The Crime rates in the USA and the Crime rates perception

[Claudius Gothicus]

Now, I'm a big GALLUP fan... I like their wide amount of analysis on economic, political and social issues. I also hold them as a rather respectable polling institution.

And lately while surfing their home page I came across this:

http://www.gallup.com/poll/150464/Am...Worsening.aspx

From a 43% rate of individuals perceiving crime as worsening in the very early 00's you guys went to a 68% rate ten years later. So, if we follow the ''fear index'' we might end up considering that the USA is becoming more and more dangerous to live in, but then we come to see the actual violent crime rates as indexed by the US Justice department.

Spoiler Alert, click show to read: 

Also If you take a look at this article's graphs you might notice how Criminal Victimization has been on a steady decline as well(except for '06 where there was peaking of victimization).

Which as many in here already now have been on a steady decline since the crack-epidemics ended or were more or less ''controlled''.

What's going on then? Does this has something to do with the press fear mongering and the construction of a fear based society? Does the USA have a geographically located crime problem like in Detroit or LA or some other gang-heavy city?

And what about petty crime? maybe it has risen during the last few years and that's what's causing the difference between crime rates and crime perception?(since the Index shows violent and not petty crime).

This are way too many questions for me to answers so I would like some Americans to actually explain this, and if willing to bring some charts, expectations or corrections forward. All posts are welcome

[bushbush]

Media and politics. From one of the top criminal law scholar in the world, Paul H. Robinson's article published in NYU Law Review:

http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.c...act_id=1470905 (look at Part III)

Basically, the media tends to exaggerate both the frequency and severity of crimes by selectively reporting details for the case for headline effects. Politicians, too, wishing to appear "tough on crime", will follow along with the rhetoric and pass tougher laws to appear that they are responding to the "rising crime".

In reality, what ends up happening is that in American criminal justice system, there are a number of rules and sentencing schemes that are totally against what most people would say to be fair (see Robinson's study), such as three strike, felony murder, adult trial for underage offenders, long sentence for drug offenses, etc. However, because of the way media reports cases in such selective manner, the public often have the perception that the crime is rampant and sentencing is too light; the politicians wanting to take advantage of this politically will lead on and pass tougher laws to appease the public. In reality, when the public is presented with a more complete picture, they believe many of the crime-fighting rules today are injustice.

[Claudius Gothicus]

Would you as a Law acquaintance argue that the Criminal Justice System in the USA is getting more and more prone to heavily punish smaller and smaller offenses?

So the whole ''media and politics business'' is actually damaging the Judiciary System by making it dysfunctional and over-reactive. However ever since the Three Strike System was enacted, in California at least, crime rates did drop(considering that in '92 the area was heavily involved in large amounts of criminality).

By simply not allowing the population to know the extent of crime decline the Judiciary System is being forced(by the political system) to destroy the function of crime punishment, to maintain and reassure the confidence of the population in a safe community. Idiots

[bushbush]

Would you as a Law acquaintance argue that the Criminal Justice System in the USA is getting more and more prone to heavily punish smaller and smaller offenses?

yes, that's Paul Robinson's argument at least. He is saying that the actual punishments dished out by US criminal justice system is far more than what average Americans would like. He used empirical research to show that (see that article).

Also this one, Intuition of Justice, http://lsr.nellco.org/cgi/viewconten...text=upenn_wps

Abstract
Recent social science research suggests that many if not most judgements about criminal liability and punishment for serious wrongdoing are intuitional rather than reasoned. Further, such intuitions of justice are nuanced and widely shared, even though they concern matters that seem quite complex and subjective. While people may debate the source of these intuitions, it seems clear that, whatever their source, it must be one that is insulated from the influence of much of human experience because, if it were not, one would see differences in intuitions reflecting the vast differences in human existence across demographics and societies.
This article explores the serious implications of this reality for criminal law and criminal policy. For example, it may be unrealistic to expect the government to "reeducate" people away from their unhealthy interest in punishing serious wrongdoing, as is urged by some reformer, for it seems unlikely that the shared intuition that serious wrongdoing should be punished can be changed through social engineering, at least not through methods short of coercive indoctrination that liberal democracies would find unacceptable. Second, a criminal justice system that adopts rules that predictably and regularly fail to do justice or that regularly do injustice, will inevitably be widely seen as failing in a mission thought important by the community, even foundational, unless the system's unjust operation can be hidden, something that would be hard to do without breaching notions of press freedom and government transparency to which liberal democracies aspire. Finally, an understanding of the nature of people's intuitions of justice can provide more effective strategies for changing them. For example, it appears that legal and social reformers would do better not to fight people's shared intuitions of justice but rather to harness them in service of their reform programs.

So the whole ''media and politics business'' is actually damaging the Judiciary System by making it dysfunctional and over-reactive. However ever since the Three Strike System was enacted, in California at least, crime rates did drop(considering that in '92 the area was heavily involved in large amounts of criminality).

