Fordham Law Professor John Pfaff was quoted by Mic on FBI Director James Comey’s statements on the “viral video effect” driving crime rate increases.
John Pfaff, a criminal justice scholar at Fordham University School of Law, characterized Comey’s remarks as “fear-mongering.” He took to Twitter to argue that increases in crime rates must be placed in historical context to have meaning, and there isn’t enough data yet to declare a broader trend of increasing murder rates — let alone posit grand theories about their origins.
Pfaff noted the local base rate of crime is crucial to acknowledge when evaluating the implications of a significant percentage increase in the crime rate: “More of than not, an unexpectedly big percent change is saying more about how small the initial point is, not how big the jump is.” For example, Dallas’ murder rate leapt by 17% from 2014 to 2015. But 2014 marked a historic low in the murder rate for the city, and even with the dramatic surge, 2015 ranked as the city’s fourth-lowest murder rate since 1930. Furthermore, big annual spikes don’t always portend a longer trend — Pfaff said the last time the United States saw these kind of percentage jumps, it was at the beginning of the 1990s — right before a historic decadeslong decline in crime.