In previous posts I’ve explored the relation between violent crime and incarceration rates in the US, which got me wondering: how much do incarceration rates reflect violent crime rates in other countries? Hence, this exploration - and I stress ‘exploration’, because good data is hard to come by and cross-country comparisons can be misleading. For example, countries may not define criminal offenses the same way or have different levels of unreported crime. But iffy data can still reveal real patterns, provided the numbers aren’t not too far off. With that hope in mind, I decided to check out the data and see what patterns I could find.
This post includes excerpts from a Campbell systematic review of surveys and studies on the impact of school-based law-enforcement strategies, followed by a few observations of my own.
Of course, causes rarely work like that in the real world, which is why scientists speak such in such convoluted terms. To say “x partly accounts for a portion of y given certain assumptions and conditions and only at high levels of x” lacks the emotional bunch of “x causes y” but that’s often how the world works.
So when people say x is the cause, or the ultimate cause, or the root cause, of some phenomenon: doubt and try to disconfirm the proposition - with a Wason test.
Andre Perry and David Harshbarger of the Brookings Institute have already crunched those numbers. To quote:
…approximately 11 million Americans (10,852,727) live in once-redlined areas, according to the latest population data from the Census Bureau’s American Community Survey (2017). This population is majority-minority but not majority-Black, and, contrary to conventional perceptions, Black residents also do not form a plurality in these areas overall. The Black population share is approximately 28%, ranking third among the racial groups who live in formerly redlined areas, behind white and Latino or Hispanic residents…While still a tremendously large population, the approximately 3 million Black residents in redlined areas account for just 8% of all non-Latino or Hispanic Black Americans.
Proximate cause (direct cause): Occurs immediately prior to the [outcome of interest]; directly results in its occurrence and, if eliminated or modified, would have prevented the undesired outcome
Root Cause: One of multiple factors (events, conditions or organizational factors) that created the proximate cause and subsequent undesired outcome. Typically multiple root causes contribute to an undesired outcome [my italics].
Root Cause Analysis: A method primarily used to identify the underlying cause of an incident or issue, and more effectively mitigate or prevent future similar incidents.
— So the question for this post is: how would we know whether the historical practice of redlining created a causal pathway that led directly to the current Black-White homeownership gap in the US? In other words, was redlining one of multiple factors responsible for the proximate causes of the Black-White homeownership gap?
The inspiration for this post was reading No, seriously. Root Cause is a Fallacy, by Will Gallego, especially:
Let’s start with some understanding behind the appeal of root cause. The thinking is that you want to get to the underlying problem, starting at where it begins, rather than treating the downstream effects. I can appreciate resolving deeper underlying issues rather than “treating the symptoms” when problems large or small crop up. Our systems are complex. It’s very tempting to look at a singular part in an effort to simplify our understanding and achieve resolution..
In other words, I’ll address how politicians and elected officials might be able to persuade the public and powerful interests to go along with disagreeable policies that promise plenty of short-term pain and almost no immediate payoff, all for an eventual yet somewhat uncertain greater good.
Reducing class size is seen as a way of improving student performance. But larger class sizes help control education budgets. The evidence suggests at best a small effect on reading achievement. There is a negative, but statistically insignificant, effect on mathematics, so it cannot be ruled out that some children may be adversely affected.
…self-management interventions significantly and positively impacted all challenging behaviors assessed (i.e., on-task behavior, prosocial behaviors, disruptive behaviors, and following directions) and academic outcomes (i.e., achievement and work completion).
The Biden administration has proposed some cuts in Medicare spending…But these savings amount to just $24 billion a year over the next decade: clearly inadequate, considering that Medicare spending is projected to increase an average of nearly $100 billion a year over the same period. What else can be done to rein in those costs?
