NY Times story on crime upsurge in Egypt

My sense is that THIS ARTICLE is slightly exaggerated, but not horribly exaggerated.

Egypt pre-revolution was almost shockingly safe given the levels of poverty in certain segments of society. Authoritarian police states are horrible, but why pretend that they don’t cut down on the crime rate? Of course they do. So, it’s only natural that getting some free speech (which is dramatically better in Egypt now) and reduced police presence/power would make the crime rate tick up a bit. At present my sense is that the levels aren’t such that they should make anyone nostalgic for the government that was in place before.

But I think it’s important to be completely honest and say: “Yes, the crime rate is higher, but it’s worth it, and we’ll try to get crime back down in the future.”

Instead of this, I often encounter two tendencies that feel to me like wishful bending of the truth.

1. The claim that lingering remnants of the old regime are still the ones committing the crimes in order to make us all feel nostalgic and demand the regime back. That was definitely true in February, but I think it’s pretty late now to claim that this is still happening. (A counter-case could be made, I’m sure, but I’m not buying it this late in the game without evidence rather than wishful speculation.)

2. The claim that crime was already just as bad before the Revolution but that the news of it was simply suppressed. This strikes me again as nothing but wishful thinking. If you drag all suspects in from the street and threaten and abuse them and detain them without trial for indefinite periods of time, then of course you’ll drive the crime rate down (but at what cost?). You wouldn’t do it otherwise. I don’t think the police state was the only reason for low crime in Egypt, but I think it was one of the major ones. We could drive down the American crime rate to very low levels too– if we wanted a government like Singapore’s. And I don’t.