What is the first duty of government? Security. International law cites that for a government to be recognized as legitimate, it must effectively control the territory it claims (international security). And for a government to remain legitimate, it must provide security for the citizens it claims to represent (domestic security). So crime (the amount of it, the types of it) is always a political issue.
You would not be wrong if you felt uncertain about the state of crime in America today. Almost sixty percent of Americans say crime is increasing. There are many people, most of them politicians, telling you that the data prove crime is at an all-time low, or crime is rampant, or you’re a racist for even being concerned about it. The first two are right; the last one is entirely up to you. Let’s dig in to the issue to get past the spin and see what’s really happening, because (1) it’s an important issue and (2) it’s a great example of how statistics can be used for good or ill!
There are two sources of crime data for America, both of them in the Department of Justice (under the Attorney General): the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) and the Bureau of Justice Statistics (BJS). The BJS data is compiled by a random survey method of Americans, the FBI uses data reported by over 18,000 American law enforcement elements (everything from State Police to Sheriffs to tribal organizations). Comparing the two, we learn that only about half of all crimes are reported (the BJS data is twice the FBI data!). Both data sets tend to move in the same direction (crime overall and types of crime vary in the same way, that is for example, less murder, even if we don’t know for sure the total number of murders).
What do we know for sure? Only a little. First, while the FBI counts crimes and the BJS has a survey, the fact that almost half of all crimes go unreported means our data can only be used in a general way. The apparent specificity of the FBI data is undermined by several factors. Local authorities do not have to report to the FBI. There are inducements to do so, but no true forcing mechanism. So some do and some don’t. Also, while the FBI has rules for how to report, there is some subjectivity. “The kid who threw a rock through the window of the only black-owned business in town. Was that vandalism or a hate crime, too? Did we have to charge it? What if it qualifies as a felony (by cost) but we charged it as a misdemeanor?” You get the point. On top of this, the FBI recently switched its data system for Uniform Crime Reporting (UCR), so some agencies stopped reporting, then restarted, others joined, some left. None of this is best practices for sound data. The phrase among statisticians is “garbage in, garbage out.”
Still, there is a principle in statistics that if you are sampling data, it is unlikely you’re only getting the outliers. So the data are good enough for general trends. When Presidents say “violent crime is down 35% under my administration,” they are at best fibbing. They might be able to claim it is down (35% is pretty large to be an outlier), but in no way should the data be taken as that specific. What are the basic trends in the data?
No one can mistake the trend lines: rates of property crimes and violent crimes are both way down from thirty years ago. The line zigs and zags, meaning it could go up in a given year, like it did during the pandemic in 2020. And local conditions vary: Chicago had a murder peak for a year or two before things calmed down. Yet overall there are far fewer violent crimes than before.
Yet most Americans believe crime is getting worse. How can that be? Statistically, you are extremely unlikely to be a victim of violent crime, and very unlikely to be a witness of one. You are somewhat unlikely to be a victim of property crime, and you are just unlikely to be a witness of one. Which is to say some crimes are more common, and more of us witness them. When you get to the point of knowing someone who experiences or witnesses such crimes, the probabilities begin to switch from “unlikely” to “likely” because you keep increasing the number of people under consideration.
And then there are “crimes of disorder.” These are the actions like public intoxication/drug use, prostitution, indecency, vandalism, petty theft, shoplifting, aggressive driving, fare-jumping, etc., that are the ones most likely to go unreported. In some cases they may not even be literal crimes anymore. They are also the most frequent “crimes” and the ones you are most likely to witness. And witnessing all those events makes one feel unsafe, regardless of whatever the FBI is telling you. When a disheveled man muttering to himself gets on your subway car, you instantly flashback to stories you heard on the news. Even if nothing happens, it turns your quiet commute listening to music on your earbuds into a tension-filled ride watching for the moment he goes off. When he does, it may or may not be a crime. No crime, but no peace either. And crimes of disorder have gone through the roof (data).
