The Crime Issue

Writing about the whole race and realignment issue, Ross says the key thing to keep in mind is that "Publius is right: 'Nixon’s law and order message was lost on no one.' It was lost on no one because violent crime went up three hundred and sixty-seven percent between 1960 and 1980." Silly Publius, silly liberals.

But wait, Nixon was elected in 1968, not 1980. Meanwhile, the population grew between 1960 and 1980. And the overall violent crime index is unreliable thanks to the vagaries of classification standards. But lets look at the homicide rate which works for comparisons over time. We see that the murder rate went up a good deal from 5.1 per 100,000 people in 1960 to 6.9 per 100,000 in 1968, at which point Nixon's "law and order" message captured the hearts of America's silent majority. But as you'll see from the above chart, there's no clear further correlation between either the absolute level of crime or the trend in crime and partisan or incumbent party success. Nixon wasn't punished in 1972 for the fact that, despite his law and order platform, crime kept going up. Crime was way higher in 1984 than it was in 1968. And so on and so forth.

Along these lines, if a move to the right was really the consequence of rising crime rates, one would expect the most conservative groups in the electorate to be those most afflicted by violent crime -- low-income African-Americans. But of course that's not how it works at all. Thus while "crime" and "law and order" were obviously successful electoral themes for the Republican Party in the 1970s and 80s there's little indication that their utility as messages was tightly linked to the objective facts about crime. After all, if the appeal of "crime" messaging was really about crime, its effectiveness should have diminished in years (1972, 1988, and to some extent 1984) when GOP leadership failed to address the issue and/or its effectiveness should have been correlated with the audience's risk of being victimized by crime, but neither is true.

Comments

I'd love to see a similar chart that used some measure of black political involvement--number voting?--along one axis.

Posted by SomeCallMeTim | November 20, 2007 3:36 PM

"Meanwhile, the population grew between 1960 and 1980."

In practice, perhaps crime is something that _shouldn't_ be normalized for population. After all, let's say the population goes up and your neighborhood is suddenly experiencing a lot more violent crime. Do you care that the population went up? Technically you might be safer because there are more potential victims walking around.

But it seems to me that you'd mostly be concerned that there's a lot of bad stuff happening in your neighborhood that wasn't happening before, and you'd like it to stop.

Posted by MattNotYglesias | November 20, 2007 3:41 PM

Crime was way higher in 1984 than it was in 1968.

Not on that chart.

Posted by Aaron S. Veenstra | November 20, 2007 3:42 PM

I think what we need is a graph showing public perception of violent crime as opposed to a graph of the actual crimes. That might bring us closer to a resolution.

Posted by guineapigfury | November 20, 2007 3:46 PM

For a better graph, going all the way back to 1925, see the Crime Misery Index, plotting the homicide rate and the imprisonment rate together over time (with the 1950s set at 100):

http://isteve.blogspot.com/2005/04/introducing-crime-misery-index.html

Posted by Steve Sailer | November 20, 2007 3:49 PM

I bet the perceived crime rate is only loosely correlated with the actual crime rate. Probably things like local news practices, what's popular on TV, and political rhetoric all contribute more to how people feel about crime.

Posted by Peter | November 20, 2007 3:51 PM

All the people I know who are obsessed with crime live in very safe areas. I remember once confronting a co-worker who was complaining about crime rates with the question of whether he locked his suburban home when he left it. It turned out that not only did he leave it unlocked, the car's ignition key never left the car at any time. This is clearly a person who objectively felt himself to be very safe. And yet he complained quite often about how out of control crime is.

Moral: it's all a bunch of talk.

Posted by Martin | November 20, 2007 4:07 PM

MattNotYglesias' comment at 3:41 may be the dumbest thing I've ever seen on this blog. Well, in a while.

Posted by lemuel pitkin | November 20, 2007 4:07 PM

Matt, you really should take more care to think things through before posting about history that your more elderly readers actually lived through.

What we can see from the Crime Misery Index graph is that the homicide rate, after settling down to a low level in the late 1940s and being flat into the early 1960s started to head up in the mid-1960s, right at the triumphant high tide of liberalism in America (LBJ's landslide, the Warren Court and the Miranda ruling, rising welfare payments, opening up of welfare to single mothers, declining imprisonment rates, LBJ appointing Ramsey Clark [!] as Attorney General, etc. etc.).

