The Phoenix’s excellent David Bernstein lays it all out. According to statistics released by the US Department of Justice: over the last six years, the numbers of reported rapes and murders in Massachusetts have stayed roughly constant. But the arrest rate — that is, the number of accused murderers and rapists taken off the streets — has plummeted under the Romney/Healey administration. That means more criminals running free. Terrific.
Crime data released last month by the US Department of Justice (DOJ), along with previous years reports, shows that arrest rates for violent crime in Massachusetts have plummeted during the Mitt RomneyKerry Healey administration. Most notably, the arrest rate for rapes has been barely half what it had been before Romney and Healey took office in January 2003….
A Boston Phoenix analysis of the DOJ data shows that the arrest rate for rapes was 26 percent just under the national average in the three years before Romney took office, but just 14 percent since then. During the three years under Romney and Healey, 758 arrests were made for rape in the state, compared with 1361 in the previous three years. Thats 600 fewer rapists arrested. The total number of reported rapes in Massachusetts, meanwhile, remained the same, even as the national figure dropped by 10 percent.
Why is this happening? The most obvious explanation is probably the right one.
The DOJ data shows that 16,286 police officers were working in the state as of last October, up slightly from 2004 but still 400 fewer than the 2001 high.
It follows that if you have less police, you will have less arrests, [Criminal Justice Policy Coalition director Brandyn] Keating says.
Springfield, which has been under severe budget limitations, had 106 fewer police officers in 2005 than in 2002, according to the DOJ report. The Boston area has also been hit hard, losing 68 officers in Boston, 20 in Somerville, 15 in Medford, and 10 in Lynn.
Anyway, regardless of the reason, there’s no doubt it’s happening. The actual numbers are horrendous. When you compare the three completed Romney/Healey years (2003-2005) to the three years that preceded them (2000-2002), you see that the rates of murder and robbery per 100,000 population have increased slightly; rape has stayed exactly the same; and aggravated assault has declined slightly. But the arrest rates for each of those crimes have been cut nearly in half.
Arrest rate for violent crimes in Massachusetts. Data for 2003-2005 shown first. Data for 2000-2002 in (parens)
Murder: 26% (48%)
Rape: 14% (26%)
Robbery: 11% (23%)
Aggravated assault: 29% (48%)
(Source: compiled by the Boston Phoenix from US Department of Justice data.)
And in case you were wondering whether there’s been some huge drop-off in the number of reported crimes during Romney/Healey that might account for this: nope.
Crime rates in Massachusetts (per 100,000 population) Data for 2003-2005 shown first. Data for 2000-2002 in (parens)
Murder: 2.6 (2.3)
Rape: 28 (28)
Robbery: 120 (102)
Aggravated assault: 312 (350)
(Source: compiled by the Boston Phoenix from US Department of Justice data.)
Personally, I’d think the crime issue is better addressed by talking about the murderers and rapists that remain on the streets, rather than two that are still in prison. But maybe that’s just me.
Individual municipalities! NOT the state!
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We do not HAVE a minimum number of police or fire per 100 residents for a town – in fact, out my way, our fire departments are all call.
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IMHO, if you aren’t getting 92% of your town’s budget from local aid, then you ake these decisions a lot better.
Because they want fewer cops? Obviously not. Because they don’t have the money to pay them. From the article: “The drop in arrests may be attributable, in part, to state budget cuts to aid for cities and towns, which have led municipalities to lay off police officers, suggests Brandyn Keating, executive director of the Criminal Justice Policy Coalition in Boston.”
http://www.leftinlow…
No, it’s simple mathematics.
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If your community gets 10% of its budget from local aid, and there is a 20% reduction, that means your budget goes down 2%.
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If your community gets 70% of its budget from local aid, and there is a 20% reduction, that means your budget goes down 14%.
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And then the next year, when local aid is frozen, the first town gets 90% x 2.5% = 2.25% increases in revenue, while the second community gets 30% x 2.5% = 0.75% increase in revenue.
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Now play that out over several years. Who comes out ahead?
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You can’t compare the situations. The math is different for every community.
And those of us who are chronically passed over -and that’s the bulk of the rural part of the state – are not as excited as the cities who were on the short list.
I doubt that anyone in any of the “passed over” communities would volunteer to spend even a week living in one of the “short list” communities.
