What seems more obvious to me is that the more surveillance you do in any area (regardless of whether the lawns are manicured), the more crime you're going to find there. If you put 5 cops patrolling the wealthiest, nicest areas of your city, and 1 cop patrolling a less wealthy less nice area, the 5 cops will find more crime than the 1 cop. Even if you don't assume crime is uniformly distributed (which it probably isn't), it's logical that more surveillance -> more crime found.
I'm not sure there are lot of murders, carjackings, breakins, etc., in wealthier neighborhoods going undetected. Why would wealthier victims be less likely to report crime?
I think there's a lot of quiet classism going on in this thread, and it's easier for these guys to just drive by and hit the downvote button than to actually speak their mind and tell us why they think poor people -> criminals.
The causation more likely goes the other way: When an area gets the reputation of being higher crime (because of reality or because of bias from more police saturation), that area becomes cheaper to live in, and poorer people can then afford to live there.
In Seattle, the bank tellers are behind bulletproof glass. In the surrounding communities, there's no bulletproof glass.
I don't think it's more police presence that causes banks to install the armor. More likely it's the lack of police presence that results in armored banks.
> The causation more likely goes the other way: When an area gets the reputation of being higher crime (because of reality or because of bias from more police saturation), that area becomes cheaper to live in, and poorer people can then afford to live there.
Isn’t that called de-gentrification, or maybe ghetto-ization? However, I think it’s the opposite with property crime (richer neighborhoods attract property crime because their is lots of property to steal).