Much of what happened was simply the Baby Boom that began in 1946 running amok. The ratio of young potential criminals to cops and jail cells grew rapidly. But the liberal hegemony over public policy ideas in the 1960s and early 1970s is largely to blame for not taking simple steps to solve these problems (i.e., hire more cops and build more jails).

Despite the doubling in the murder rate from 1965-1975, the imprisonment rate actually declined over the same period, such was the power of liberal ideas at the time. The imprisonment rate started to creep up in the late 1970s and grew rapidly in the 1980s and 1990s, finally plateauing in this decade following the big crime drop that began in the mid-1990s.

How much direct control does the President have over street crime? Obviously, not too much. Legislators at the state and federal level have more. The President's influence on crime rates is probably most significant in the area of judicial nominations, a lever with an extremely long lag time. So, your posting is pretty silly.

Posted by Steve Sailer | November 20, 2007 4:08 PM

Matt writes:
"one would expect the most conservative groups in the electorate to be those most afflicted by violent crime -- low-income African-Americans"

But African-Americans are disenchanted with Republicans and conservatives for reasons other than crime.

But what about "low-income whites"? I suspect that since they live closer to the financial edge, where burglary or vandalism can be a real hurt, a strong preference for law-and-order would result.

Posted by Quiddity | November 20, 2007 4:09 PM

the imprisonment rate

Is that imprisonment for homicide, or is that going to include drug related crimes?

Posted by SomeCallMeTim | November 20, 2007 4:15 PM

if a move to the right was really the consequence of rising crime rates, one would expect the most conservative groups in the electorate to be those most afflicted by violent crime -- low-income African-Americans.

That doesn't seem right to me at all, for a variety of reasons. Chief among those is the fact that cops were very racist until fairly recently, and "law and order" was unlikely to help black communities very much, even if their crime rates were high.

Posted by Mr. Noah | November 20, 2007 4:19 PM

But what about "low-income whites"?

Also heavily Democratic, at least of late.

Posted by SomeCallMeTim | November 20, 2007 4:22 PM

The fact is, crime went way up in the 1960's. With a little lag time, the term Liberal went way down in popular appeal. My gut feeling is that this is largely due to the perception that liberals were interested in coddling criminals.

I saw an interesting statistic somewhere recently (maybe on this blog?): the clearance rate for homicide is 60% in the US but 90% in Europe. I think one of the biggest influences on crime rate is the likelihood of getting caught (as opposed to the length of jail time). So, this is interesting.

Posted by Jim W | November 20, 2007 4:29 PM

And, if Bugs Mussolini becomes the Repub nominee, the spectre of "It's Giuliani time!" will be raised. His 'crack down on the nigs' racism was a winning formula in his mayoral races. If he does come out ahead in the primaries, the Democrats should not be shy about using it against him. Diallo and Louima could be the poster boys for what a Giuliani Presidency would mean. Willie Horton indeed!

Posted by Trevor | November 20, 2007 4:38 PM

Quiddity writes:

"But what about "low-income whites"?"

Right. The big political change after 1964 was the breaking away from the FDR Coalition of blue-collar whites in the north and south.

Posted by Steve Sailer | November 20, 2007 4:50 PM

Anyone who still wants to pretend that 'tough on crime' meant anything other than 'tough on black people' at this point is a not only a god damned retard, they are a racist god damned retard.

Posted by Soullite | November 20, 2007 4:53 PM

Matt:

You definitely need to read a good history of the Sixties. The most relevant book to fill in gaps in your knowledge about why Democrats lost popularity after 1964 would be "The Unraveling of America: A History of Liberalism in the 1960s" by my old Rice U. history professor Allen J. Matusow.

http://www.amazon.com/Unraveling-America-History-Liberalism-American/dp/0061320587

Posted by Steve Sailer | November 20, 2007 4:54 PM

Steve missed the point (again??) ... which is that if law and order is a persuasive political argument (and Ross and Matt are arguing that it is, for different reasons), then depending on why it is persuasive we'll see different correlations with crime and elections.

Under Ross' assumption, crime rates will be mirrored by concern for law and order, so Republican wins in the Executive branch (as well as the other branches) will accompany increased crime.

Under Matt's assumption, crime rates will not be meaningful because law and order stands for something different and more pernicious. He makes the case for this assumption with the graph above.

You can decide for yourself how to interpret, but Matt's not saying that any one party is good at stopping crime relative to another, he's pointing out that since the parties say different things about crime, depending on how it is interpreted you will expect different election results.

