends credence to the notion that those crime rates have actually been dropping as well.]

name_here · Post by **name_here** » Sun Mar 11, 2012 5:10 pm

Unreported crime actually refers to crimes not reported to the police, as opposed to crimes the police don't talk about. The rate is believed to be high for rape and similar due to the associated humiliation, but I'm willing to bet that the unreported crime rate for murder is low because it tends to leave bodies to be autopsied.

Kaelik · Post by **Kaelik** » Sun Mar 11, 2012 5:15 pm

erik wrote:You can call me stupid for believing some as of yet unknown cause has dropped crime rates across the entire country at once.
I can call you a paranoid nut for believing that there was a coordinated or coincidental drive to suddenly and dramatically begin under-reporting crimes to a much greater degree than the norm across the entire country at once.

Well that's a dumb deal, since I called you stupid for believing what you do for stupid reasons, not because the conclusion is stupid.

If you said:

1) Blue
2) Purple
3) Therefore George Bush was a bad president.

I would call you stupid for your reasoning even if I agree with the conclusion.

Likewise, I fucking don't believe that crime was unreported, which is why I said:

Kaelik wrote:Now, there is no compelling evidence that the violent crime rate has drastically reduced because of reporting changes.

But unlike you, I believe it for intelligent reasons.

erik wrote:[edit: I should note that I stake much of my belief on that the reported murder rate in particular has been dropping. Either less murders are happening or they aren't, that's a bit more cut and dry. I really doubt even the NY 81st precinct is failing to investigate or report murders.

And if murder rates are truly dropping, at about the same rate of many other crimes, it lends credence to the notion that those crime rates have actually been dropping as well.]

WARGARBARABRGAR!!!

What the fuck is wrong with you. Unreported crimes are crimes the police don't fucking know about. If I murder you, and then incinerate your body, and then you end up on a missing persons report, it's an unreported murder because the police can't find any evidence that there was a murder.

If I inject you with a super secret poison that is indistinguishable from heart attack, and then you die, and the autopsy treats it like a normal death, that's an unreported murder.

If I shoot you in the face, and the police find the body, and the police refuse to report or investigate, that's still a reported murder.

erik · Post by **erik** » Sun Mar 11, 2012 5:57 pm

Kaelik wrote:
Kaelik wrote:Now, there is no compelling evidence that the violent crime rate has drastically reduced because of reporting changes.
But unlike you, I believe it for intelligent reasons.

I did not form this belief *because* of the article Parthenon cited. I continue to hold it *in spite* of the article Parthenon cited, which is what I said.

You had no fucking idea why I held this belief but decided it must have been stupid because it was not swayed by that article. Kudos. It seems that you have a pathological desire to be contentious douche, but please, the adults were talking.

I went on to explain the foundation for my belief that crime rates have dropped on account of that they appear to be doing so in a similar rate to which murder rates have dropped. Murders being a lot less likely to go unnoticed, or unreported.

kaelik wrote: Unreported crimes are crimes the police don't fucking know about. If I murder you, and then incinerate your body, and then you end up on a missing persons report, it's an unreported murder because the police can't find any evidence that there was a murder.

This has nothing to do with anything unless we want to consider the possibility that people committing homicides started covering them up much better in the 90's as a more likely scenario than that people stopped committing as many homicides.

I'm not ready to credit the CSI dramas with the drop in reported murders, so I'm thinking there has been a fucking actual drop in murders.

Username17 · Post by **Username17** » Sun Mar 11, 2012 6:13 pm

Kaelik wrote:If I shoot you in the face, and the police find the body, and the police refuse to report or investigate, that's still a reported murder.

Actually no. Reported murder in this case means reported to the national government, not merely that it was reported by someone to some police officer somewhere. If the police don't write it down, it's not "reported", whether they were told about it or not.

There are indeed times and places where the police go out of their way to underreport crime. That is a real thing that happens. I just don't think that it's reasonable to think that in the era of facebook and blogging that all precincts all over the country are simultaneously getting better at hiding crime stats.

Regardless, my favorite theory for the rise and fall of crime in the US is "Cocaine is a hell of a drug". That is: as cocaine became more popular, crime went up. When cocaine went to crack and got mega popular, crime went nuts. As cocaine use fell, crime dropped. It's a pretty good graph fit.

-Username17

Koumei · Post by **Koumei** » Mon Mar 12, 2012 3:14 am

FrankTrollman wrote: Yeah, did you know that I am in violation of the DMCA by digitally distributing After Sundown even though I am the copyright holder? Yes, I am copyright infringing myself. That is an actual crime, which I am guilty of.

Will you be pressing charges (against yourself) any time soon?

A higher "crime rate" would just correspond with the government being more repressive and have nothing to do with whether actual criminality as I understand it was high or low.

Hence the old joke "How to reduce crime: legalise theft!"

DSMatticus · Post by **DSMatticus** » Mon Mar 12, 2012 3:48 am

FrankTrollman wrote:Regardless, my favorite theory for the rise and fall of crime in the US is "Cocaine is a hell of a drug". That is: as cocaine became more popular, crime went up. When cocaine went to crack and got mega popular, crime went nuts. As cocaine use fell, crime dropped. It's a pretty good graph fit.

It's probably worth noting that crack was the poor man's cocaine. If a bunch of very poor people suddenly pick up a hardcore drug habit, that's a fantastic recipe for crime.

erik · Post by **erik** » Mon Mar 12, 2012 3:55 am

DSMatticus wrote:
FrankTrollman wrote:Regardless, my favorite theory for the rise and fall of crime in the US is "Cocaine is a hell of a drug". That is: as cocaine became more popular, crime went up. When cocaine went to crack and got mega popular, crime went nuts. As cocaine use fell, crime dropped. It's a pretty good graph fit.
It's probably worth noting that crack was the poor man's cocaine. If a bunch of very poor people suddenly pick up a hardcore drug habit, that's a fantastic recipe for crime.

Especially a drug that makes you think you are invincible and clever.

I wonder if some states had more or less cocaine usage. Could compare those and their crime rates mebbe.

PhoneLobster · Post by **PhoneLobster** » Wed Mar 14, 2012 5:36 am

So anyway. Abortion and insane conservative base etc...

Now when this Catholic bishop "religious freedom means enforcing our religion on employees that do not share it" thing went through as a way of attacking women, again...

I was thinking hell, business as usual, sure it reveals their basically anti-sex/anti woman agenda for what it really is (ie very little to do with their claimed goals about abortion and a lot to do with sexism and punishment fetishes) ... but you know whatever.

But as it turns out in order to defend their actions, and defend crazy radio jocks defending their actions, and defend crazy Republican politicians defending their actions and... well basically in a giant Tribal clusterfuck of never surrendering any ground to anyone criticizing any tribal ally no matter how insane...

It's gone to serious crazy land and the anti-sex anti-female agenda is more stark and publicly revealed than ever and it is batshit crazy indeed.

We have the conservative movement in America effectively now pushing a hard line "anti-slut" attack line on the pill and even against consensual non-procreative sex in monogamous heterosexual married relationships.

We have the conservative base rallying behind actually attacking the Girl Scouts as a secret homosexual indoctrinating abortion pushing sex cabal.

And we have this sort of crazy shit going down...

State Rep. Terry England was speaking in favor of HB 954, which makes it illegal to obtain an abortion after 20 weeks even if the woman is known to be carrying a stillborn fetus or the baby is otherwise not expected to live to term.

... those dumb dumb fucking fuckers.

Don't they know they are supposed to keep up a pretense in order to try and win elections and push their agenda. Trying to ban abortion of STILLBORN fetuses effectively completely lets the cat out of the bag that they have NEVER been serious about their "pro life", "save the precious babies real live babies!" line EVER. When they literally push for forced child birth legislation that punishes and medically endangers women without "saving a baby" they show that all their bullshit excuses about brainless snot balls having souls were a big fat fucking lie.

Same goes for the "married sluts on the Pill" attack line revealing that their agenda has always been anti-sex and never REALLY was serious about all the bullshit excuses they gave about it not being the case.

And the girl scouts thing? Aside from just being a really creepy "yeah sure THIS is going to be your vote winner!... right..." issue. Makes it pretty clear that their hatred of women and women's rights has extended to the point that they regard even the most tame, conformist and bland of little girls social groups as a feminazi lesbian attack on their delicate anti-woman sensibilities.

We are in a strange new era where everything we ever said about Tzor and friends crazy REAL motivations are literally being eagerly and openly admitted to and then openly defended despite any and all obvious and significant popularity hits they are taking for it.

I was wondering why Tzor suddenly got his knickers in a twist and I think this winning strategy of the right is the real embaressment he is in hiding from and we won't be seeing him back until it blows over with the rest of his own hysteria some time well after the next election.

Koumei · Post by **Koumei** » Wed Mar 14, 2012 8:36 am

This has gone beyond "You can't actually tell the difference between the Right and a parody article such as by TheOnion." You once again can tell the difference: a parody would not attempt to be quite so fucking insane.

PhoneLobster wrote: I was wondering why Tzor suddenly got his knickers in a twist and I think this winning strategy of the right is the real embaressment he is in hiding from and we won't be seeing him back until it blows over with the rest of his own hysteria some time well after the next election.

When he comes back, we'll need to remember to ask him for his opinion on the crazy shit he was absent for. His attempts to justify it could result in him ragequitting again even sooner.

Ted the Flayer · Post by **Ted the Flayer** » Wed Mar 14, 2012 3:30 pm

PhoneLobster wrote:(ie very little to do with their claimed goals about abortion and a lot to do with sexism and punishment fetishes)

Don't they realize that women are into that more often than one would think if they were just open about it? I'm just saying, they don't have to legislate that sort of thing when they can find a woman that likes to be tied down, spanked, and called a bad little girl without too much effort.

EDIT: I looked up posts by this Tzor person you all keep bringing up. Are you sure he wasn't trolling when he said that crap? I find it hard to believe someone could be that messed up for real...

RobbyPants · Post by **RobbyPants** » Wed Mar 14, 2012 4:31 pm

Ted the Flayer wrote: EDIT: I looked up posts by this Tzor person you all keep bringing up. Are you sure he wasn't trolling when he said that crap? I find it hard to believe someone could be that messed up for real...

If he was a troll, it was a very convincing and very long-lived rant.

Pseudo Stupidity · Post by **Pseudo Stupidity** » Wed Mar 14, 2012 5:36 pm

Tzor is sort of like the Jesus of the den. He was here a long time ago, pissed a bunch of people off and then left, but people can't stop talking about him and hotly debate the meaning of each thing he said.