Is crime up these days? Or is it down? What kind of crime, anyway?
You would be surprised how hard this question is to answer. On a national level, crime statistics take a year to compile so they're always way out of date. To make things worse, the FBI recently changed its crime-reporting process and lots of police departments have just decided not to bother with it. And then, to make things worse still, crime went up and down during the pandemic in ways that are very hard to account for.
What this means, basically, is that I wouldn't take recent crime data very seriously. There's no way to guarantee any kind of accurate comparison between years and it will probably be 2024 or 2025 before things settle down and we once again have numbers we can rely on.¹
But that got me curious. What about fear of crime? There are polls that ask about this, but it occurred to me to wonder what people actually do when they get concerned about rising crime in their neighborhoods. Answer: they think about buying some kind of security equipment. So how has that gone over the past few years?
This is Google Trends data for three different search topics that people might search for if they're afraid of local crime. As you can see, they all have peaks around the holiday season and around Google Prime Days. This is presumably caused by people who either buy or receive this stuff as gifts and are googling to find out how to use it.
However, once I've smoothed out the lines a bit and added trendlines, the conclusion is pretty obvious: on a national level, fear of crime is either flat or going down. There's no sign at all that people are increasingly interested in security equipment. This shows up in the value of home security companies too:
There's nothing very impressive here. If the home security business is booming, you sure can't tell it from the performance of large public companies that specialize in it.
Now, this obviously has limited applicability. I had trouble coming up with generic search terms and I might have missed some large home security companies. But I didn't cherry pick anything here. I just did my best. If you want to suggest other search terms or companies, let me know in comments. Just remember: the object is to come up with things that people might search for if they're afraid of local crime, not just crime reports on cable news.
¹There's local crime data from cities like New York and Los Angeles that's fairly up to date, but you still have to be careful with it. For one thing, it only applies to a single place, but it's also the case that different cities report crime categories differently. If you look at local stats, be very, very careful that you know what you're looking at.
If there was someway to crawl the Nextdoor data you would have a trove of information, all tidily localized. Huge amount of reports of prowler/lurker/hostile intent types of things because calling the police isn't much of an option when you can just ask your neighbors - i.e. someone who actually empathizes.
Yeah, NextDoor is all about scary people! Crazy.
There doesn't seem to be any question that there was a significant upsurge in the national murder rate in 2020 - the fourth year of the I-alone-can-fix-it presidency. It's baffling that Democrats haven't been belting Republicans around the ears with the fact.
It's baffling that Democrats haven't been belting Republicans around the ears with the fact.
Raising the salience of crime as a political issue is probably a bad move for Democrats right now.
How about hammering the Republicans over their efforts to defund the Police.
They want to defund the FBI, the IRS, and the AFT. They have voted against bills providing for Federal grant to local PD's.
The GOP is the pro-crime party.
Try a different measure -- firearms purchases. If I were fearful of crime (I'm not), I'd move or buy firearms, not a home security system.
Not necessarily. Firearms purchases increase whenever the far-right gets excited over a perceived threat of new, restrictive firearms regulations.
People don't buy firearms because they are afraid of crime. They buy firearms because they realize that their in-group is becoming less powerful politically and other groups are becoming more powerful. The only "crime" they are afraid of is that others may be getting what they already have.
Besides fear of crime in your home, there’s also fear of crime on the streets in your local area and security equipment can’t help with that. There was a lot of fear recently regarding flash mob robberies in local stores and malls. If you are afraid of that, or afraid of, say, homeless people/encampments in local parks or under bridges you don’t necessarily look for home security equipment. Perhaps personal self defense equipment?
It seems to me that there are too many variables to determine fear of crime than just looking at home security equipment.
In politics, it not that you are directly seeing more crime, but if you don't vote for me, you will--it will be just like those shoot outs they have in the big cities 24/7.
What this means, basically, is that I wouldn't take most recent crime data seriously.
I feel this way about a lot of the data I've seen over the last 2.5 years, starting (especially) with demographics. I have no doubt US population growth has slowed pretty substantially from an already low (by historical standards) level in the 2010s. But to look at a lot of the post census estimates, it seems like virtually every jurisdiction I've heard of is bleeding residents.
Some of them are shrinking, clearly, but I'm skeptical the data collection is fully accurate. I suspect it'll be another decade before we have dependable numbers again on the country's population numbers (assuming a GOP takeover hasn't utterly obliterated the Census Bureau, which it may well do).
People who are “afraid” of crime change their habits. Most people don’t… even if they think there is more risk. The key word is afraid. That’s a strong reaction. Those folks might buy a weapon or a security system.
