When you look at the statistical data, crime has been on a downward trend for quite some time.
Despite that fact, people have historically believed that crime is worse now than it was before--year after year despite the downward trend.
This is (TLDR version) an artifact of the media culture that we have--accounting for political messaging as part of that media culture.
Violent crime is currently up, but is still lower than it was in the 90s. This is attributable to several factors most of which have more to do with the psychology and culture of the time (the political and cultural extremism) than with law enforcement action.
Property crime continues to go down.
The reality is that crime is not an actual issue--it is in most cases an issue of perception vice reality. Your stance on crime vis-a-vis politics isn't about crime but about (political) identity, for the most part.
There is crime, and there is violent crime. And within violent crime, there is unpreventable violent crime, and there is preventable violent crime. The epidemic of mass-shootings in this country that began with the Austin Texas shooting and has accelerated alongside the rise of easily-obtained, high-capacity, magazine-fed semi-automatic firearms leaves a lot of people feeling unsafe outside of their homes, regardless of what the odds of being in a mass-shooting in your lifetime looks like. Add a certain tolerance of political violence and violence against law enforcement into the mix and it gets worse. Then add the smart phone everyone carries in their pocket that tells them every time there is a horrifically violent crime taking place anywhere in the country--often accompanied by images and/or video--and you end up with a populace that is hyper-sensitive to lower levels of violent crime that are over-reported because the media knows our psychology and what will move the ad clicks at this point. "If it bleeds, it leads" still dominates not just TV media, but now social media as well, and Americans are MUCH more connected to their social medias than the TV news.
As always, this comes back to "it's a voter/consumer/viewer problem." We're constantly victims of our own stupidity. Society's weakest links will always hold back progress because that's what easily-manipulated stupidity does: it holds back progress. The GOP is FILLED with easily-manipulated and stupid voters who do not know how to parse good data sources from back ones. They are people who you can fuck in the ass for as long as you want so long as you whisper into their ears it's actually just a liberal and/or an immigrant fucking them in the ass, not someone from their own tribe. They will actively let you grift them so long as you lie to them and reaffirm their most insane conspiracies out loud. These are very VERY simple people.
That's a very interesting website. Take a look at reported rapes, and the high-water mark is 2018. That's very strange to me. Violent crimes were much higher in the 90s in every other category. There's no specific category for domestic violence, though. Looking at the crime clearance rate, violent crime has a 40% clearance rate but rape is counted separately (??!), and has a 30% clearance rate, I guess it not being as important as other violent crimes. In other words, crime has gone down quite a bit since the 90s as long as you factor out crimes against women.
I think that th rape numbers are a lagging indicator of sorts--in that as the culture changed, rates of reporting increased.
Because of a lot of the cultural factors around sexual crime, especially rape, it would be my thought that it is both underreported (even now) and more difficult to investigate and clear than straightforward violent crime.
When you look at the statistical data, crime has been on a downward trend for quite some time.
Despite that fact, people have historically believed that crime is worse now than it was before--year after year despite the downward trend.
This is (TLDR version) an artifact of the media culture that we have--accounting for political messaging as part of that media culture.
Violent crime is currently up, but is still lower than it was in the 90s. This is attributable to several factors most of which have more to do with the psychology and culture of the time (the political and cultural extremism) than with law enforcement action.
Property crime continues to go down.
The reality is that crime is not an actual issue--it is in most cases an issue of perception vice reality. Your stance on crime vis-a-vis politics isn't about crime but about (political) identity, for the most part.
https://www.statista.com/topics/2153/crime-in-the-united-states/#topicHeader__wrapper
There is crime, and there is violent crime. And within violent crime, there is unpreventable violent crime, and there is preventable violent crime. The epidemic of mass-shootings in this country that began with the Austin Texas shooting and has accelerated alongside the rise of easily-obtained, high-capacity, magazine-fed semi-automatic firearms leaves a lot of people feeling unsafe outside of their homes, regardless of what the odds of being in a mass-shooting in your lifetime looks like. Add a certain tolerance of political violence and violence against law enforcement into the mix and it gets worse. Then add the smart phone everyone carries in their pocket that tells them every time there is a horrifically violent crime taking place anywhere in the country--often accompanied by images and/or video--and you end up with a populace that is hyper-sensitive to lower levels of violent crime that are over-reported because the media knows our psychology and what will move the ad clicks at this point. "If it bleeds, it leads" still dominates not just TV media, but now social media as well, and Americans are MUCH more connected to their social medias than the TV news.
As always, this comes back to "it's a voter/consumer/viewer problem." We're constantly victims of our own stupidity. Society's weakest links will always hold back progress because that's what easily-manipulated stupidity does: it holds back progress. The GOP is FILLED with easily-manipulated and stupid voters who do not know how to parse good data sources from back ones. They are people who you can fuck in the ass for as long as you want so long as you whisper into their ears it's actually just a liberal and/or an immigrant fucking them in the ass, not someone from their own tribe. They will actively let you grift them so long as you lie to them and reaffirm their most insane conspiracies out loud. These are very VERY simple people.
"You've got to remember that these are just simple farmers. These are people of the land. The common clay of the new West. You know… morons."
Gotta love a Mel Brooks quote
That's a very interesting website. Take a look at reported rapes, and the high-water mark is 2018. That's very strange to me. Violent crimes were much higher in the 90s in every other category. There's no specific category for domestic violence, though. Looking at the crime clearance rate, violent crime has a 40% clearance rate but rape is counted separately (??!), and has a 30% clearance rate, I guess it not being as important as other violent crimes. In other words, crime has gone down quite a bit since the 90s as long as you factor out crimes against women.
I think that th rape numbers are a lagging indicator of sorts--in that as the culture changed, rates of reporting increased.
Because of a lot of the cultural factors around sexual crime, especially rape, it would be my thought that it is both underreported (even now) and more difficult to investigate and clear than straightforward violent crime.
I think you may be seeing an increase in reporting in recent years.
I don't know if a straight line can be drawn between clearance and importance.
One point completely unspoken is that crime is worse in the red states/cities per capita than in the blue states.
But, but, but Chicago!!!
And if those education deprived folks would bother looking it up, Chicago is # 20 in per capita violent crime rates. https://worldpopulationreview.com/us-city-rankings/most-violent-cities-in-america. Most of the others are red areas (Anchorage is higher? Wow.)
It's because of the higher gun ownership rates, higher rates of poverty, and lower rates of people seeing psychologists in those red states.