Posted by Matt | November 20, 2007 5:03 PM

I think you may be looking at Nixon's "Law and Order" campaign as strictly a crime issue, but it's salience to the electorate was *really* about Law and Order (with an emphasis on the Order part). Crime was certainly higher in '68 than previously, but 'disorder' (especially as amplified by the media), was WAY up: riots and demonstrations in the U.S., uprisings across the globe, contributed to a visceral fear of anarchy (not to mention a general loathing of hippies and african americans) among the voting majority.

Posted by dukej | November 20, 2007 5:11 PM

The Republicans' efficacy as crimefighters is no more relevant to their political success than their efficacy as war fighters or terrorism fighters.

See also: fiscal responsibility.

Posted by politicalfootball | November 20, 2007 5:13 PM

I agree with Soullite -- to some extent, the *rhetoric* about crime was (is?) coded racism. Also, it seems to me that anxiety about crime works a lot like fear of immigration or homosexuality (or terrorism): It seems like people who haven't experienced these things directly tend to have the strongest feelings about them. I grew up in the 1960s and 1970s in a neighborhood where there was a lot of property crime (but not violent crime, so much). In other words, our house got broken into a lot. And most of my friends who grew up in safe suburban neighborhoods (and how now live in relatively safe neightborhoods) are much more nervous about crime than I am. I'm guessing that this fearfulness has something to do with the emphasis on violence in the news and in all forms of entertainment . . .

Posted by mary | November 20, 2007 5:18 PM

There's a level of historical ignorance displayed here that is startling to an old coot like me.

The basic reason liberals call themselves "progressives" today is because crime went up on the liberals' watch in the 1960s and it took America over three decades to wrestle it back down again. It was a national catastrophe that wound up killing more people than Vietnam.

The President's influence on the crime rate is mostly indirect through federal judicial appointments. Nixon started appointing more conservative judges, like Rehnquist, and Reagan carried on the process and eventually the federal judiciary was more conservative than it was in the 1960s.

The other Presidential effects on street crime are mostly symbolic, such as LBJ appointing the flamingly far-left Ramsey Clark as Attorney General in 1967, which sent a message to law enforcement and the courts all over the country about what kind of ideas and policies are prestigious.

But anti-crime conservatism grew at all levels of politics from the early 1970s onward, including in the Democratic Party, and now crime is low enough that you hear a lot of silliness spouted by people who don't know the facts.

Posted by Steve Sailer | November 20, 2007 5:18 PM

Theodore White's Making of the President books, which may not be entirely reliable, mention how the law and order theme of conservative politics was in fact most popular among the working-class. He described a Nixon rally where young people would cheer for Vietnam disengagement, the middle-class for tax cuts and such, and the working-class, including scattered blacks, for law and order.
In 1968 law and order was also important for RFK in establishing popularity with blacks and Nelson Rockefeller is described as having used it to the same effect in establishing himself politically in NY.

Posted by Moral Panicker | November 20, 2007 5:20 PM

What we're seeing here in the comments and the postings is that a lot of liberals (excuse me, "progressives") would rather feel holier-than-thou toward other whites than to understand the genuine concerns of voters in order to win elections.

Posted by Steve Sailer | November 20, 2007 5:24 PM

I've been recently writing about this for a graduate course. Quick point: "crime" is determined by our laws, and the laws got infinitely more tough and numerous since the 1960s. What hasn't changed, for the most part, are figures from victimization surveys. We got similar "crime" to other countries (other than violent crime... *ahemguns*), but we got very different rates of "law-breaking."

Posted by studier | November 20, 2007 5:26 PM

Steve Sailer, I see your name and spit knowing there is more racist tripe that will follow. You are a degenerate lying racist, to be nice about what I really think.

Posted by Jennifer | November 20, 2007 5:31 PM

Most of the biggest milestones of human progress -- religious tolerance, abolition of slavery, universal suffrage, defeat of fascism, equal rights for women and gays -- have been achieved over the opposition of people like Steve Sailer.

Posted by lemuel pitkin | November 20, 2007 5:42 PM

Re: The big political change after 1964 was the breaking away from the FDR Coalition of blue-collar whites in the north and south.

Low income whites and blue collar whites are not the same group at all. Low income whites generally do vote Democratic still, to the extent they vote at all. And even blue collar whites have not bolted en masse to the GOP: especially in areas with high union membership many of them still tend to vote Democratic. It’s the middle class that defected to the GOP.

