“Minors contribute to the overall crime problem, but not in a way that would justify the overwhelming punitive policy response,” said Jeffrey Butts, research professor and director of the Research and Evaluation Center at the John Jay College of Criminal Justice. “Is it misleading to concentrate our attention on one subset of the population?”
“A community might show higher rates of reported robberies because residents are more likely to trust the police and more likely to report crimes when they occur. Unreported crimes don’t show up in police statistics, but that’s not a public safety indicator,” he added.
While the Council on Criminal Justice’s findings paint an encouraging picture for the country, the director of the Research and Evaluation Center at John Jay College in New York cautioned against reading too much into them. “You can learn something by looking at city-specific trends, but don’t rush to broad conclusions based on an incomplete sample,” Jeffrey Butts said.
By the end of 2022, the theft of items valued at less than $1,000 had increased 53 percent since 2019 at major commercial locations, according to a new analysis of police data by researchers at the John Jay College of Criminal Justice.
Crime is a “complicated social phenomenon” with many causes, said Jeffrey Butts, director of the Research and Evaluation Center at John Jay College of Criminal Justice in New York City. “Easy answers are popular, but they are never accurate,” he said.
“The things that cause crime to go up and down are largely societal, structural,” said Jeffrey Butts, a professor at John Jay College of Criminal Justice. “It’s about employment, poverty rates, drug abuse, types of drug being abused, neighborhood conditions.”
