The Topline: The nexus between climate change and traffic deaths
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Welcome to The Topline, a weekly roundup of the big numbers driving the Minnesota news cycle, as well as the smaller ones that you might have missed. This week: traffic deaths are up; church attendance numbers are squishy; Minnesota jails are full of legally innocent people; recidivism rates are down; and youth sports participation is high.
Traffic deaths are up 61% in the first quarter of 2024
MPR News reports on preliminary data from the Department of Public Safety showing deaths on state roadways were up 61% from January through April 10 this year. So far authorities are mostly attributing the spike, which could end up reversing several years of declining mortality, to unseasonably warm weather this winter.
There’s an interesting nexus between climate change and public safety here. Americans drive more during the warm months and less in the cold ones, and more driving means more fatal collisions. Some of that warm weather driving increase is simply a function of seasonal factors like the academic calendar and summer vacations. But research also shows that warm weather, alone, drives increases in vehicle miles and in fatalities.
A warming climate likely means busier, deadlier roads, in other words. And it looks like we’re getting a preview of that this year.
Americans go to church less frequently than they claim
Surveys show that about 22% of American adults say they attend church weekly or more. However, geolocation data from more than 2 million smartphones suggests that just 5% are actually going to church that often, according to a new working paper from a University of Chicago economist.
On the other hand, the smartphone data showed 73% of Americans attended a church service at least once in the year-long study period, much larger than the 46% rate surveys show.
It’s not easy to reconcile these differences. Part of it is due to the inherent flaws in the representativeness of both public opinion surveys and smartphone data. But not all of it can be written off as a methodology problem.
The smartphone data suggest that between 76% and 79% of Minnesotans attend church services at least yearly, a rate higher than the national average.
The latest data on Minnesota’s prison population
The Prison Policy Initiative recently updated its 50-state data on jail and prison populations in the U.S. One bracing statistic: there are currently about 5,900 people sitting in local Minnesota jails, and roughly two-thirds of those haven’t yet been convicted of any crime. This typically happens when a criminal suspect is too poor to post bail. Those pre-trial detainees are legally innocent, and some are eventually released without being convicted.
As recently as the late 1990s, Minnesota jails held more convicted prisoners than pre-trial ones, but that changed starting in the 2000s. Now pre-trial inmates outnumber convicted ones in local jails by roughly two-to-one.
Minnesota also has an additional 8,000 state prison inmates, 1,900 federal prisoners, and close to 90,000 people on probation or parole.
Recidivism rates trend downward
On the other hand, a federally funded study from the Council on State Governments Justice Center shows that reincarceration rates fell in nearly every state following the passage of 2008’s Second Chance Act, which gives grants to state agencies to help keep prisoners from reoffending after they’re released.
Minnesota’s recidivism rate fell from 26% to 19%, and we now have the fifth-lowest rate in the nation. Recidivism is costly: the study estimates that states will collectively spend about $8 billion to reincarcerate people released from prison in 2022. Substance abuse, mental health problems, homelessness and economic difficulties are among the main predictors of recidivism.
Minnesota a leader in youth sports participation
Nearly two-thirds of Minnesota kids participate in youth sports, according to the latest National Survey of Children’s Health data compiled by USA Facts. That’s the tenth-highest rate in the nation, and the map shows an interesting geographic split with northern states participating in youth sports at significantly higher rates than southern ones.
The dividing line is roughly at the 36th parallel, which was the line used to divide slave and free states in the Missouri Compromise. You see similar divides along the same line today in a lot of economic, social and public health indicators, including income, literacy rates and health insurance.
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