Paradox of the Perception of Crime

There is a paradox in America where all across the nation, people believe that crime in their area is less of a problem than it is nationally. How can that be? For crime to be bad on a national level, there would need to be numerous areas where residents saw crime as not only a serious problem, but worse than the national average. We don’t see that.

This paradox also appears in other forms, such as ongoing polls asking if crime has gotten worse over the past year.

Since the 90s, except for the years 2000 and 2001, the majority of the population has believed that crime has worsened over the past year, every year. The vast majority of the time, they are wrong, as shown by violent crime rates in America over time.

That graph stops at 2023, so it is worth noting that crime saw a substantial decrease in 2024, and reports on the first half of 2025 show those steep declines continuing.

Violent crime in America is at a 50-year low, and yet the majority of the population still believes not only that crime has increased in the past year, but that it is out of control.

What is the cause of this disconnect? Deliberate fearmongering.

Some of this fearmongering is to drive viewership, clicks, and engagement. Bad news tends to get more attention than good news. The rest of it is designed to shape the national discussion to drive a political narrative.

2024 saw some of the largest crime declines in history. It was not hard to find this data in a wide variety of forms from many different sources. Despite this, 90% of Republicans believed crime was worse in 2024 than it had been in 2023. Only 29% of Democrats thought crime had worsened in 2024, the lowest on record since at least 1989.

That extreme difference in perspectives comes from news, pundit, and influencer sources. Fox News and the like talked every night about out-of-control crime, including showing videos of violent crime, typically from cities. They never discussed the actual crime rates or the fact that the crime had reduced. Neutral and liberal sources discussed the historic reduction in crime happening across the country.

The above chart shows how political this mindset is; more Democrats tend to think crime is worsening when a Republican is president. More Republicans believe crime is getting worse when a Democrat is president.

Recent polling found that 81% of Americans believe crime in large cities is a significant problem. 96% of Republicans felt that way. Cities typically have a more democratic population, which once again highlights the disconnect between believing that crime is less of a problem in one’s own community versus a place they never visit, but frequently see media saying how dangerous it is.

The Council of Criminal Justice performs ongoing crime analysis, specifically in large cities. Here is a chart that shows the change in crime rates as compared to 2019 over the past five years. Crime has been dropping in large cities, and each of these categories is now below where it was before the pandemic.

As Republicans back Trump’s authoritarian actions of sending armed National Guard troops uninvited into city streets, they continue to target blue cities in blue states. Chicago has become the latest potential target for Trump despite being 29th in violent crime among cities with a population of over 500,000 people.

A recent stat used to push this agenda is that 58 people were shot in Chicago over the Labor Day three-day weekend. While we can hopefully all agree that we’d like to see fewer people attacked by someone wielding a gun, what does this number actually represent?

Two-thirds of the incorporated places in America (cities, towns, and villages) have a population below 5,000. The idea of over 50 people being shot in one of those communities during a long weekend is incomprehensible. Chicago has a population of 2.7 million. What this means is that in any given day this past weekend, someone in Chicago had a 0.0007% chance of being shot. Americans were 4x as likely to be injured in a car accident on any of those days as to be shot in Chicago.

Furthermore, Chicago is seeing significant reductions in crime in the first half of this year:

• Overall Violent Crime: -21.6%

• Homicides: -32.3%

• Overall Shooting Incidents: -37.4%

• Multi-Victim Shooting Incidents: -44.6%

• Robberies: -31.9%

• Vehicular Hijackings: -49%

• Aggravated Assault: -18.1%

One of the issues Chicago faces is that 60% of guns used in crimes in the city come from out of state due to lax gun laws in other states like Indiana and Mississippi. But that isn’t brought up because Republicans are walking a tightrope of fearmongering about crime, including people being shot, while ensuring the conversation never enters the territory of federal gun reform, because the gun lobbyists funding their campaigns would be upset.

That is the real problem. While crime is reducing and at historic lows, it is still higher than in our peer nations, particularly when looking at homicide rates. 80% of all homicides in the US involve guns, and guns are the number one killer of children aged 1 to 18.

If we want to have a serious conversation about crime in America, then we need to talk about gun reform, lack of access to healthcare, income inequality, job opportunities, and availability of quality education, all topics that Republicans hate because they’re on the wrong side of every one of those issues.

Addressing those issues would see a permanent reduction in crime at the same time as prosperity increased across the nation. A much better result than a temporary reduction in crime from the expensive and illegal use of the National Guard patrolling city streets.

We live in a country where politicians and the media fearmonger, lie, and spread conspiracy theories to keep their audience afraid, which keeps them in power, despite never making progress on any of the actual root causes of the problems our nation faces.

The only way that changes is if we stop letting the fearmongering be so successful. And the only way to do that is to educate others on the facts.

https://counciloncj.org/crime-trends-in-u-s-cities-mid-year-2025-update/