Why aren't Americans willing to believe good news about crime?

What's happening

The best data we have available shows that violent crime in the United States has declined significantly over the past couple of years. But ask the average American and they’ll confidently tell you that it’s actually going up.

According to the FBI’s preliminary analysis, crimes like murder, rape and assault fell in 2023 at what could prove to be a record pace, erasing a pandemic-era spike in violent crimes and bringing the national rates near the lowest levels ever recorded. The rate of property crimes like burglary and theft has also declined.

In survey after survey, though, Americans consistently say they believe crime is increasing. In a poll taken late last year, 77% of people said crime is getting worse, and two-thirds said crime is an extremely or very serious problem. The last time Americans were so pessimistic about crime was in the early 1990s, when the violent crime rate was more than double what it is today.

This gap between perception and reality has real-world impacts. The campaign to enact police and criminal justice reform gained major momentum in the wake of the nationwide protest movement following George Floyd’s murder in 2020. But it has largely stalled — and in some cases been rolled back — as members of both parties have returned to promoting “tough on crime” policies.

Republicans have also worked to make crime a central issue in the upcoming election, often in connection with immigration based on the false claim that migrants are fueling a national crime wave. They also frequently mischaracterize crime rates in major Democratic-run cities. Former President Donald Trump, reacting to his own criminal convictions, has claimed that crime is “rampant” in New York even though it ranks among the safest cities in the country. Polls suggest that, despite this misleading message, voters trust the GOP to deal with crime much more than Democrats.

Why there's debate

Part of the disconnect appears to come down to human nature. We tend to put more weight on negative events, whether we experience them personally or simply hear about them, much more than times when everything goes well. Gallup has been polling on perceptions of crime for 25 years, and almost every year a majority of people say it’s going up, even though the actual crime rate has been cut by more than half over that same period.

Experts say there are also plenty of cultural forces that feed our predispositions on crime. Watching the news or using social media, which frequently focuses on out-of-context acts of individual violence, can make crime seem much more prominent than it really is. That’s especially true of conservative media outlets that have a vested interest in promoting the narrative that crime is on the rise.

Politics plays a major role as well. Republicans have been promoting the idea that crime is out of control, especially in blue cities like New York and Chicago, to attack their liberal rivals and draw favor for their “tough on crime” policies for decades. For the most part, though, Democrats have struggled to land on a cohesive narrative to counter these attacks that highlights the progress that has been made without seeming to be dismissive of voters’ concerns.

But some conservative analysts argue that the data is simply wrong and crime has not in fact fallen as much as the numbers would suggest. While the FBI’s figures are the closest thing we have to national crime rates stats, they are far from perfect. They don’t include data from every law enforcement agency in the country and only account for crimes that were in fact reported to police.

Critics say it’s possible that what has really declined is the share of crimes that get reported, either because people distrust the police more recently or because some departments have had their resources cut, not the true crime rate itself. As evidence for this claim, they point to data showing that the share of people who say they’ve been the victim of a crime — whether it was reported or not — did rise in 2022 after falling during the peak of the pandemic.

Perspectives

Good news doesn’t get any attention

“The old adage is that if it bleeds, it leads: Lurid stories attract press coverage. More positive stories, such as the absence of crimes, are less likely to receive attention.” — David A. Graham, The Atlantic

The GOP wants the public to think crime is rampant, and Democrats aren’t eager to counter that message

“Politically, for [Republicans], it would have been helpful if the statistics had been just the opposite. If homicides had gone up, it would have been a useful tool for bashing Democrats in order to take some of the heat off Trump. Democrats, on the other hand, could use the positive stats to bolster policies fostered by the current administration, but they’re being fairly quiet about them because they really want to keep the spotlight on the abortion issue and Trump’s trial.” — EJ Montini, Arizona Republic

Crime hasn't actually gone down; it has just been reported less

“Americans aren’t mistaken. News reports fail to take into account that many victims aren’t reporting crimes to the police, especially since the pandemic.” — John R. Lott Jr., Wall Street Journal

Social media turns rare incidents into viral moments

“The spread of social media and video technology has made it infinitely easier to film and publicize a viral crime incident such as a large-scale shoplifting spree. There are millions of property crimes occurring each year, but these outlier incidents become the glue people rely on when guesstimating whether crime is up or down. My neighbors never post on NextDoor how many thousands of packages they successfully receive, only video of the one that randomly got swiped.” — Jeff Asher, crime data analyst, via Substack

Conservative media is committed to pushing a false vision of crime

“Even with crime dropping, Fox is still talking about crime as though it’s on the rise. This is often done by cherry-picking, finding a city or a statistic where crime has gone up and then focusing on it. Often, though, it’s simply presented as a given, which its audience — given what it sees on the news — will assume to be the case.” — Philip Bump, Washington Post

Bad data obscures what's really happening with crime in the U.S.

“I wouldn’t say the FBI is cooking the books, but that the data they are putting out is half-baked. … So it’s not a conspiracy but a rush job, and it’s giving people a false picture. They infer something is true, and then because it’s politically expedient they don’t bother correcting it.” — Sean Kennedy, executive director of the Coalition for Law, Order and Security, to Real Clear Investigations

The chaos of the past few years has left people feeling unsettled and wary of the world around them

“The bottom line is that concern about crime is often a proxy for broader fears about social disorder. Public safety is about more than just the number of robberies and assaults that occur in a given year; it is also about whether people feel safe when they leave their homes. And those vibes have been way off during the past four years.” — Ethan Corey, The Appeal