“Choices about how to generate income are central to the link between wages and crime. Education and training increase skill levels and wage rates. It is expected that these increases will reduce criminal participation. Education leads to employment. Employment provides offenders with responsibility, personal value, independence, dignity, a stake in society, offers income, structure, and routine, an opportunity to increase social networks, and enhance self-esteem and psychological health. Not only does the offender benefit from employment, but the community also profits from the decrease in costs associated with recidivism.” - Gregory Magee
Comparative studies have shown that in most countries an increase of around 40 points in the PIAAC numeracy score leads to a wage increase of between 12% and 15% of the reference wage. (Hanushek et al, 2013). But the wage increase is as high as 28% in the United States. So if the reference wage was $20 an hour, a wage increase of 28% would bring that up to $25.60 an hour, or an additional $224 a week for full-time workers.
And one study found that an increase of around 40 points in the PIAAC literacy score was associated with a 6% increase in hourly wages, on average, across several developed countries, including the United States (Kankaraš et al, 2016).
In previous posts, I focused on the violent crime rates of 20 large cities, ten with Republican mayors and ten with Democratic mayors (here and here). I also looked at clearance rates for violent crimes in 19 of these cities (here), meaning the rate of violent crimes “solved for reporting purposes”, usually by arrest. The pattern I found was clear: the large cities with Republican mayors had lower violent crime rates and higher clearance rates than those with Democrat mayors. Interesting, but a pattern doesn’t establish causality.
“Crime is concentrated in small places, or ‘hot spots,’ that generate half of all criminal events. Hot spots policing focuses police resources and attention on these high crime places…Overall, it is more likely that hot spots policing generates crime control benefits that diffuse into the areas immediately surrounding the targeted locations than displacing crime into nearby locations.” - Hot spots policing of small geographic areas effects on crime
“The ‘No Excuses’ charter school model focuses heavily on high academic expectations, rigid and consistent discipline, extended instructional time, intensive teacher training, and increased parental involvement…No Excuses charter schools, on average, produced larger math and literacy achievement gains for their students than their public school peers—with higher gains for math.” - ‘No Excuses’ charter schools for increasing math and literacy achievement in primary and secondary education
The Campbell Collaboration is a nonprofit organization that promotes evidence-based policymaking through the production of systematic reviews, summaries and syntheses of policy-relevant evidence. Each post in this series includes excerpts from the Campbell Collaboration’s “Plain Language Summaries” in the subject areas of crime & justice, education, and social welfare.
My process is to start with an outcome that varies by the variable of interest and then explore possible causal pathways from the variable to outcome. In these posts, crime rates are the outcome, mayor’s political party is the variable of interest, and the possible causal pathways are policies and their cascading effects. For example, if Republican-led cities were more likely to meet police staffing goals than Democrat-led cities and they also had higher crime clearance rates and higher clearance rates were associated with lower crime rates, then we have a possible causal pathway. This is a gross simplification of course: whatever happens is likely the result of multiple interacting causal pathways. And even that is a gross simplification. I won’t elaborate further. Let’s just say it’s complicated. But complexity never stopped medical progress. Why should it stop progress in governance? Knowledge advances one baby step at a time.
High perceived control tends to soften the blows of outrageous fortune by activating action plans to make things better. Low perceived control sharpens the sting of adversity because it makes us feel helpless and hopeless. Individuals who chronically lack a sense of control tend to become angry and disengaged: there's nothing I can do to make a difference, so why bother?
In prepping for a previous post on social justice, I came across a great meta-analysis on the research and theory of "relative deprivation", which the authors define as "the judgment that one is worse off compared to some standard accompanied by feelings of anger and resentment" (Smith, Pettigrew et al, 2011, p 203). According to this meta-analysis, the experience of relative deprivation can be applied to the self or ingroup and requires…
Grievance involves feelings of deprivation, shame, humiliation, impotent anger, and being the victim of injustice. Grievance demands payback. Deep grievance demands big payback and may not be satisfied until the payback is proportionate to the harm done. Which may take forever.