Do crime stats in Arizona support the rationale for the law?

[matt819]

Reading the posts on various sites, one might expect that Arizona was overrun with crime. Mexican gangs, mostly. But a dangerous place in dangerous times that called for extreme measures. Thank goodness the good legislators of AZ had the foresight and courage to pass this anti-immigrant bill. Good for them.

Okay, I don't live in AZ, and I certainly don't mean to diminish the impact of gangs and crime in any community. Crime is serious business, and we do need to address the issue of illegal immigration. But I decided to take a quick look at crime stats from the FBI's Uniform Crime Reporting site. Among the other things I am not is a statistician, and the odds are good that a statistician could make these numbers sing, and you can probably make any number of cases from these numbers. But a quick review of stats from 2005 through 2008 reveal some interesting things (before 2005 the data was not easily downloadable into an Excel file), and there is only preliminary data, on a gross (not state by state) level for 2009. Four years do not necessarily suggest a trend, but here goes.

2005 - 2008: per capita violent crime down from 513 per 100K to 447 per 100K. On a per capita basis, also down over this 4-yr. period are murder, forcible rape, robbery (up for a few years, then down in 2008), aggravated assault (seems to be down dramatically), property crime, burglary, and motor vehicle theft. The only crime stat up over this period is larceny/theft. These are for the state overall, though there is a breakdown for metropolitan and rural.

I didn't compare these stats to other states, but looking only at AZ, you'd almost have to say that whatever else they may have going on, their law enforcement seems to have things under control (notwithstanding the utterly vile tactics of the mad sheriff).

Granted, maybe "general" crime is down, but gang crime is up. Maybe there are statistics on the ethnic makeup of those accused of these crimes. There's a lot more than can be done with these stats and others that are available. But just a quick look at these numbers doesn't suggest that there has been a massive and growing number of criminal acts in the state.

So, we're back to the reason for the bill. Becomes more obvious by the day.

[BlooInBloo]

1. According to the Jim Crow law supporters, if just one white person is attacked...

The law is justified.

edit: Or if there's any other theoretically possible downside for white folks.

[dkf]

4. Half of Arizona could be killed in the Mexican drug wars and we still wouldn't do anything.

Wouldn't want to be politically incorrect you know.

[BlooInBloo]

5. I realize stormfront wants to branch out, but this is ridiculous.

[Warren Stupidity]

15. !

[MadMaddie]

2. It is about racism which is convenient

but it really is about "Voter suppression". The now Governer who was the Secretary of State managed to suppress over 100, 000 votes.

http://www.opednews.com/articles/AZ-Immigration-Law-is-Real-by-Greg-Palast-100428-446.html?show=votes

<snip>
Beginning after the 2004 election, under Brewer's command, no fewer than 100,000 voters, overwhelmingly Hispanic, were blocked from registering to vote. In 2005, the first year of the Great Brown-Out, one in three Phoenix residents found their registration applications rejected.
<snip>

The Republicans now have ensured they will not get any Hispanic votes.

[bliss_eternal]

8. exactly.

:thumbsup:

[xchrom]

3. Recommend

[Rex]

6. It is about race.

[bliss_eternal]

7. wait....what....?

...mexican gangs?

so you think creating a law that profiles brown individuals as possibly undocumented is an appropriate way to crack down on mexican gang activity and crimes in arizona? is that what your op is saying?

are you aware at all of media disparities in reporting crimes based on racial background and one's ethnicity?

there is such a thing as "black on black crime" for media reporting. you've heard this term before, yes? have you ever heard of "white on white crimes." there is no such thing for media reports. more often than not, one is more likely to hear about violent crimes committed by people of color than similar crimes committed by non-ethnic people.

maybe the question you should ask yourself is why is that...? why are you only hearing about mexican gang activity as opposed to the crimes committed by others in arizona? i assure you, there are other crimes commmitted there (that you aren't seeing statistics for).

[matt819]

11. You're missing my point

The only reason I mention Mexican gangs is that that's the term the RW is throwing around. I know it's nonsense, and I'm surprised you read something else into it. The point that I was making is that crime - overall crime, without respect to race - is generally trending downward in Arizona. I don't know if the FBI has statistics on the ethnic makeup of criminal and victim. Possibly. But this wasn't available in what I was looking at, and I didn't raise this in my post.

And, yes, I know you can play all sorts of games with statistics, but the fact remains that the statistics - in this case provided by the states and compiled by the FBI - are presumably what government agencies are basing their decisions on. You can interpret them as you like, but if we're all singing off that same sheet of music, how come some see a downward trend in crime and others see massive outbreaks of Mexican gang crime? What other factors are at work? Racism? Voter suppression? The news so far has only scratched the surface, but, sadly, I don't think we're going to see any in-depth reporting on this issue.

[bliss_eternal]

12. hmmmm, interesting.

...thanks for the explanation and clarification.

[UTUSN]

9. Bad law is bad law. n/t

[jmm]

10. Oh, people can come up with statistics to prove anything. 14% of people know that.

I could find stats to "support" enacting numerous laws that discriminate and violate people's rights.

[Posteritatis]

13. Crime stats don't support any rationale for most laws these days

People ignore the real ones and act based on their perceptions - witness just about everyone, everywhere, wrongly convinced that crime rates are going up.

[Warren Stupidity]

14. Crime stats are irrelevant.

States cannot implement their own immigration policy nor can they interfere in the federal enforcement of immigration policy. Google: Supremacy Clause.

Besides, even if Arizona's crime was statistically out of whack with other states, one would also have to establish that undocumented immigrants were causing the difference to make this a justification for an unconstitutional law.

[old mark]

16. The FBI report states that violent crime in the US is at the lowest

in 28 years.
Maybe the legislators in AZ are simply planning ahead...or maybe they just hate Mexicans.

mark

[EFerrari]

17. The Official Story is utter bs.

Immigration is trending down, crime is trending down, and there's no evidence that immigrants commit more crime than any other group.