The Ferguson Effect is B.S.—Why do Smart People™ buy it?

Crime trends contradict each other. They tell disparate stories when the numbers are broken down by geography. They’re counterintuitive. They vary by how much police departments fudge numbers. The FBI UCR database is the most dependable tracker of crime, yet this year, the FBI admitted that changes in reporting methods excluded nearly half of police departments around the country.

On top of all that journalists can’t do math so statistical analyses in the media are suspect.

This does not stop everyone from drawing concrete conclusions that fit their preexisting notions. Conservatives vociferously blame the defund movement, bail reform, reform DAs, and BLM protests for a spike in homicides, even as many other crimes fell. Meanwhile, I am sure—sure!—that the spike in murders, and drop in other crime during the pandemic, were due to the … pandemic.

Hear me out: It’s easier to murder someone when you know where they are 24/7 (home). Homicides, like suicides, tend to be a combination of planning and momentary urges. If you want to murder Paul from down the street, and one morning you really want to kill that fucker, but he’s at work, maybe by the time he gets home, the urge has dissipated. At the same time, other crime dropped. This also makes sense: if you want to steal steal Paul’s Xbox, you’re less likely to do break into his house if you know he’s home because he might kick your ass.

Conservatives have little doubt about the so-called Ferguson Effect: the idea that protests for racial justice following the murder of George Floyd so dispirited cops they stopped doing their jobs, leading to a spike in murders.

The theory also has traction among Official Smart Pundits™—those guys driven solely—solely!—by Facts™ while the rest of us grubby ideologues push our agendas. It’s a favored explanation of German Lopez.

Yesterday, another Vox alumni Matt Yglesias referenced the Ferguson Effect on Twitter: