I've written a lot about crime over the past month or so. Here's a summary of the most important bits. First, crime has gone down steadily over the past decade. Property crime continued to go down in 2021 while violent crime remained stable.
In 2022, the largest cities in the US almost all reported lower murder rates and only smallish increases in violent crime. New York City is the sole outlier, and its numbers are iffy.
If there's nevertheless a genuine fear of rising crime, it should show up in concrete actions taken by consumers. But it doesn't. Google searches for home security devices have gone steadily down over the past few years.
Perception of rising crime is highly partisan and very recent. It started among Republicans in 2021, after Joe Biden was inaugurated.
Taking all parties together, overall perceptions of crime have been down consistently over the past decade. This changed only in 2022, when news media reports and Republican campaign ads began to insist that crime was out of control this year even though every indicator suggests that property crime is down and violent crime is up only slightly.
The Gallup poll results are easily explained. Fox News cynically began running sensationalized reports on violent crime beginning in 2021, and then almost instantly pulled back after the midterm elections of 2022 were over.
Bottom line:
- Property crime is down over the past decade and has continued to fall this year.
- Violent crime is also down over the past decade and is up only slightly this year.
- Perceptions of crime were consistently modest during this time.
- Perceptions changed only after Joe Biden took office. This was thanks to deliberate manipulation of crime coverage from Fox News.
First Kevin asserts:
But then he concludes:
Stable and down aren’t synonymous so which is it? Including the data labels for 2012 in the first chart would help there.
So yes, I succumbed to interpreting the second sentence as including the first…
Also 2021 =/= ‘this year’ …
Mr. Drum, I know this won't happen but could you please get a gig writing opinion pieces for the WaPo? Please. The wagged dog national media is guaranteed to be laughingly manipulated by rightist propagandists; it's a reflexive reaction that Fox and Republicans (the cunning ones, anyways) know exactly how to trigger and control. This kind of post is precisely the antidote that changes the entire dynamic. Clear, lucid, simple but not simplistic, with an emotional pull - calling out the liars. Tell your agent to get on the ball.
+1 - but The Post is too deep in RW fabulists & their OP-eds to inject such straightforward & meaningful facts to counter it.
Look, you have to consider both sides. Every time facts are published, they need to publish Republican counter-points.
There. was a fairly large increase in homicides per capita between 2019 and 2020, with not much change between 2020 and 2021. The spike in homicides at the beginning of the Covid pandemic is one factor in the perceived increase in crime. https://www.macrotrends.net/countries/USA/united-states/murder-homicide-rate#:~:text=U.S.%20murder%2Fhomicide%20rate%20for,a%201.32%25%20decline%20from%202016.
And in a related development, numbers of people carrying handguns almost doubled between 2015 and 2019: https://ajph.aphapublications.org/doi/10.2105/AJPH.2022.307094
beat me to it....
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2022/nov/25/how-many-americans-carry-guns-daily
Homicides are only a small percentage of violent crimes--but it gets more headlines. Also, most gun deaths are suicides--guns are generally dangerous to have around.
Quite a few large cities saw record or near record murders in 2020 and 2021 (my city broke records in both years). There was also a spike in carjackings in several cities at around the same time. Both of those trends have moderated, but they do increase the feeling that there is more crime within a community. Since smaller towns and cities often get their news from nearby big-city newspapers and television news programs, the sense of rising crime can spread beyond the geographic borders of where the crime is actually happening.
It does take time for people to notice the trends, so it's not odd that a reduction in murders will take at least a year (or more) to become part of accepted knowledge.
And, of course, news coverage does make a difference. Most violent crime doesn't get reported. There aren't big news reports every time there is a rape or bar fight. But murders and carjackings definitely do get covered.
So, is what Fox News does considered a crime? I suspect so, if this weren't this country.
I take that back. FN is only providing a service that it's funded to do - all on the up and up.
It would probably be more useful to track the coverage of crime in the non-right-wing media. Not necessarily the "elite" media like the NY Times, but things like TV broadcast network news, non-Fox cable, local papers, etc. where swing voters are likely to get their news.
Sinclair anyone?
The multi million $ MAGA crime wave ad campaign was successful in NY because of close proximity of the suburbs to NYC, and that there still is an increase in violent crime in the city. It brought down a few congressional democrats (including my representative), and brought Zeldin (a Trump loving, election denying, forced birther asshole) closer to the governor's mansion than what have seemed possible.
So, why did Fox News stop hyping crime news after the election? Why not just keep it up?
They were expecting the Republicans to take over???
Or....they need to convince that things are going downhill when the election happens. You do that by ramping up coverage of crime. There's probably an upper limit to the number of crime stories before if hurts advertising.
For the same reasons they will start again in the summer of 2024.
Becuase thy want people going to election feeling that crime is going up, so they reduce the cover after election, so they can increase in in the runup to the election.
That make sense. It's funny they'd make it so obvious. Maybe they didn't think people would notice.
As "perceived violent crime" was a major campaign meme for all Republican candidates, we eagerly awaited their plans for stopping it. It turns out that "INVESTIGATE HUNTER BIDEN!!" was the extent of the plan.
That's Hunter 'Snowball' Biden to you, sir.
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It is tempting but too easy to say that Americans believe things that are not true because of FOX, or Sinclair, or right-wing radio. They believe things that are not true because they are stupid, bigoted, and eager to embrace stories that confirm their beliefs about the world.
My cousin could truly receive money in their spare time on their laptop. their best friend had been doing this 4 only about 12 months and by now cleared the debt. in their mini mansion and bought a great Car.
That is what we do.. https://earningblue.blogspot.com/
I think this kind of misses the point. It isn’t just that crime is up a lot… it’s that the criminals are benefiting from lax enforcement and blacks are out of control.
https://www.americanprogress.org/article/gun-violence-disproportionately-and-overwhelmingly-hurts-communities-of-color/
Even the liberals say so!
“The lack of investment in communities of color, coupled with weak gun laws, has resulted in devastatingly high rates of gun violence for Black and brown people.”
“Gun violence is a major problem in the United States as well as the key driver of the rise in violent crime across the nation. Notably, gun violence has a disproportionate impact on racial and ethnic minorities and is highly concentrated in a relatively small number of neighborhoods that have historically been underresourced and racially segregated. This is due to a combination of weak gun laws; systemic racial inequities, including unequal access to safe housing and adequate educational and employment opportunities; and a history of disinvestment in public infrastructure and services in the communities of color most affected by gun violence.”
So… that’s the political gotcha from republicans. Blacks are violent and kill each other at a high and increasing rate in 2020-2022. They make urban life miserable for everyone around them. Democrats have no real solution to this problem because they have demonized the police.
Fox News might have changed their coverage, but so what? Local news is still all over it. And this still happens all the time.
“A Texas man armed with a gun burst into his ex-wife’s home during Thanksgiving dinner and opened fire, killing her and another man and injuring two others, police said.”
More frequently or less? Who cares? Americans are well armed violent freaks.
Case in point.
PARK FOREST, Ill. — A 2-year-old boy is in critical condition after being shot in Park Forest Friday.
Does it matter if this happens more now than it did last year?
I'm not sure home security devices are a good indicator of violent crime fears-- burglar alarms and the like are more about property crime. When most people think "violent crime" they think of muggers, rapists or murderers ready to attack on a dark street.
This overlooks the huge, crippling increase in crime in progressive cities like Portland and Seattle. Progressive DAs are overseeing an enormous rise in crime, better to address the ruinous effect this has on communities than to play the Republicans Pounce framing.