Posted by Jonf | November 20, 2007 6:05 PM

Not to be pedantic, but the candidate who used the slogan "law and order" in 1968 was George Wallace. Nixon's own campaign message was mostly that he wasn't Lyndon Johnson or Johnson's vice president.

Posted by Jim | November 20, 2007 7:13 PM

When someone says "Law and Order," I believe they just mean "Order".

In a 60s context, no crime, no bra-burners, no hippies, no uppity Negroes talking about the problems with society, no Jimi Hendrix ("Jimi," for crissakes!), no marijuana, no nothing. An orderly society where everyone knows their place. No amount of goddamn pointyhead statistics are going to convince anyone that things are orderly, when they can turn on their TV and see disorder in the streets.

Law and Order = Order = ressentiment against the modern world, because the modern world = disorder.

Posted by Delicioius Pundit | November 21, 2007 1:34 AM

Martin: All the people I know who are obsessed with crime live in very safe areas.

That's strange, becasue the arrow of causality only runs one way. Obviously, where people live is random, and should be what determines how they think about crime. It could not possibly be that people who are obsessed with crime tend to prioritize safety where determining where to live.

one would expect the most conservative groups in the electorate to be those most afflicted by violent crime -- low-income African-Americans

This is typical liberal half-logic. Blacks may be victimized by violent crime, but they also are the group that commits most of it - getting tough on violent crime may make an African-American voter safer, but it also is more likely to send one of his relatives or friends to prison for a long time.

If blacks committed crime at a low rate and were mostly victimized by some other racial group, they would be much more conservative on crime issues.

His 'crack down on the nigs' racism was a winning formula in his mayoral races.

If David Dinkins' policy hadn't been "let them run riot in the streets" Giuliani's formula wouldn't have been so popular. (Don't get me wrong - I would vote for Hillary before I would vote for Rudy).

Anyone who still wants to pretend that 'tough on crime' meant anything other than 'tough on black people' at this point is a not only a god damned retard, they are a racist god damned retard.

Anyone who thinks that the reason that "tough on crime" means "tough on black people" is racism (rather than the fact that blacks commit so much cime relative to their proportion of the population) is a moron.

When someone says "Law and Order," I believe they just mean "Order".

When someone says "Law and Order," I believe they just mean "Fred Thompson." Unless they mean "Sam Waterson" or "S. Epatha Merkerson."

Posted by Glaivester | November 21, 2007 2:12 AM

Don't worry Sailer, their negative energy only makes you stronger. :o)

I would just point out that while the homicide rate is nominally the most accurate crime measure (hard for a police department to sweep a death certificate under the rug), it doesn't take into account the vast improvement in emergency medicine in the last 60 years. Call it to the Trapper John M.D. factor: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trapper_John,_M.D.
After every war, a new generation of combat surgeons bring their experience and innovations back to the civilian trauma center (itself an invention of R. Adams Cowley, a World War II army surgeon).

To give one example, the military's experience treating Traumatic Brain Injuries in Iraq and Afghanistan will save countless civilian lives in the future. As a consequence, every life they save won't be counted as a homicide.

Posted by beowulf | November 21, 2007 2:24 AM

Re: Blacks may be victimized by violent crime, but they also are the group that commits most of it - getting tough on violent crime may make an African-American voter safer, but it also is more likely to send one of his relatives or friends to prison for a long time.

So what? Whites are the only people who join the KKK. Does this mean that all white people support the KKK, or at least oppose any effort to limit its reach because (by your logic) we might be opposing one our relatives? Your insinuation that all or even most Black people have relatives who are criminals is disgustingly racist.

Re: I would just point out that while the homicide rate is nominally the most accurate crime measure (hard for a police department to sweep a death certificate under the rug), it doesn't take into account the vast improvement in emergency medicine in the last 60 years.

How much does that matter though? Maybe in domestic disputes where someone calls the EMTs right away. And maybe in vehicular homicides too where help is also brought promptly to the scene. But most murder victims (other than cases like the above) are found well after they are past the point of resucitation. The whole point of commiting a murder is to make sure the person is very dead, so most homicides (again, excluding involuntary homicides and manslaughter acts) take place where no one will call for help.

Posted by JonF | November 21, 2007 6:30 AM

Re: "The whole point of commiting a murder is to make sure the person is very dead..."

I think it is just not true. Two typical example:

shooting during a robbery in a store

the point is clearly to remove resistance to robbery. Quite frequently there are witnesses who promptly call emergency

revenge shooting/stabbing

again, quite often it takes place in public

homicide as a kind of suicide

the perpetrators is angry and despondent and either commits his/her act in public, or him(her)self calls an emergency number.

