Internet Scofflaw

The New York Times makes an interesting claim about crime in Arizona:

It is a connection that those who support stronger enforcement of immigration laws and tighter borders often make: rising crime at the border necessitates tougher enforcement.

But the rate of violent crime at the border, and indeed across Arizona, has been declining, according to the Federal Bureau of Investigation, as has illegal immigration, according to the Border Patrol. While thousands have been killed in Mexico’s drug wars, raising anxiety that the violence will spread to the United States, F.B.I. statistics show that Arizona is relatively safe.

That Mr. Krentz’s death nevertheless churned the emotionally charged immigration debate points to a fundamental truth: perception often trumps reality, sometimes affecting laws and society in the process.

Judith Gans, who studies immigration at the Udall Center for Studies in Public Policy at the University of Arizona, said that what social psychologists call self-serving perception bias seemed to be at play. Both sides in the immigration debate accept information that confirms their biases, she said, and discard, ignore or rationalize information that does not.

(Emphasis mine.)

The Times’s expert phrases her hypothesis is in a neutral way: both sides are suffering from perception bias. But the article as a whole argues that it’s really the anti- side that is suffering from it, putting undue emphasis on anecdotal evidence. (That’s rather hypocritical, since current journalistic practice is always to lead with an anecdote where possible, but never mind.)

In support of its argument, the Times makes two claims: (1) violent crime is dropping at the border, and (2) violent crime is dropping statewide. The first claim is relevant to its argument, while the second is not. But they go on to provide data only for the second claim, and none at all for the first. A quick google search finds numerous articles making the same faulty argument.

So where should we look for crime data along the border? The FBI statistics don’t report such figures, so we’re forced to look for a proxy. The AP looked at one proxy: the crime rate in three Arizona border towns (Yuma, Nogales, and Douglas). They found that the crime rate in those three towns has been flat.

Tom Maguire looked at another proxy: the statistics for areas outside Metropolitan Statistical Areas. The only metropolitan area near the Arizona-Mexico border is Yuma, so rural crime rates in Arizona give some indication of the situation along the border. When he found was striking. While the rate of violent crime per capita in Arizona metropolitan areas dropped 20% from 2000 to 2008 (which doubtless accounts for the statewide drop), the rate in non-metropolitan areas went up a staggering 45%. The rate in cities outside of metropolitan areas went up a similar 39%.

So it seems that rural Arizonans, at last, have good reason to be concerned about rising crime. Now, this doesn’t prove that illegal immigration is at fault. Indeed, I think that the drug war can be blamed for a lot of it. But it certainly does show that the New York Times is guilty of the same perception bias that it decries in opponents of illegal immigration.

POSTSCRIPT: For any non-regular visitors, let me reiterate that I’m generally for immigration from Mexico. Unfortunately, today’s welfare state is incompatible with unrestricted immigration. I would rather scrap the former and allow the latter. But one way or the other, it’s certainly clear that the current arrangement — wherein we largely cut off legal immigration but permit nearly unrestricted illegal immigration — is untenable and tends not to select for the immigrants we want.

This entry was posted on Monday, June 21st, 2010 at 11:25 am and is filed under Media Failure. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.