Q&A – In Florida, How Much Crime Is Undetected

Today’s entry: Good story, a story about technology leading to the detection of more tropical systems, same factors apply in other areas, something to think about, for example, how do you make the crime rate go up? How could you "make" that happen? Simple, hire more police officers. More police officers = more investigations, it's not due to more crime but the increase in officers looking to preserve their job by looking for more of already existing events, the only increase is in reports being filed by the increase in officers. Your point that better tech is creating the "illusion" of more events is a good example of buyer beware.

Bottom Line: This on back of a recent story demonstrating that half of the named storms during the 2019 Atlantic hurricane season would have been undetected prior to satellite technology. The point was/is that higher detected activity in the tropics doesn’t necessarily indicate that we’re experiencing more storms and hurricanes, just that we’re more aware of what’s happening. But your point, illustrated through crime and your law enforcement example, is compelling. Is it true that we could manipulate crime levels based upon levels of policing? 

Using data from the Bureau of Justice Statistics, most crime isn’t reported to local police. According to the Bureau’s database, 53% of violent crime and 65% of property crime are never reported. Regardless of policing levels, if crimes aren’t reported, they’re not going to enter official crime rates. I've tested your thoughts against Florida’s statistics. Florida has reported a total decline in crime every year since 2008 after reaching a peak in 1998. Since then, the population increased by 39%, property crime has decreased by 45% and violent crime decreased by 40%.

On the surface that's an extremely impressive improvement. But have policing populations kept up with the population increase? According to the FDLE annual report, Florida currently has about 2.5 law enforcement officers per 1,000 people. In 1998, that figure stood at 2.7 per 1,000. In this case, that’s a 7% decline in law enforcement officials relative to our population. The point is this, coming back around to your broader point, operating on assumptions often leads us down a primrose path. 

Florida has had a significant decline in crime over the past twenty years that isn’t explained away by policing levels. It’s a real improvement. At the same time, most crime still isn’t reported, so we don’t know what we don’t know, but it’s relative progress all the same. The challenge is wading through political agendas to simply consider facts. 

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Email: brianmudd@iheartmedia.com

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Photo by: Saul Martinez/Getty Images


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