In general, large proportion of violent crimes is committed by angry loosers rather than by calculating creeps who obviously would assure that the victim "stays dead".

Re: "Anyone who thinks that the reason that "tough on crime" means "tough on black people" is racism (rather than the fact that blacks commit so much cime relative to their proportion of the population) is a moron."

Question: why penal laws are so much more punitive in USA compared with Europe, and within USA, more punitive in Southern states, while in Europe, more punitive in England where again we have the race angle at work?

Once I was driving near NYC trying to find a sensible radio station and I stumbled on some talk show. A caller, encouraged by the person running the show, was railing for several minutes why "the animals" are treated so well and with such expense in the prisons of NY state. I can assure you that in a country where minorities are not implicated in crimes in a similar manner people do no villify criminals in that manner.

Not to go to another continent, the attitudes to the crime problem in Mexico are vastly different than in USA. While people demand that police works better (and, preferable, not as a crime organization in itself), there is no clamor for harsher penalties for the criminals who are caught. Perhaps there is some national pride at work too (we are not crazy gringos with their insane penalties like death or life without parole). And it is not like Mexicans are so unaffected by crime that they are very dispassionate by the subject.

Posted by piotr | November 21, 2007 9:15 AM

One more examples about very different perception of the need to harsh penalties.

By reading mailing list of local "bicyclist coalition" I got impression that the members are quite pissed off that as a norm, vehicular homicide perpetrators serve no time. Now, killing a person with a bicycle would be quite a feat, so bicyclists do not have much empathy for the perpetrators (while they know victims).

By the way of contrast, while more people are killed by vehicle crashes than by all other kind of homicide (and accidents?), there is no clamor for harsher penalties among wider public, with the exception of drunken driving, but even the latter is not treated particularly harshly.

Besides vehicular homicide, there are many kinds of crime or misdimeanors that are not associated with the minorities in the popular perception and which are treated quite leniently as a result. White collar crime in general, date rape, posession of non-crack cocaine etc.

Posted by piotr | November 21, 2007 9:30 AM

Piotr,

Vehicular homicide (which as you note above is the sort of homicide that is prevented by prompt medical attention) is treated less harshly than murder because of the intent issue.

If you kill someone with reckless intent, you face murder or manslaughter charges. To simplify, a homicide with intent to kill or commit some other felony is murder, and one with intent to commit a misdemeanor (like driving drunk or starting a bar fight) is manslaughter.

DUIs excepted, most vehicular homicides are at worst negligent homicide. Some states will prosecute that as a misdemeanor (with probation for a first offender). But generally, if the driver isn't drunk or driving recklessly, the cops don't press charges and the case is left for the personal injury lawyers to handle.

Posted by beowulf | November 21, 2007 11:59 AM

"What we're seeing here in the comments and the postings is that a lot of liberals (excuse me, "progressives") would rather feel holier-than-thou toward other whites than to understand the genuine concerns of voters in order to win elections."

What we're seeing here is an innate ability to find "evidence" to fit pre-concieved notions. Truly, Steve, that "graph" and your latest consultant-speak are your saddest moments to date. One imagines a conversation in the not too distant future....

Steve Sailer: "Hi, Steve!"

Steve Sailer: "Hey, Stevo!"

Steve Sailer: "Yo, Steve, check out his new chart I found while doing 'research' online".

Steve Sailer: "Cool, Stevo! That graph PROVES everything that I, Steve Sailer, already 'knew' to be true."

Steve Sailer: "Me, too, Steve! Golly, the guy, oops, sorry, I mean 'person' --- (shoulder shrug) --- who came up with that must be frickin' brilliant."

Steve Sailer: "No worries, Stevo, it's a dude that came up with this. Says here his name is Steve Sailer. I hear he's thinks he gots some Jew in him, so ya know he must be smart."

Steve Sailer: "Wow, Steve! Genetic credentials, and his own website, people must be itching to get his opinion on everything".

Steve Sailer: "You'd think, so, wouldn't you Steveo. But the 'man' keeps tryin' to keep him down so he's resorted to trolling other people's websites to fool the the stupider and more naive ones into visiting his site."

Steve Sailer: "Whoa, dude, that's pathetic"

Steve Sailer: "Tell me about it, dude..."

Posted by Rihilism | November 21, 2007 1:56 PM