What have we learned about effective crime control policies? For one, they require active policing. The so-called Ferguson effect, named for the spike in violent crime after the riots in Ferguson, Missouri (caused by the police shooting of Micheal Brown, who never put his hands up and never said “don’t shoot”) is real. The effect happened again in the wake of the Black Lives Matter protests/riots: tell police they’re not wanted and not trusted, and they will retreat, which empowers all kinds of criminal activity.
However, active policing doesn’t requite trampling constitutional rights. “Broken windows” policing, the idea that enforcing small rules against vandalism helps prevent a community sliding into a cycle of increasing criminal violence, works. But turning that policy into a massive “stop-and-frisk” exercise simply eliminates any trust between the community and the police. People want a friendly cop on the block, someone with whom they can talk and engage; they don’t want to be stopped and searched every time they leave their house.
Criminals may not be good at delayed gratification, but they aren’t stupid. Tell criminals they won’t be charged for shop-lifting less than $950 at a time (looking at you, California!) and they will demonstrate amazing math abilities when swarming a retailer. Abolish cash bail and criminals will go on a spree, because if the fear of jail doesn’t deter you in the first place, the fear of more jail eventually won’t either. Being in jail without bail does, ‘tho. As San Francisco learned, telling people their feeling of insecurity is all in their heads as they step over a drug-addled body on the street and into a pile of human feces while headed to the CVS where everything is under lock-n-key, is a losing proposition.
So if violent crime is going down, and police know what to do to fight it, why do we feel so insecure? In America, we have been on a libertarian/progressive bender with respect to crime and punishment. Not everywhere, nor all the time, but often enough to show up in regular people’s lives. In the war on drugs, the US has surrendered. We are gradually decriminalizing or legalizing cannabis in various forms, under the argument it’s no worse than alcohol (I will point out here that there are a nearly unlimited number of things which can fit into this category, so the argument is ridiculous, but hey, it has won). Courts previously ruled that homeless people could not be incarcerated for occupying public spaces. Over-policing like the stop-n-frisk effort undermined public confidence in the police and the broken windows theory. Various progressive groups cited arguable data to suggest that arrests and convictions were racially biased, leading to policies like cashless bail, the aforementioned green-light on shoplifting, and elimination of minimum sentencing.
What went wrong? If shoplifting isn’t punished, you will get more of it, like any other crime. If marijuana use is legal, cops aren’t going to police public use unless it’s egregious, and forget about possession with the intent to distribute (which in many cases was still illegal). If the homeless are free to live on the streets, they will (literally) do their business there, too. And if every police stop becomes a potential case of racial bias, cops will retreat from the very communities most at risk. Of course, when automated traffic cameras display the same “racism” noted in live police stops, it undercuts the argument.
My more perceptive progressive friends may point out that some of these same changes in law or enforcement were enacted successfully in Europe. And that’s true, to an extent. Decriminalization (drugs, prostitution) and an emphasis on rehabilitation or redirection to counselling have met with some success initially in Europe. One major difference there is cultural: Portugal’s famous drug decriminalization approach was based on a Portuguese culture which strongly disapproves of drug use. Another is they fund rehab. A third is they enforce what few limits they have. We didn’t. And even a place like Amsterdam which had the longest-running, most successful, libertarian approach to social “crimes” (i.e., drugs use and prostitution) is reconsidering. It is little wonder that wherever such approaches were developed in libertarian or progressive parts of America, they have failed miserably.
So it is absolutely true that violent and property crimes are greatly reduced. It’s also true that most Americans are witnessing a general lawlessness that is not conducive to feeling safe.
I think I would prefer to say that certain localities have redefined what laws they will and will not enforce, and that the prosecutable crimes have undergone severe revision over the past four years.
Also, please note that whistleblowers have accused the FBI crime database of not being updated consistently or accurately lately (during the point at which main stream media was pulling the data just prior to voting day). And that national samples that the FBI was quoting from was based on altering the sampling rather than actual average info.
I like the FBI, but those running it have been cooking the books.