Well, maybe it’s justified, since crime does seem to cluster; that is, crime is intensely local. But if you happen to live across a big area, maybe it’s not justified, or so suggests Jeff Asher:
Murder plummeted in the United States in 2023, likely at one of the fastest rates of decline ever recorded. What’s more, every type of Uniform Crime Report Part I crime with the exception of auto theft is likely down a considerable amount this year relative to last year according to newly reported data through September from the FBI.
Americans tend to think that crime is rising, but the evidence we have right now points to sizable declines this year (even if there are always outliers). The quarterly data in particular suggests 2023 featured one of the lowest rates of violent crime in the United States in more than 50 years.
Murder is down 12.7 percent in our YTD murder dashboard as of this writing (December 7th) with a decline in 73 percent of the more than 175 cities with available data. The sample suggests either the largest or one of the largest national declines in murder on record occurred this year (both in terms of percent and absolute decline). [Jeff-alytics]
I know six months ago car-jackings in the Twin Cities, often by teenagers, seemed to be surging, while here in January of 2024 I can’t recall seeing a report in quite a while. Still, “a report” qualifies as anecdotal evidence par excellence, but as much as it’s important to understand that your feelings do not qualify as expert opinion on any quantifiable phenomenon, it’s also important to understand that our irrational, keep you alive part of your brain runs on internalized empiricism, or intuition aka your feelings. Keeping that in mind, it’s good to stay connected to the community through news sources, but, unless those sources include summations with time-series graphs, if you’re feeling panicky about trends, seek out authoritative sources of said graphs.
And then think about them.
For instance, if the per capita graph says a rate is going down, ask yourself if the population covered by the graph is itself growing. If the answer is ‘yes’, then that might explain why there are more incidents being reported even as the per capita drops.
So when I see a report that says murders are dropping, I wonder if that applies to the Twin Cities, and how growing population is interacting with a saturated new station and a dropping rate. I’m too busy or too lazy to seek out the actual data, but at least I know I should do it.