Home security systems aren't useful for things like carjackings or mass shootings, which drove a lot of the recent wave of crime fears. Burglaries went down during the pandemic. Most people I know don't think security cameras do much beyond let you see your stuff get stolen. Where I am catalytic converter theft is high, but that almost always happens on the street, where people aren't filming anyway. People are much more likely to buy dashboard cameras because of road rage (sales are up for those) and guns to increase their overall sense of power over crime (sales are also up for those).
I would think that looking at home security revenue would be at least as meaningful as looking at those companies’ stock price.
FBI data give you 65% of the population presently: https://www.motherjones.com/crime-justice/2022/10/fbi-crime-stats-republicans-zeldin-fetterman-ronchetti-homicides-bad-data-midterms/
While combining data sets is likely difficult or worse, if FBI shows up, and then looking at NYC shows up and LA shows up, up nationally would be a reasonable conclusion. Just not by how much. Same for down. If some one was one way, some other then still muddled.
I suspect it is as much a question of how badly one wishes to know. “Testing” in the realm of crime.
It is hard to dispute that perception of crime, and actual risk, are different. Further, tools such as Nextdoor increase local perception of crime.
However, I would contend, it is an error for Democrats to discount concerns over violent crime as some misguided Fox News plot to hurt Democrats. While not at 1990’s levels, violent crime has risen in the last couple of years, in many US cities, and ranks highly as a voter concern.
Gun crime especially.
And that's what the Democrats need to run on--the streets are over flowing with guns and the GOP blocks even the most common sense actions, e.g. background checks, red-flag laws, etc.
golack - guns, in my opinion, are a serious problem. The challenge on that topic is political: Democrats support much stricter gun regulation and Republicans' prefer much less restriction on gun rights. Further, its not a top issue for independents.
You note, that most Democrats in swing districts (remove maybe California) don't much talk about guns....
Without any interest in the political points (has crime gone up or down, has fear of crime gone up or down, who's to blame, etc etc) I'd point out that this methodology has its problems.
On the one hand, it's unclear to me that people buy cameras ONLY for "home security" type purposes. They are now cheap enough and easy enough to install that you just might as well for multiple convenience/fun purposes: see who's at the front door (ie the "primary" goal of Ring), see when packages are delivered, try to catch photos of that squirrel that keeps vandalizing your flowers, etc.
On the other hand, cameras also serve something of a now saturated market. Yes, people will buy occasional replacements and upgrades, but the glory greenfield days are over.
Both of these are interesting business points, but seem unrelated to the crime issue.
Something like sales of sirens might be more indicative, but that's harder to tease out. Likewise something like use of the Neighbors app, but again in different places that is used in very different ways (in my neighborhood it's mostly about animal sightings!)
And the comments above suggest why this is a thankless space to investigate: few people appear to care much about the truth. It's all "those damn Republicans are stoking up fears of crime" right up until "hey, we can stoke up fears of guns to counteract them".
Not much interest in truth here...
What is he saying here?
https://www.rawstory.com/trump-nuclear-bomb-book-planted/
Is such a thing actually in there?
If his every accusation is a confession . . .
Data & truth are irrelevant for the low & no information voters who determine elections in purple districts & states. If someone on TV or at the local bar is saying that crime is up, then crime is up. All it really takes is one sensational or lurid crime that the local news "covers" by making it the top story for a week or two.
"You would be surprised how hard this question is to answer. On a national level, crime statistics take a year to compile so they're always way out of date. To make things worse, the FBI recently changed its crime-reporting process and lots of police departments have just decided not to bother with it. And then, to make things worse still, crime went up and down during the pandemic in ways that are very hard to account for."
Which is why you never hear or read statistics about rural crime rates because if such departments aren't going to provide any such statistics nor feel they have to do so, then what's the point of keeping national statistics that are skewed towards larger communities? There should be a law which states that any community seeking Federal funs or equipment have to report such rates to the FBI's national data base or don't get them. They've been getting away with this for too long.
Murder rates are much lower than decades earlier. Same for other crimes of extreme violence.
For a variety of reasons (lower infractions to misdemeanor , eliminate bail) there has been an upsurge in theft, shoplifting, mugging, etc.
And nowadays they are captured with security cameras and smartphones. Then they are first up on the local news.
People are *seeing* more crime, and that shapes their perception of how things are going. Footage of smash and grab at jewelry stores are dramatic.
As others upthread note, Nextdoor and other platforms spread the word about crimes you normally wouldn't hear about..
You're probably right. But concern over crime isn't any less valid just because we're more aware of it than we used to be.
I'm going to say that is you haven't yet searched for "gun" then you're not finished.
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