Is the “defund the police ideology” really responsible for the “murders by non-citizens,” “many dying from fentanyl,” “women being raped,” and “rampant crime across the country”? How much credence should we give to what someone is supposedly “seeing and hearing.”
Let’s begin with the claim that a “defund the police ideology” is causing a wide array of social ills. Calls for shifting money from policing to investing in communities emerged in 2020, in part, as a response to the murder of George Floyd. If there was an uptick in violent crime and fentanyl deaths after 2020, that does not mean that the “defund the police ideology” was the “cause.” The writer may be confusing “cause,” one phenomenon is the result or the occurrence of another phenomenon, with correlation.
A correlation is a statistical method that aims to understand the relationship between two or more variables. It is important to understand that correlation not only does not imply causation, but that the correlation in and of itself can be meaningless.
Say we discover that a decrease in the divorce rate in Minnesota coincides with a decrease in the consumption of margarine. The two may be highly correlated but have absolutely nothing whatsoever to do with one another. This is a meaningless statistic.
Let’s move on to the assertion that there is “rampant crime across the nation.”
There are two primary sources of government crime statistics, the Federal Bureau of Information’s Uniform Crime Report (UCR) and the Bureau of Justice Statistics’ National Crime Victimization Survey (NCVS). The UCR has been collecting data on violent crimes and property crimes reported to law enforcement for over 90 years. The NCVS has been surveying households throughout the United States, asking questions about nonfatal personal crimes (i.e., rape or sexual assault, robbery, aggravated and assault and personal larceny) and property crimes, both those reported and not reported to the police, since 1973.
The most recent results from the National Crime Victimization Survey document a 30-year decline (1993-2022) in overall violent victimization from 79.8 per 100,000 to 23.5 per 100,000. It is true that there has been an uptick in total violent victimization, reported and unreported to the police, from 2021 to 2022, but this uptick is not notably different from the patterns we have seen since the mid-2000s.
Using the UCR Crime Data Explorer Tool, I was quickly able to access National and State crime trend data (1985-2022). In 1985, the rate of homicide offenses by population were 8 per 100,000 in the U.S. and 2.1 per 100,000 in Minnesota. The peak homicide rate in the U.S. was in 1991 at 9.8 per 100,000. The U.S. homicide trend has been mostly downward, with the largest uptick in 2021 at 6.8 per 100,000. Minnesota’s homicide rates have always been lower than the overall U.S. rates, with rates ticking upward in 2020 and 2021 (3.4 and 3.6 per 100,000).
Did this uptick in homicide rates continue an upward trajectory in 2022? The most recent crime statistics released by the FBI indicate a decrease in crime from 2021 to 2022. Overall violent crime across the Nation decreased by 1.7%, with murder and non-negligent manslaughter decreasing by an estimated 6.1%. In Minnesota, the rates increased in 2020 (3.4 per 100,000) and 2021 (3.6 per 100,000), but showed a decrease in 2022 (3.2 per 100,000).
I do not mean to imply that we should not be concerned about an increase in crime. A further disaggregation of the crime data is needed to better understand the nuances of these statistics. However, broad, unfounded accusations are not helpful.
We are asked to believe that it is “non-citizens” “rampantly” committing violent crimes. The reality is we lack basic information about undocumented immigrants and crime. However, the evidence that we do have, does not seem to support this assertion.
To the best of my knowledge, Texas is the only public safety agency that keeps detailed records on crime and immigration status. Texas is second to California on the number of undocumented immigrants. Two independent analyses of Texas Department of Public Safety data each found that undocumented immigrants are less likely to commit a crime than U.S.-born citizens.
The Cato Institute analysis of homicide convictions from 2013 to 2022 determined that undocumented immigrants were 26% less likely than native‐born Americans to be convicted of homicide, and legal immigrants were 61 % less likely. White and colleagues found that relative to undocumented immigrants, U.S.-born citizens are over 2 times more likely to be arrested for violent crimes, 2.5 times more likely to be arrested for drug crimes, and over 4 times more likely to be arrested for property crimes.
Mind you this is in the state of Texas, a state in which the governor and other high ranking public officials make no bones about how they feel about so-called illegals.
Finally, there was an assertion that “many are dying because of fentanyl” with the cause attributed to undocumented immigrants. Yes, since 2009 opioid-related deaths have been continuously rising. Scapegoating undocumented immigrants will not solve the problem.
A report by the Cato Institute found that in 2022, 89% of convicted fentanyl traffickers were U. S. citizens, 99% of the consumers who pay for illicit opioids were U.S. citizens, and 93% of fentanyl seizures occurred at legal crossing points or interior vehicle checkpoints, and not on illegal migration routes.
At most, just 0.009% of the people arrested by Border Patrol for crossing illegally possessed any fentanyl whatsoever
By all means vote your conscience. But please do not make spurious associations and unfounded accusations to justify your actions. The people seeking refuge in our nation, just like those who came before them, are tired, poor and yearning to breathe free.
Nancy M. Fitzsimons is a professor of social work at Minnesota State University. She lives in North Mankato.