That is the case. In fact, Robinson argues that by making the criminal system most "unjust" in people's eyes, these rules actually make crime worse because people will think the system has less credibility. Robinson's study shows that people are less likely to obey the law when they don't find the legal system to be morally credible. So what happens at the end is that the media distortion and crime politics, while proclaiming to be fighting the "rising" crimes, actually weaken the crime control capability of the justice system.

By simply not allowing the population to know the extent of crime decline the Judiciary System is being forced(by the political system) to destroy the function of crime punishment, to maintain and reassure the confidence of the population in a safe community. Idiots

Exactly. Read this article:

http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.c...ract_id=184735

"Why Does The Criminal Law Care What The Lay Persons Thinks Is Just? Coercive Versus Normative Crime Control"

Abstract
THE criminal law codification movement of the 1960s and 70s was guided by instrumentalist principles designed to reduce crime, rather than by retributivist notions of giving offenders deserved punishment. The Model Penal Code, which served as a model for nearly all of the period's code reforms, was explicit on the point: The Code's "dominant theme is the prevention of offenses" and its "major goal is to forbid and prevent conduct that threatens substantial harm." Yet, as Part I of this Article will show, even from such a staunchly instrumentalist code came a criminal law that defers to laypersons' shared intuitions of justice on issues touching essentially all criminal cases. Why should this be so? Lay intuitions of justice hardly produce a distribution of criminal liability that maximizes the traditional crime control mechanisms of deterrence, incapacitation, and rehabilitation. In fact, as Part I will make clear, reliance upon lay intuitions of justice commonly undermines the operation of these mechanisms. Why, then, should modern American code drafters follow an unspoken principle of heeding lay intuitions of justice?
One explanation might be that the drafters have an unexposed retributivist streak. Perhaps they have retained the natural impulse of most laypersons to think of criminal liability in terms of desert. If this were the case, the drafters' focus on instrumentalist arguments in explaining and justifying their code provisions would seem less than forthright.
There is, however, another explanation, in which the drafters' concern for lay intuitions of justice is justified by an instrumentalist rather than retributivist rationale: The drafters may have believed that effective crime control requires a criminal code that is seen as adhering to the community's shared perceptions of just desert. While the Model Penal Code drafters offer no defense of this position--indeed, the principle itself is unarticulated by the drafters, even as they seem to follow it--Parts III and IV will offer arguments in its support. In those parts, I will argue that the perception of a criminal code as doing justice is necessary for the code's moral credibility, which in turn is necessary for the effective crime control that the drafters seek. It is necessary because the extent of criminal law's moral authority determines the extent of its ability to shape community norms and to influence people's conduct through normative forces.

[Condottiere 40K]

Since it's a psychological state, it's politicians creating chimera to get elected, and then actually funding state organs to make an illusion reality. Heavily reinforced by the news and creative media capitalizing on sensationalism to ensure ratings.

That doesn't mean that violent crime doesn't exist, in some areas more prevalent than others, but watching TV makes you believe you couldn't walk to your neighbourhood 711 without getting mugged.

[bushbush]

Since it's a psychological state, it's politicians creating chimera to get elected, and then actually funding state organs to make an illusion reality. Heavily reinforced by the news and creative media capitalizing on sensationalism to ensure ratings.

That doesn't mean that violent crime doesn't exist, in some areas more prevalent than others, but watching TV makes you believe you couldn't walk to your neighbourhood 711 without getting mugged.

The even worse thing is that watching tv long enough with the selective reporting on details of the cases make people think the sentencing in general is lenient or the criminals are not punished enough (people tend to change their minds when they actually read the case records and see how much punishments are dished out). The result is creating rules such as felony murder, three strike, more and more aggressive prosecution of underage offenders as adults, heavy penalty of drug offenses, etc, all of which are actually against the intuition of justice of laypersons in America. This is the most negative implication of the distorted presentation of crimes to the general public.

[Prosaic Visitant]

Here in Australia, it's the same thing; poll after poll shows that there is a perception that crime is rising, while the Aus' Bureau of Statistics shows that crime is on an overall downward trend.

Thanks a lot, commercial media, hysteria, our paranoid national and institutionalized obsession with safety and politicians constantly campaigning to 'be tough on crime'.

yes, I blame these things among other minor things for the skewed perception. I wouldn't be surprised if this scenario was present in other countries as well.

The even worse thing is that watching tv long enough with the selective reporting on details of the cases make people think the sentencing in general is lenient or the criminals are not punished enough (people tend to change their minds when they actually read the case records and see how much punishments are dished out)

Indeed, one psychology study here revealed such a thing; giving people crimes to 'judge' and what it found was that the more a person knew about a crime and the perpetrator, the less draconian their judgement would be (barring a few hard noses).

