A few days ago, a friend and I were bitching about how the NYC subways were getting more and more crowded. I jokingly said, “well, that’s what you get when you crack down on crime on the subways. People aren’t afraid to use it anymore.”
Today, I read an article in the New York Times that reveals that residents in the outer boroughs of NYC have the longest (timewise) commutes in the country (well, the longest of the 29 states for which census data has been released). Even residents of Manhattan have longer commutes than residents of L.A. And I started thinking that maybe lower crime hasn’t been such a good thing for NYC after all.
I mean, let’s look at the costs of decreased crime:
[ul]
[li]Increased population, which leads to[/li][li]longer commutes[/li][li]higher rents, which in turn leads to [/li][li]increased gentrification. Middle and upper middle class people are moving into neighborhoods they wouldn’t have dreamed of living in 10 years ago, thus raising rents for long-term residents[/li][li]Congestion on mass transit.[/li][/ul]
The benefits of decreased crime are (i) less people victims of crime - but even in “high crime” periods, the overwhelming majority of the population aren’t victims of crime, and (ii) a better atmosphere for business, thus increasing employment, but that effect is lessened in NYC because of its dependence on Wall Street, which was never greatly affected by the crime rates.
Looking at a cost/benefit analysis, I think it could easily be said that the low-crime era has cost more people more than the high-crime era did.
This thread is partially tongue-in-cheek, but can an argument be made that too much crime control is bad for a city?
Some (besides the criminals) are worse off when crime rates drop significantly.
Speaking as a very marginal econ student, I would surmise that high crime rates made some otherwise very desireable commodities more affordable on a cash basis but probably not on a quality of life basis for those who are crime averse. In a way, those who had a tolerance for crime, seeing it as a low probability, non-random event or even a necessary evil made out like bandits as long as they were not crime victims themselves. High crime depressed prices.
When the crime was reduced, the crime averse came flying back and prices (cash, time, headaches) skyrocketed to better reflect the market value of these goods.
Those priced out of this market are most likely worse off with reduced crime, but others benefited to the tune of millions of dollars. Those who are suffering the increased rents, commutes, pollution, headaches, etc. are doing so voluntarily, so they probably at least think they are better off with reduced crime.
Speak for yourself. In the early '90s, I lived in a high crime area in Philadelphia. The advantages were twofold:
Considerably cheaper rent (and considerably more space) than in the “safe” areas of Philly; and
A drastically shorter commute to work.
Coincidentally, two of the benefits I noted earlier.
Lorenzo, depends what you mean by “voluntarily.” I guess that it’s conceivable that the poor residents of Alphabet City and Fort Greene, who longer can afford the rents in their neighborhood, could move to a different and cheaper city.
I think you’re forgetting that crime has all kinds of costs for people living in poor neighborhoods, quite apart from the financial losses and physical pain endured by the victim of a mugging.
If you live in an impoverished, high-crime area…
Banks don’t want to do business in your neck of the woods, and will close down your branches. So, if you want to cash your small paycheck (or welfare check), you’ll have to do it at a “check cashing” store that will charge you a sizeable percentage of the value of your check. And if you want to pay bills, you’ll have to buy money orders from the check-cashing center, since there aren’t any local banks where you can maintain a checking account.
Supermarket chains don’t want to do business in your neck of the woods, and will close down their branches. You’ll have to buy your food from small, Mom-and-pop stores, which lack the supermarkets’ ability to buy in bulk, and will therefore charge you a LOT more for your basic groceries than supermarkets in safer neighborhoods charge.
There aren’t many places in your neighborhood where you can find a decent job. You may have to work at a low paying local job, or ride the dangerous local transit system far away, to someplace where better-paying jobs are available.
Suppose you or your spouse would LIKE to get the additional education or training you need to find better jobs and better your lot. Do you feel safe taking the bus or subway to a night school or community college at night? How about WALKING to such night classes? If you don’t feel safe, you don’t try to get the further education you need.
If you’d like to start your own business locally, you’ll be unable to find affordable insurance.
