Thursday, October 06, 2022
Political Mayhem Thursday: Crime truths
The folks at Pew Research have measured this and describe the odd dynamic this way:
Americans tend to believe crime is up, even when the data shows it is down. In 20 of 24 Gallup surveys conducted since 1993, at least 60% of U.S. adults have said there is more crime nationally than there was the year before, despite the generally downward trend in national violent and property crime rates during most of that period.
One problem with this media-driven delusion is that people live in fear needlessly, prodded on by politicians who critique incumbents of whatever party as ineffective because people think crime is "out of control."
Here in Minneapolis, things are getting better regarding violent crime. The two firmest measures of violent crime are homicides (it's hard to avoid a dead body) and shots fired report in places (like Minneapolis) that have an acoustic "shot-spotter" system. Looking at that, the news is really good: Comparing the last month here with the same time period in 2021, homicides are down over 33% and shots fired are down over 31%, according to the city's crime dashboard. For the year to date compared to the same period last year, homicides are down 18% and shots fired are down about 15%. That's great news. It's also a really dramatic decrease.
But no one is reporting it. I reached out to some people to pitch the idea, but... nothing came of it.
We're really not doing this right.
