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pheisenberg t1_j858an3 wrote

Reply to comment by W4ffle3 in Family of Oakland baker seeks 'restorative justice' for her death following robbery by IAmNotARobot124

Similarly, most poor teenagers don’t commit crimes, therefore poverty is not a sufficient cause of crime.

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dern_the_hermit t1_j85bfrg wrote

That doesn't track. It's not like a light switch where there's just the two "crime" or "not crime" states. It's a matter of likelihood that someone will commit a crime, not a guarantee.

If the crime rate increases as economic standing decreases, that establishes a link between poverty and crime, there's no need for most of the group to be exhibiting the behavior.

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pheisenberg t1_j88y149 wrote

The point is that there must be many other factors that tend to increase or decrease the likelihood someone will commit a crime, because their wealth is not a very good predictor of crime at all at the individual level.

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dern_the_hermit t1_j8aceti wrote

> The point is that there must be many other factors

Exactly, which is why it's weird to see someone insist that most members of a group must exhibit the relevant behaviors to establish a connection. Crime is a complicated issue and remains opportunistic even when there is greater incentive to commit it, for instance.

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SatanicNotMessianic t1_j85vvnm wrote

That’s not how statistical analysis of correlation works. If chewing tobacco causes oral cancer rates to soar by a factor of ten, it doesn’t matter if only 35% of chewing tobacco users get oral cancer.

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pheisenberg t1_j88xt7w wrote

If your output variable is “#cancer in large population”, yes, an increase in tobacco use rate causes it to go up. I don’t think that’s true of crime, though. Not every recession causes a jump in crimes rates.

But I was talking about the output variable “Does person X commit a crime?” For that, most of the time poverty will not cause crime. There must be many other factors involved such as community relationships, opportunity, values, likelihood of going to prison, etc.

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