There Is No National Crime

Americans are freaking out about crime in the United States. Eight out of ten say it’s a big problem. They rank it before health care and poverty, the everlasting priorities. Solid majorities believe crime is worse today than it was 30 years ago, which despite the record increase in murders in 2020, nowhere near the truth.

This fear of crime has potentially huge implications. Wanting to show that the White House is paying attention, President Joe Biden launched a series of crime-fighting initiatives last month that focus on guns. Republicans have tried to tie Democratic support for police budget cuts to the rise in crime, and police reform efforts in the field and in Congress could all be shaped by public views on crime.

But ask Americans how things are in their own communities, and poll after poll, they show a lot less concern. In a recent USA Today / Ipsos poll, 62 percent of Americans (rightly) believed that crime had gotten worse in the United States, but a majority felt that their own community was no longer dangerous, according to the results is very similar to a Navigator survey. In a Washington Post / ABC News poll, 59 percent saw crime as a serious problem at the national level, but only 17 percent saw it as a serious problem in their own region. This split is not new, but it could widen. In November, Gallup saw the biggest difference ever: 78 percent of Americans said crime was increasing nationwide from year to year, but only 38 percent said it had increased in their area.

Americans are into something. “Violent crime, in particular, is highly concentrated,” Wesley G. Skogan, a political scientist at Northwestern University, wrote to me in an email. “In contrast to Lake Wobegone, almost all quarters are below average.”

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The divergent perceptions of crime at local and national level result in two divergent ways of combating the increase in violence. Politicians may use concerns about national crime to pursue blunt and simplistic responses from the past, including tougher convictions and excessive policing. But the differentiated views of the public suggest that policymakers have the flexibility to develop locally appropriate strategies for crime.

Some crime trends are national: from the 1970s to the 1990s, crime increased nationwide, followed by a significant decline. At its peak, in 1991, there were nearly 10 murders per 100,000 people. By 2014, that number had dropped to 4.4 per 100,000. In 2020, murders soared in most American cities, leading to the largest increase in the murder rate in history, at an estimated 6.6 per 100,000. Understanding general trends is important, but most crime-fighting efforts take place at the local level and the federal government plays a minor role. Or as Skogan put it, “What the hell is ‘crime in the nation’?”

Opinion polls have long shown that Americans overestimate crime in the country, as John Gramlich of the Pew Research Center wrote. Despite a historic decline in crime rates, the majority of surveys indicated that crime is increasing. Much of the blame for this misperception is likely to lie with the press. The media tends to follow the maxim “If it bleeds, it leads” – violence tends to deserve coverage. Criminologists say this is especially true of television journalism.

“Citizens can only rely on the mass media for information about the national crime picture, and that information is often alarmist, sensationalist, and decontextualized,” wrote Mark Warr, a sociologist who has studied crime perception in an email. “That is why national crime often looks much worse than it is.” But while Americans are concerned about national crime rates, they see the situation in their home community as largely stable. Scientists believe citizens are aware enough to tell what is really going on around them, despite the particularly criminal coverage on the local news.

Politicians like to appeal to misjudgments about crime at the national level. During his 2016 campaign, Donald Trump warned of street slaughter during a period of remarkable calm and expected it to resonate with voters. Older, white Americans are the least likely to be victims of crime and are also the most likely to believe they are at risk. The belief that crime is far more common and dangerous than it is can manifest itself in calls for “hard crime policies,” many of which are not proven to be effective in reducing crime, but have major drawbacks, including racially diverse enforcement and Lots of people.

The misperception is “enormously momentous,” said Gary LaFree, chair of the criminology and criminal justice department at the University of Maryland. “The political implications are considerable. Ever since Barry Goldwater began to arm crime as a national issue, this has been part of the national discussion at the political level. “

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But now violent crime is really on the rise across the country, even if the increase is not as dramatic as many think: 57 percent of those polled in the USA Today / Ipsos poll believe the current situation is worse than it was 30 years ago is definitely not that Case. In addition, some categories of crime have not grown. The rates for many crimes, such as home break-ins, even fell in 2020, probably as a result of the pandemic.

The impulse to worry about the picture nationwide is understandable. “Violence is important to people. You don’t have to be very close to worry, ”said Lisa L. Miller, political scientist at Rutgers University. “Violence is a first-order political problem. If the state is supposed to do one thing, it is to protect us from internal and external threats. “

Still, it probably makes more sense to think about the crime in your own area than to think about national crime rates. This is not just because a national crime rate is a fuzzy metric that captures all types of crime and aggregates different vectors in different communities into one big trend. In addition, the United States has ruled that crime is a local matter monitored by approximately 18,000 different law enforcement agencies across the country, rather than a national force as in some other countries. Biden has few levers to influence crime as law enforcement is not primarily a federal matter.

Fear drives bad politics, especially excessive fear. In the case of crime, it pushes for harsh sentences and increased incarceration, although evidence that these tactics deter crime is limited. When you’re scared of crime but not around you, it is much easier to support drastic action. The recent deaths of George Floyd, Breonna Taylor and others are a reminder of the need for improved policing in many parts of the country. So far, surveys offer some reasons for cautious optimism. Majorities tend to be in favor of more resources for the police, but also recognize the need for more comprehensive and unpunished strategies. Targeted crime solutions that require local knowledge work better than anything the federal or state governments can do.