Bus strike leads to drop in crime statistics.
Background information: a two-month bus drivers' strike has recently ended in the Minneapolis/ Saint Paul Metro area.
A headline on the front page of the (4/30/04) Minneapolis newspaper reads: "Police caution against making link to ridership. Some crime ebbed during strike."
In the article, we learn that the number of crime reports had fallen at the Mall of America, and in both downtowns. The particular crimes which saw reductions were: narcotics sales, shoplifting, petty theft, and stuff like that. The types of crimes that saw reductions were characterized as being: "those occuring around bus stops."
An initial reaction to this information may be: "Good. Let's limit the mobility of the riff-raff." Or maybe, "Let's make sure that the bus doesn't run through my neighborhood." The statistics in this news article would tend to lend themselves to supporting this argument.
What interested me was to consider how these statistics could be deceiving...
Since the "crimes occurring around bus stops" were less likely to occur, could it be likely that the crimes were occuring elsewhere but not being reported?
Also, since the crimes usually being committed were being diffused into other areas, wouldn't it be more difficult for the police to locate possible criminals if they had moved their "criminal enterprises" elsewhere? (for at least a period of time before adjustment.)
One could assume that the police have become conditioned to look for crime at or around bus stops. Since there were fewer people around the bus stops during the strike, the epicenters of crime would have to move as well. It would probably take a while for the police to catch-up with the criminals once they have established new locations.
As far as shoplifting at the "Mall of America": It is possible that such a large enterprise (as the mall) would have a stronger loss-prevention infrastructure than the areas that absorbed the mall's traffic. (That may be a reach... I am just trying to illustrate how statistics can be restated to indicate different things.)
Similar to the mall's situation, the downtown areas probably have stronger infrastructures for detecting and reporting crime.
I felt that the article in the newspaper does a pretty good job of not drawing conclusions. I am afraid however that those readers who didn't put as much thought into the article may make a rash decision without fully weighing the meaning of the statistics. It can usually be easy to blame social ills on the lower economic strata of society (who presumably are more likely to ride the bus.) Sometimes deceptive statistics can help to support the claims of those who cast blame.
Personally, I feel that the truth of this particular issue is somewhere in the middle. Maybe some criminals were deterred by lack of mobility. The lack of mobility may have increased the "opportunity-costs" of committing certain crimes to the point that the crimes had been deterred.
I also feel that the drop off of crimes being reported were do partially to the lag time needed for police to adjust their policing strategies to a shift of location of crimes. The crime is still out there, it just had gotten harder-to-find.