[Claudius Gothicus]

So the problem is more or less something along the lines of...

• -Individuals perceive high criminality because there's high criminality.
• -Media portrays and accelerates the process of perceiving high criminality.
• -Politicians promise to be ''tough on crime'' as to win voter's trust.
• -''Zero'' or little tolerance legislation is enacted to deal with the high criminality rates and perception.
• -Even though the crime rates descend politicians continue to push for a ''tough on crime'' stance and rely on the media to portray or put forward their stance on it by ''making a representation of a social decay'', a ''social decay'' that's actually being reverted.
• -Individuals continue to perceive high criminality even though the criminality rates have dropped.
• -The media portrays and accelerates the process of perceiving high criminality.
• -Politicians promise to be even ''tougher on crime'' as to win or maintain the voter's trust.

Does this vicious cycle even end at some point and how can things be stabilized in regards to perception and actual crimes?

[Diamat]

I wonder if there is more than just an inverse correlation between actual crime rates and crime rate perceptions. Perhaps these perceptions, spread by the media, somehow help keep crime rates low. So perhaps it is a good thing that the media sensationalizes crimes. This would make an interesting study.

[Claudius Gothicus]

I wonder if there is more than just an inverse correlation between actual crime rates and crime rate perceptions. Perhaps these perceptions, spread by the media, somehow help keep crime rates low. So perhaps it is a good thing that the media sensationalizes crimes. This would make an interesting study.

There's not an structurally inverse relationship between criminal rates and criminality perception rates... for example during the late 80's and early 90's america was experiencing a wave of high violent crime rates and the media did portray it on a sensationalist way, therefore communities perceived the criminality. There might be however a ''momentary'' relationship.

The inverse relationship is between ''social tolerance'' and ''crime social perceptiveness'', the more a community perceives crime the less tolerant it gets. The problem with Mass Media and the Political System is that it deattaches social perception of crime from actual criminality, therefore it screws with the functionality of a Judiciary System by excessively punishing individuals and at the same time making communities believe that those individuals are not being punished enough.

It's like a vicious pit of self-punishment

[Diamat]

The inverse relationship is between ''social tolerance'' and ''crime social perceptiveness'', the more a community perceives crime the less tolerant it gets. The problem with Mass Media and the Political System is that it deattaches social perception of crime from actual criminality, therefore it screws with the functionality of a Judiciary System by excessively punishing individuals and at the same time making communities believe that those individuals are not being punished enough.

It's like a vicious pit of self-punishment

Is there any chance, though, that such exaggeration and harshness might result in lower crime rates?

[Prosaic Visitant]

So the problem is more or less something along the lines of...

• -Individuals perceive high criminality because there's high criminality.
• -Media portrays and accelerates the process of perceiving high criminality.
• -Politicians promise to be ''tough on crime'' as to win voter's trust.
• -''Zero'' or little tolerance legislation is enacted to deal with the high criminality rates and perception.
• -Even though the crime rates descend politicians continue to push for a ''tough on crime'' stance and rely on the media to portray or put forward their stance on it by ''making a representation of a social decay'', a ''social decay'' that's actually being reverted.
• -Individuals continue to perceive high criminality even though the criminality rates have dropped.
• -The media portrays and accelerates the process of perceiving high criminality.
• -Politicians promise to be even ''tougher on crime'' as to win or maintain the voter's trust.

Does this vicious cycle even end at some point and how can things be stabilized in regards to perception and actual crimes?

Pretty much, yes.

[Condottiere 40K]

Since it's our job to elect these clowns, it's our responsibility to make clear to them that we don't fall for cheap emotional sleight of hand.

[Watchman]

Did anyone yet mention the massively bloated private-sector incarceration industry and why it's a stunningly stupid idea right on the face of it...?

[Border Patrol]

The prison system is beyond saving for one. Claudius nailed the heart of it though, we have policies in place in just about every country on this planet that observes each person as a criminal that has yet to be convicted. Just look at the various city police forces.

[Count of Montesano]

What's going on then? Does this has something to do with the press fear mongering and the construction of a fear based society? Does the USA have a geographically located crime problem like in Detroit or LA or some other gang-heavy city?

And what about petty crime? maybe it has risen during the last few years and that's what's causing the difference between crime rates and crime perception?(since the Index shows violent and not petty crime).

This are way too many questions for me to answers so I would like some Americans to actually explain this, and if willing to bring some charts, expectations or corrections forward. All posts are welcome

To answer your questions:

1. Does the USA have a geographically located crime problem like in Detroit or LA or some other gang-heavy city?

Yes, crime may be down overall but certain cities have seen a spike. The Rust Belt (formerly prosperous automaking centers like Detroit and Flint, Michigan) are now some of the most dangerous places to live in the US, and for that matter probably among all industrialized nations.

