Murder by Numbers

1, 2, 3

Murder
Every once in the while, depending on the editorial staff, we are made privy to the Crime of the Century or the Trial of the Century, or something that rises above a mere “Film at 11”. This gives us yappy yuppies the opportunity to say something clever to snark or opine with something new to toss onto the pile of brain spew. This time, straight from the headlines, we have a midwit Mr Robot wannabe take out an insurance CEO. The stuff of which legends are made, right?

My advice on this bit of obligatory seriousness is to wait the discussion out. If pressed, go ahead and say something on the order of “Murder is murder. We have laws and procedures for that and our courts are capable of handling it. Next.” Since none of us have an opportunity to weasel our way onto the jury, there’s nothing we really have to say that is material. Everything else falls beneath the interest of the police, judges and the criminal courts. So what are we to make of the hearsay? As little as possible.

Yet the sad fact is that I’m actually happy that subway vigilante Daniel Penny was found not guilty of whatever the charge was against him, and I guess I would have to say something about that. But I’ll stick to the basic principle that human beings are capable of making life and death decisions and some of us are actually mature adults in that regard. Others of us not so much.

Although Penny was immediately taken in for questioning by the NYPD, police quickly released him without any criminal charges. Amid mounting pressure, it would take nearly two weeks before Penny was finally arrested and leniently charged with manslaughter instead of murder.

Oh, yeah, politics.

The editors over at News One, had that to say, and we’ll see how long they will stick to their standing narrative which obviously colors the article which I’m not even going to bother linking to.

Speaking of brain spew, did you know that the idea of ending a sentence with a preposition was considered outre by medieval scholars in their attempts to conform the English language to Latin grammar? Now you know handwriting pedantry sticks around for centuries. That rule is something to which I will no longer pay attention. Maybe.

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Numbers
I think it behooves us all to have an idea about how many actual homicides take place in the US on an annual basis, what the clearance rate is and the sort of statistical perspective that would help us get out of slavish symbolism. You know, like the data a criminologist would use, or maybe a post DOGE administration would make as easy to find as cat videos.

Here’s the thing. As I was writing this article over at Tessellations, I discovered this cool software called Stata which allows expert researchers to bundle up their statistics, data etc in a replication kit. Unfortunately, Stata would cost me $500 for a license just to use it for six months, and clearly few of you have access to such software. However if you do, here’s the link to the repkit. https://osf.io/f9pbn/

Kermadec Journal 001

I was really intrigued by the study’s correlation between how many hours of the week individuals spent away from home and the incidence of violent crime happening to them. Activity Adjusted Crime Rates. Imagine that. Well you have to imagine because I aint spending the dough. Still, I’m interested to see that Substack does. Perhaps I should write a letter.

Off the top of my head, there are about 17,000 murders every year in the US, and roughly twice that many suicides, but my numbers are pre-COVID. Still, people are more dangerous to themselves as others are to them, with the following exception. Most victims of murder are done in by someone known to them, unlike those in the news.

Here is Table Six, from the FBI Uniform Crime Reports. I started this in response to fact-checking snarky conservative Bill Whittle, nine years ago. The thing I was interested in, turned out to be fairly accurate, which was this. The dark spots in America where murder and other violent crime is high (I call these crimey) are well-known neighborhoods. If you’re an urban dweller and your local journalists keep up a city desk, you should easily be able to see them on a map.

Here is an example of such a map of crimey vs non-crimey Los Angeles. I grew up in the orange and raised my kids in the dark green. Now I live in the red, but the community is gated and quite peaceful. I know the park around the corner where all the shit goes down. I’ve been there twice in five years. Which kind of proves an anecdotal point which we could be more comprehensive about with the right data apparatus. Maybe a few more of you should become paying subscribers. Just kidding. I’ll be doggone if I put more than the standard solicitations here.