Arkady
President
Conservatives occasionally bring up the uptick in crime in Chicago as an indictment against Obama. But lost in that is the fact that the murder rate has actually trended down, nationally, on Obama's watch, pretty substantially. In 2008, we had 5.4 murders per 100k. By 2012 (the last year that's been officially reported), that was down to 4.7. That's about a 13% decrease in murder in four years.
But (I hear you say), we can't thank Obama for that, since the murder rate had already been falling consistently before he took office. Actually, no. In the Bush years, there was no substantial improvement. The murder rate started at 5.5, rose to 5.7, fell to 5.5, rose to 5.7 again, then fell to 5.4. After eight years, it was a scant tenth of a point better than it had started, and the average rate on his watch was higher than what he'd inherited. It's true that before Bush there'd been a dramatic seven-year-long run of improvement under Clinton (from 9.5 to 5.5), but before that the rate was up and down from year-to-year, with no clear trend of improvement the way we had in the Clinton and Obama years.
So, what's the explanation for that? Why was there a dramatic drop in the murder rate on Clinton's watch and a very decent one on Obama's watch? Some of the bigger sociological explanations (involving regulations that controlled lead pollution, and the impact Roe v. Wade had) are interesting, but they don't explain the island of failure, during the GW Bush years, between those two periods of success.
The success of the Obama years is all the more intriguing when you consider that it's despite economic troubles, which most people would instinctively expect to cause crime troubles. In fact, when the dramatic decline in murder that we saw in the Clinton years gave way to the up-and-down cycle of the Bush years, some people explained it by way of the fact that the Bush years didn't have going for them the huge economic prosperity gains that we had under Clinton. But then how does one account for how well things have been going under Obama, despite the economic challenges?
But (I hear you say), we can't thank Obama for that, since the murder rate had already been falling consistently before he took office. Actually, no. In the Bush years, there was no substantial improvement. The murder rate started at 5.5, rose to 5.7, fell to 5.5, rose to 5.7 again, then fell to 5.4. After eight years, it was a scant tenth of a point better than it had started, and the average rate on his watch was higher than what he'd inherited. It's true that before Bush there'd been a dramatic seven-year-long run of improvement under Clinton (from 9.5 to 5.5), but before that the rate was up and down from year-to-year, with no clear trend of improvement the way we had in the Clinton and Obama years.
So, what's the explanation for that? Why was there a dramatic drop in the murder rate on Clinton's watch and a very decent one on Obama's watch? Some of the bigger sociological explanations (involving regulations that controlled lead pollution, and the impact Roe v. Wade had) are interesting, but they don't explain the island of failure, during the GW Bush years, between those two periods of success.
The success of the Obama years is all the more intriguing when you consider that it's despite economic troubles, which most people would instinctively expect to cause crime troubles. In fact, when the dramatic decline in murder that we saw in the Clinton years gave way to the up-and-down cycle of the Bush years, some people explained it by way of the fact that the Bush years didn't have going for them the huge economic prosperity gains that we had under Clinton. But then how does one account for how well things have been going under Obama, despite the economic challenges?