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I just don’t think that you can make a case that a town with a very high wealth should have to pay a smaller percentage of that income in property taxes than a town with very low wealth. When I look at the average single family tax bill compared to the 1999 per-capita income (an older, flawed metric, I admit), there are some interesting points.
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I know you live on the Cape. The average bill for Cape towns are as follows, followed by percentage of per-capita income:
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Yarmouth: $2,245 (10%)
Dennis: $1,807 (7%)
Eastham: $2,292 (9%)
Truro: $3,335 (15%)
Brewster: $2,716 (11%)
Sandwich: $3,861 (14%)
Chatham: $3,007 (11%)
Harwich: $2,877 (12%)
Mashpee: $3,119 (12%)
Provincetown: $4.072 (16%)
Wellfleet: $2,734 (11%)
Orleans: $3,253 (11%)
Falmouth: $2,739 (10%)
Bourne: $2,946 (13%)
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Data is not available for Barnstable since they implement the primary residence exemption (I’m surprised more Cape towns don’t do this).
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Now let’s look at some of the poorer cities:
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Lawrence: $1,942 (15%)
Springfield: $2,230 (15%)
Fall River: $1,681 (10%)
New Bedford: $2,346 (15%)
Holyoke: $2,396 (15%)
Worcester: $2,879 (15%)
Lowell: $2,634 (15%)
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With the exception of Fall River, large cities are paying in the area of 15% of their per-capita income in property taxes. With the exception of Provincetown, no Cape town is paying higher than that. It’s fairly regressive, in fact.
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No Cape town, with the possible exception of Barnstable, faces anywhere near the problems that the larger, poorer cities are facing. There are a number of towns that pay higher percentages (excepting Amherst, which pays 29% but whose data is probably skewed by students) — the highest being Lincoln (no tears there) at 21%, the majority of the towns paying over 15% are wealthy like Weston, Carlisle, Sherborn, Sudbury, Wellesley, and Concord.
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The poorest of that group are Lynn, Greenfield, Revere, Sunderland, Middleborough, and Carver. But with the exception of Greenfield, those towns don’t have the same need to spend money. They don’t have crime problems. They don’t have large numbers of students who are failing in school. They don’t have a lot of rental property in need of code enforcement. They don’t have homeless populations.
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Let me be Eric Kriss for a minute — do those towns have revenue problems, or spending problems?
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I also do not think that per-capita income accurately represents the wealth of communities with high numbers of retired people. For example, the per-capita income of Edgartown is $25,740. The per-capita income of Lawrence is $13,360, The per-capita income of Winchester is $50,414. Is Edgartown more like Winchester or Lawrence?
What, if WBZ doesn’t have a TV truck there, then it didn’t happen?
OK, I’ll give you that “no crime” isn’t precise. But do you ever, ever, ever feel unsafe walking down the street in any part of your town in broad daylight?
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There are places in Springfield that I wouldn’t even drive through.
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Are there any neighborhoods that you wouldn’t feel comfortable living in?
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There are places in Springfield that you couldn’t pay me to live in.
Look beneath the veneer of the tourist area.
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When is the last time you CAME here?
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The Barnstable Town Councillors are trying to stop random shootings on Fresh Holes road.
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A 23 year old shot up the Eastham police station last night.
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And on and on.
Not because they wanted to. But because State Aid to local cities and towns was cut by hundreds of millions of dollars, and even though local communities raised their property taxes by an average of $700 or $800 per household there was still not enough to retain all the Police Officers or Firefighters, or many other employees.
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And the state still hasn’t returned aid to 5 year old levels. That’s what should be done with the money Healey wants to use to pander to voters in her fiscal shell game.
Explain why we should go back to subsidizing your local decisions, like paying the Cambridge City councillors, and two staff, over $950,000 for a part time job.
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Blank check local aid to the favored few just enables their mismanagement.
In case you didn’t notice, crime fighting is done locally. And the funds which the State has to spend is made available by taxpayers, taxpayers who live in communities.
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If you wish to think that the State bureaucracy can better spend that money that individual communities I’ll begin to suspect you of being a Liberal in disguise.
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Local aid is hardly just to the favored few. It does tend to favor the disadvantaged communities, but then perhaps you don’t care about them.
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Talk of gravy trains might pass for intelligent commentary on Howie Carr, but local communities do a very good job of spending their money wisely.
