Rising Crime Rates Correlate with Transparency?

Crime is down since 2004, but violent crime is up in a few larger cities in the US according to

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the 2015 FBI reports released this month. We came across this chart in The Economist comparing the crime rate crime rate per 1000 people in 2004-2005 to 2014-2015 in a few of the most populated cities across the US. Of the cities listed, only one largely populated city has a lower crime rate than the national crime rate - Honolulu had a crime rate of 2.4 while the National crime rate came in at 3.5.

We like to claim we can determine the quality of a police department depending on how the department makes crime data available. Since we only have anecdotal evidence to speak on this it’s simply an assumption. However, when we looked at the graph, we immediately noticed a correlation between transparency with crime data and the crime rates. 

The White House Police Data Initiative and the open data movement have really caught on the past couple of years and it has been a little bit easier to approach agencies about open crime data, but it’s still not an easy task. Especially when agencies like Columbia, SC, who claim to be participating in the PDI, blatantly ignore FOIA requests from SpotCrime. Columbia wasn’t listed on The Economist’s graph (not a high enough population), but there are other police agencies we know as not very transparent with crime data whose crime rates did rise. 

Low Transparency, Increase in crime rate

Indianapolis, Oklahoma City, and Las Vegas all three have low transparency with crime data and an increasing crime rate. 

All three cities have consistently tried to block sites like SpotCrime from accessing public data. These agencies try to control who can and can’t access the information or give a vendor preferential access to public crime data. 

Detroit, San Jose, and El Paso had low transparency and an increase in crime in 2015, but all three of these cities showed improvements in transparency this year - 2016. We hope that this quality of policing translates into a decrease in crime rates in these cities once 2016 stats are released. 

High Transparency, Decrease in Crime

Dallas, Fort Worth, Los Angeles, New York, Philadelphia are all moderately transparent with public crime data. They have all seen a decrease in crime. These are just a few cities who measure up to this assumption.

High Transparency, Increase in Crime

Unfortunately there are anomalies to the pattern we are seeing. Specifically, Louisville, Chicago, DC. These three cities have been mostly open with crime data. In fact, at one point in Louisville there were about seven different entities mapping crime in Louisville from a public crime data feed. 

These cities are proof that correlation does not equal causation. Our hope is that crime data will remain open in these cities even if they continue to see a rise in crime rates.

Other cities of note
Baltimore has released a ton of data since the death of Freddie Gray and the resulting DOJ investigation including use of force, arrests, CAD, and RMS. They are much more transparent this year in 2016 compared to previous years.

San Francisco property crime is on the rise most likely due to their booming population. However, we did notice that in 2016 their data feed moved from weekly to every 2 weeks - a step backwards in transparency. Boo. 

We always hate it when we see a police agency dial back their technology and transparency - particularly when the access to technology and reductions in costs are exponential. How does any entity reduce the rate of communication in this environment. It does not make sense. 

We are not going to make predictions on the correlation we're pointing out. For one, we know it's not very scientific. But secondly, and most importantly, we hope that all agencies move toward more transparency and openness with crime data no matter their crime rate.