Here's the latest list of top 10 worst American cities for crimes: http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/43158398.../#.TroUG9RFagw

2. And what about petty crime?

Once again, that's very location specific but I'm sure it has gone up in many places. I live in the Seattle area, which is considered one of the safest metropolitan areas in the U.S. That being said, burglaries and car thefts are a HUGE problem.

3. Does this has something to do with the press fear mongering?

I'm a former reporter who's worked at both small town newspapers and big papers like the Seattle Times. Contrary to popular belief, the press for the most part does not have some Dr Evil agenda to keep people "afraid." What has changed more than anything is the Internet and the 24-hour news cycle. Horrible crime stories that would once only be talked about locally for a few days can now get national or international coverage for weeks. People can also get detailed reports about all the crimes happening in their neighborhood, the locations of nearby sex offenders, etc. In other words, it's the sheer amount of information that's frightening, even if individually the average American is pretty safe.

[xcorps]

I'm a former reporter who's worked at both small town newspapers and big papers like the Seattle Times. Contrary to popular belief, the press for the most part does not have some Dr Evil agenda to keep people "afraid." What has changed more than anything is the Internet and the 24-hour news cycle. Horrible crime stories that would once only be talked about locally for a few days can now get national or international coverage for weeks. People can also get detailed reports about all the crimes happening in their neighborhood, the locations of nearby sex offenders, etc. In other words, it's the sheer amount of information that's frightening, even if individually the average American is pretty safe.

But you would be willing to admit that the press does have an agenda, and that agenda is to make money? Right?

And they make that money from advertising, and the adverting pays based on reader/viewership?

And that certain types of news reporting in general increase viewership? One of those types of reporting being demogoguery?

What story would be more likely to grab a front page headline in any newpaper in the world:
A story with sex, murder, drugs, and animal abuse, or a story about how often local charity sets up fund raising drives?

[Count of Montesano]

But you would be willing to admit that the press does have an agenda, and that agenda is to make money? Right?

And they make that money from advertising, and the adverting pays based on reader/viewership?

And that certain types of news reporting in general increase viewership? One of those types of reporting being demogoguery?

What story would be more likely to grab a front page headline in any newpaper in the world:
A story with sex, murder, drugs, and animal abuse, or a story about how often local charity sets up fund raising drives?

I never said that the media isn't out to make money. I only wanted to point out that - in my experience - there isn't some secret cabal ordering reporters to go cover certain things for the Bilderburgs or to help start the glorious Communist revolution for Overlord Obama.

It's also not the fault of the media if the public chooses to read/watch the latest story featuring sex, murder and animal abuse. Local papers and news stations feature heartwarming stories about charities all the time. Guess what? They aren't as popular. My wife still works as a web editor in the media, and traffic for strange sex-related crimes are always get the highest web traffic, followed quickly by murder and sports.

[Claudius Gothicus]

I never said that the media isn't out to make money. I only wanted to point out that - in my experience - there isn't some secret cabal ordering reporters to go cover certain things for the Bilderburgs or to help start the glorious Communist revolution for Overlord Obama.

I disagree, there's a reason why Fox News answers to a large sector of the GOP while the New York Times has been repeatedly identified with Modern Liberals in the USA.

Newspapers have ideologies, and that's cool because every institution(private one's lets not get the government in it) or individual or group of individuals has a right to see the world in a way that fits them. That's why freedom of the press exists.

It's also not the fault of the media if the public chooses to read/watch the latest story featuring sex, murder and animal abuse.

Media outlets have consumer markets, just like any other product or industry all sectors(to different extents of course) of society will systematically buy and reaffirm their world view through media outlets.

If a group believes that social decay can be equaled with murder, violent crime and be blamed to ''Liberals'' then the media outlet that recognizes said group as a potential or actual consumer of their products has to systematically feed them that, liberals screwing with society.

If another group believes that ''social decay'' is created by race inequality, gender issues and other stuff, and the motivation behind all of those evils is within the mindset of ''the conservative agenda'' then the media outlets that answer to said market have to systematically feed em with cases of ''the Conservative agenda'' screwing with society.

[conon394]

2. And what about petty crime?

Once again, that's very location specific but I'm sure it has gone up in many places. I live in the Seattle area, which is considered one of the safest metropolitan areas in the U.S. That being said, burglaries and car thefts are a HUGE problem.

I don't think so - that is par for the course in a big urban area. Violent crime is unusually high in many specific US areas. I seriously doubt in property/petty (Lets say Burglary, Larceny and Auto theft) in Seattle is atypical compared to any US or European city - per 1000. You could always move to Colfax...

OP - I think the issues most generally just that people are really bad at measuring risk in logical fashion. Thus you get zelots who won't vaccinate thier kids or probably don't appreciate that driving there car is far more likely to kill than in America than flying or Islamic terrorists ( I guess we need a long war on the auto industry).