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FailOsprey t1_isash70 wrote

Reply to comment by SirJelly in [OC] Monthly US Homicides by aidansean

>It is not particularly surprising through this lens why crime rates spiked during COVID. Small businesses nestled throughout distressed communities went under during the shutdowns. Once lively blocks, storefronts, even single street corners turned from happy places to desolate in an instant. Social connections, a critical violence mitigator, was effectively forbidden.

...I feel as though the increase in murders during covid is better explained by all the people out of work and school and the fact that a ton of stimulus money was flowing through the drug trade (every drug addict got access to a few thousand dollars that immediately went to drugs). Alot of social avenues we're shut down, but people were still socializing; bars stayed open where I'm at, and people spent alot of time getting drunk with each other at home.

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BSP9000 t1_isc72m0 wrote

Covid had little to do with it. The 2020 crime spike didn't happen in any country besides the US, despite covid being everywhere.

It was a result of the George Floyd protests and the subsequent changes to policing:
https://astralcodexten.substack.com/p/what-caused-the-2020-homicide-spike

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FailOsprey t1_isf30l4 wrote

...one can argue that the George Floyd protests were the result of people not working, which was made possible through a combination of unemployment, government stimulus, and shutdown of schools and workplaces.

It seems that the protests are correlated with the increase in the homicide rate, but not it's cause.

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sukkibds t1_isliiq2 wrote

> It seems that the protests are correlated with the increase in the homicide rate, but not it's cause.

No the protests themselves aren't the cause. The argument is that the subsequent pulling back/ lack of policing following the protests is the proximate cause. Of course, all those things you mentioned were big factors in causing the intensity and scale of the protests so it's really a question of where you draw the line.

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BSP9000 t1_isq2drs wrote

Except that the pandemic was worldwide. Pretty much every country saw unemployment and school shutdowns. Most of the developed world had government stimulus.

Only the United States saw a 30% increase in murder. And that was mostly in black communities in the US.

So it was an effect of depolicing black communities, not an effect of unemployment.

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