You know perfectly well I was referring to the Local Aid gravy train. And I concur that local communities know their own priorities, which is why Deval’s pledge to reduce property tax is so goofy – how the heck does he know what we want or need? Other than a lower tax rate, thank you. He can start with income tax, which IS in his purported purview.
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And it has always interested me how the definition of ‘disadvantaged’ communities so nicely dovetails with the areas represented by Democrats in leadership.
Of course I knew you meant local aid. After all, I’m the one who noted that cuts in it have forced local communities to cut Police and other services.
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Local aid is not a gravy train, but a return to local communities of the taxes they pay. If you’d like to support state laws permitting such communtities the right to raise funds in some fashion other than property taxes, let me know. Until then, the state needs to pony up more money for cities and towns.
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Deval’s policy doesn’t depend on knowing what Orleans wants, except that he knows Orleans could use some help paying for it.
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Reducing the income tax rather than returning state aid to proper levels merely shifts the burden. Until state aid, and the rainy day fund, have been restored to proper levels the income tax is a gimmick.
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As for the disadvantaged “dovetailing” with Democrats, that shouldn’t be too hard for you to figure out. It might be a matter of caring.
We need a commercial that flatly lays out these statistics. No scary voice-over, no mug shots — just the facts stated, well, matter-of-factly.
has a distressing habit of not picking up stories first reported in the Phoenix. See: Church sex abuse scandal.
Nice post and link.
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Arrest rate way down, almost halved. Staffing levels down 3% from all-time high.
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A reasonable conclusion would be that staffing levels are not the primary engine of arrest rate.
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In the past on BMG, we’ve discussed what to do.
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I don’t know that Gov. Patrick will be able to do much here. The key actors are mayors, police chiefs, and DAs in the high-crime cities.
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MittWit (I like that one) did offer extra state cops to Mumbles at peak of murder cycle; Mumbles declined.
Arrest rate way down, almost halved. Staffing levels down 3% from all-time high.
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A reasonable conclusion would be that staffing levels are not the primary engine of arrest rate.
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I don’t think law enforcement officials would find that reasonable.
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You need to be careful of averages and look at what happened in key crime areas. In the first two years of the Romney administration 185 Police positions were cut in Boston alone [Boston Municipal Research Bureau].
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Of course an additional harm created by fewer Police on the streets is the lessening in crime prevention a high profile presence results in.
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By the way, during those same two years Boston cut 85 Firefighter positions, and over 700 teachers from the public schools.
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I agree with your larger point that it’s useful to look at the personnel levels in the high-crime cities, rather than statewide averages.
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So: Boston police department headcount is down 185 since 2002, out of 3000 folks. That’s 6% cut in staffing, not 3%. It still doesn’t explain huge spikes in crime.
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The post that I linked to makes the point that head count is neither the main cause or the main solution.
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Also, SPENDING on cops went way up even in that period where head count when down.
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BTW, to your BTW, since BPS lost 700 positions, yet student achievement rose significantly to the point where BPS just won a national prize for “Best Urban District”, is your view that schools are better off with fewer teachers? 🙂
Actually the sworn officers count was down over 10% during a slightly longer period. And this cut doesn’t have to account for the “average” increase in crime statistics. It would obviously apply to Boston’s situation.
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Whether a 6% or 10% cut in personnel could have an effect on crime statistics obviously depends on more than one factor. But these cuts are not insignificant, and the statistics mentioned had to do with “solving” crimes, did it not. Crime solving takes time, and fewer bodies has an effect.
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Spending for cops, as for all types of employees,went up because people get raises.
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As for Boston school teachers, I’m sure you’re not claiming that fewer teachers, and thereby larger classes, are an aid to learning. The effects are necessarily immediate.
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I would note, however, that the most recent MCAS results showed some first time setbacks for the Boston Public schools at the Elementary level, the grades most in need of smaller classrooms.
Of course, none of this is as compellling as a fire in a three decker in Dorchseter. It’s invisible to Boston media, ergo, it isn’t happening.
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Hear about the person who chopped off his kids heads ahd hid them in a duffle bag? That was us.
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Like all city folk, you use the oldest income and census figrues to back up your claims of neediness. Hell, our SCHOOL CENSUS reimbursement figures was from 1989 until 2003!