I just witnessed a really amazing seminar by Randolph Roth entitled "American Homicide." He has tried to put together homicide data for the United States over the last couple hundred years from newspaper reports and coroner reports. From this he makes claims that murder rates were basically flat from 1914 to 1933 and that prohibition had no impact on murder rates. I really wish that I could post a copy of the figure that Roth presented. The fact that murder rates seem to have risen in individual states after they adopted prohibition doesn't seem to matter, that murder rates fell dramatically as soon as prohibition ended to the month in 1933 doesn't matter. The more amazing thing is how he got his data together. When someone asked him about the subjectiveness of determining what is murder, Roth responded that it is extremely subjective: "Tell me what murder rate you want and I can get you that murder rate." In most fields you want to have some separation between those who put the data together and those who use it. Ideally it is best if those who put the data together have no idea what the data is going to be used for. But Roth who seems to have extremely strong political views has not ensured a separation in data gathering and use. Such separations are expected in most empirical work that I am familiar with. No actual bias necessarily occurs and even unconscious effects might be avoided, but the data has more credibility with others if precautions are taken. For example, those gathering the data should not even know what it is going to be used for.
It was also interesting that he had no desire to try to reconcile the data that he gets with state level and other patterns, such as those just discussed with prohibition.
I would have liked to have seen him use newspaper reports from today to construct the homicide rates that we see. Could he use newspaper reports to accurately construct the changes in crime rates? I doubt it.
I have also rarely seen an academic seminar where someone crops the ends of his figure (e.g., cutting off the crime data in 1992) to exaggerate the differences that he is trying to claim exist.
UPDATE: Here are number for the period that Roth claims that murder rates were essentially flat. Note that individual states were adopting prohibition rules over this period. Bureau of Justice Statistics, DOJ I don't disagree with the claim made that murder rates fell dramatically after prohibition ended (though his claim that it was just due to FDR wasn't explained.
1900 - 1.2
1901 - 1.2
1902 - 1.2
1903 - 1.1
1904 - 1.3
1905 - 2.1
1906 - 3.9
1907 - 4.9
1908 - 4.8
1909 - 4.2
1910 - 4.6
1911 - 5.5
1912 - 5.4
1913 - 6.1
1914 - 6.2
1915 - 5.9
1916 - 6.3
1917 - 6.9
1918 - 6.5
1919 - 7.2
1920 - 6.8
1921 - 8.1
. . .
1933 - 9.7 (last year of prohibition
Randolph Roth, Ohio State University History Professor, Seminar "American Homicide"
4/
5
Oleh
abudzar