So, there are tradeoffs. If a formerly crime-infested neighborhood becomes safer, resident WILL have to pay higher rents. On the other hand, they may get to shop at major chain stores again, deal with real banks again. They’ll pay less for their food, they’ll keep more of their paychecks, they’ll have better job opportunities, and they’ll be freer to take advantage of educational opportunities.
are you factoring other costs to crime? (prisons, prosecutions, labs for testing, lawyers and more lawyers). Crime is big business. Providing quite a few jobs for quite a few folks (of course it would take a hefty swing in the crime data to really make an impact here)>
THis works two ways, however, 'cause most of those costs are passed on to you personally in the way of taxes.
Crime, or the business of appearing to fight it, is a very profitable and lucrative affair. Some areas of America are festering with crime and the sorrow that it brings to a community. As Americans, we wouldn’t have it any other way.
Criminals are am important part of our society. As long as we have criminals we have a group to compare ourselves to. Without criminals and the poverty that they impose on their community we have no lower class. Without a lower class, we have no middle class and so on. Americans like our class structure and we like the class that we belong to, as long as we are not in the lower class.
Criminals bring an interesting factor into the equality equation.
We are all supposed to be entitled to equality and to some extent we are;
We want guns taken from the hands of criminals so we entertain the idea of a ban on all guns. We lose our right to bear arms but we are all equal.
Some people cannot control their drug use, or one group says that drugs are “bad”, so we make the drug illegal. The responsible citizens lose their right to make this decision, but we are all treated equal.
Drunk drivers are a minority but their actions force the majority to lose their right to privacy in their vehicle. We go through the roadblocks without saying a word against this loss of our right. We are all subject to this police surveillance, do we like this equality?
A community is overrun with gangs and crime so we put the entire communtity under a “lockdown.” We set curfews and inject a police presence into the area to watch us all. Every human action is monitored and evaluated against someone elses’ standards of “right” or “wrong”. We all are subject to this scrutiny, but we are all equal.
We are all equal, it says so in the Constitution. But, it doesn’t say that we have to be treated equally well. It would appear that we are supposed to be treated equally bad or “equal to the lowest common denominator.”[ul]
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Firstly, while rent prices and property values (and thus taxes) increase in safer neighborhoods, I don’t think this automatically translates into higher prices for all commodities.
Assuming that low-income, inner-city, heavily minority neighborhoods are generally “high crime” (which isn’t necessarily so, but is more likely the perception, if not also the reality), then one could NEVER come to the conclusion–based on the information above–that high crime is a good thing.
Furthermore, law-abiding citizens in high crime neighborhoods must deal with police harrassment, lack of emergency services (ever heard of the song that goes, “911 is a joke in your town”?), and societal stigmitization that cannot be evaluated in dollars and cents. Having grown up in a moderately crime-filled neighborhood, I remember always being embarrassed whenever I had to give someone my address. Such embarrassment is not a good thing.
Of course, the OP deals with cities, not neighborhoods, but I don’t think it’s that hard to extrapolate from the latter into the former. I live in Newark, a city that has a very bad reputation crime-wise. I have never been mugged, had my car stolen, or otherwise been a victim of crime, and yet I must constantly hear people denigrate my city for being a “bad, bad place”. (Most times, the people who are doing this denigration do not live in Newark, so what the hell would they know?) And yet, it’s hard for me to feel pride in this city. If it wasn’t known as the Car Theft Capital of the World, maybe I wouldn’t have to pay so much in auto insurance. Maybe I would feel more comfortable living closer to where I work. Maybe more businesses would fill up all those blocks and blocks of abandoned buildings, giving employment to the people who normally hang out on the street corners. Maybe the city would just be a better place to live.
So you’ll have to do better than just saying “higher prices and more traffic” to convince me that high crime is a good thing.
i sometimes think crime is good for manipulating real estate values. it forces people to move around, loose net worth. truly eliminating poverty and crime would make things very stable. actually reduce the power of the super rich. i wonder if any real estate magnates are also in the drug business or have friends who are.
Port St. Lucie in Florida has a low crime rate, especially in the areas of serious crime, like rape, murder, car theft, robbery, and assault. Interestingly enough, the city has no ‘ghetto’ areas but the population blends all into a homogenous mix.
Now there are the potentials for the beginnings of high density Black, Hispanic and Indian populations, but the crime rate has leveled out and the city is prosperous, watched over by a moderately sized police force. The cost of living is on an upward spiral because the city is the fastest growing one in Florida and land values, followed by rent, keep going up as the population density increases.
Crime seems to have little to do with the prices increasing within the city. Crowding, on the other hand, seems to have more of an influence because now you pay higher prices to live in low density neighborhoods complete with easy access to stores and entertainment. Plus there are several high class communities being developed, the most predominate and costly of which is around the area of the Mets winter stadium.
Fifteen years ago you could buy a two bedroom house and lot for around $50,000 in a nice area but now that same house will cost you roughly $100,000.
So, there, crime has never been a major factor, but density has. Overcrowding and roads barely able to handle the traffic have become a major problem within the city which was never designed for the tremendous increase in population that it has experienced. That affects the property values.
It all started in 1981, when, walking over to my car, I noticed it looked like it was parked a bit crooked. I didn’t remember parking it that way, but nothing else was amiss, so I just got in & went. This happened a couple of times, until, one morning, it just wasn’t there. Took a while before I realized it had been stolen on me.
Now, I had, for two years, parked this car on the streets of that neighborhood. Many times I didn’t even lock it, out of forgetfulness more than anything else.
Anyway, this being NYC, it took me a few months to get a new car, since you don’t need one to get to work there. I was just finishing paying off the old car when it was stolen, BTW.
Didn’t hurt much getting a new car at first. The insurance payment was large enough that I took a vacation and bought the car with what was left as a down payment after I came back.
Dumb move. Within a week, the car had been broken into and the radio stolen. Didn’t replace that, just got the dash repaired. But that was just the start. Next it was the tires. After that, the gas line was slashed and the tank emptied. Then the spare and the jack were taken.
It went on and on. I was thoroughly bewildered, not knowing how I’d ever gotten away with being so cavalier with the first car when this one was being vandalized practically every other week.
The end came when my wife was mugged. Been living in the suburbs ever since (1985).
Heard all the stories about crime going down. Visited my cousin in NYC two years ago with my used station wagon. When I came back, the grillework was gone. Haven’t been back to visit anyone in NYC since.
The cops are always there to give you a ticket if your registration is expiring one minute after midnight on the night it expires. They’re never around when the thieves strike, though.
Low crime costly? First of all, you don’t have low crime yet. It’s a myth (with the exception of the subways, which are a lot safer than they used to be). Secondly, it costs to replace every single item that gets stolen. Thirdly, the city loses access to most of the income of a suburbanite, even if he works in the city.
I do think that you could make an arguement that for a renter (not an owner), there are signifigant advantages to living in high percieved crime/low actual crime areas, and I think that these areas are actually a lot more common than many people think: they seem to be the result of the fact that inside actual cities “high” and “low” crime areas are often actually pretty small and mixed up. In my small city, you can have two streets back to back where one is safe at 3 am and the other is dangerous at noon on a Sunday. My husband grew up in Uptown Chicago, and he reports much the same phenomenon. Public perception, however, tend to lump large areas–like “New York”–as high crime", and this can effect rents throughout the area.
Here in the South, at least, “high crime” is also a euphimism for “black”: it’s a way for bigots to tell real estate agents that they want only lily white options. So my apartment is cheap, cheap cheap, at least in part because it is in a “bad neighborhood”, where bad is understood by everyone to mean “black”, not “high crime”.
Another benefit of crime going down: shoddy businesses and business practices in affected neighborhoods gets more scrutiny, as they would if the businesses were in ritzier places.
So in the south “bad neighborhood” has nothing to do with things like a perceived higher level of crime, graffiti, poor lawns, or poorly maintained homes? I can assure that when searching for homes in Little Rock, Pine Bluff, Memphis, and South Dallas there were some pretty bad neighborhoods.
It can mean all that, of course, but there is this certain way of saying “Isn’t that sort of a bad neighborhood?” where it is pretty clear that what they mean is “isn’t that sort of a black neighborhood?” And yes, I suspect that “inner city” is the Northern equivilant.
Mando Jo is right. A neighborhood can be safe and comfortably middle class, and yet there is still a perception that it’s bad if there’s more than a handful of black people living there. It suddenly becomes “the hood”. I’ve heard people call South Orange, a nice little village not that far from Newark, “the hood” because a lot of black people live there. They tend to ignore the fact that these people are just as middle class as their white neighbors.
