Another reason is that the opioid epidemic died out.
Like the earlier crack epidemic eventually some combination of those vulnerable to it dying off and new measures to control it being implemented.
I think the reason that right-wingers don't accept this is that murder was never really something that bothered them. Two black gangbangers killing each other over drugs doesn't really involve them. It was only that murder was correlated with other things.
What bothers right wingers is something like "civil disorder". It's whether there are going to be needles in the park or some schitzo shouting at you on the subway. These interactions don't always turn violent, but they are the opposite of civilziation. They are also harder to get hard data on.
There's something to the quality of life argument. And there are a lot of cities that experience way more petty crime than they did a decade ago. But it's harder to convey we live in a hellhole when the problem is more shoplifting versus more murders.
The primary complaint about public spaces is not that they're more dangerous but that their filled with foreigners and it alienates people. That's a problem, yet it's harder to convince normies to be upset with it if it's not accompanied by violent crime.
The universal sign of civilization seems to be whether everything at the local CVS is locked up.
I personally use the chick-fil-a sauce test. Are the sauces out in public for anyone to take as much as they want, or are they behind the counter and you have to request them.
When you read the travel reports of people who have visited the US, they very often comment on how disorderly our public spaces are. You are correct that these things don't translate into crime statistics. We really need to fix this as it's a terrible problem. Can "broken windows" policing and "stop & frisk" policies help?
"Another reason is that thanks to smartphones and social media, we’re more aware of individual crimes than we were 30 years ago."
This, I think, is the single biggest factor causing people to overestimate the crime problem. Nearly every altercation is caught on video and shared. Interestingly, smartphones are probably a potent crime deterrent. It's very hard to commit a crime without some identifiable information being captured on video. Of course you have those people who don't care about being caught, but that's a different story.
Another reason is that the opioid epidemic died out.
Like the earlier crack epidemic eventually some combination of those vulnerable to it dying off and new measures to control it being implemented.
I think the reason that right-wingers don't accept this is that murder was never really something that bothered them. Two black gangbangers killing each other over drugs doesn't really involve them. It was only that murder was correlated with other things.
What bothers right wingers is something like "civil disorder". It's whether there are going to be needles in the park or some schitzo shouting at you on the subway. These interactions don't always turn violent, but they are the opposite of civilziation. They are also harder to get hard data on.
There's something to the quality of life argument. And there are a lot of cities that experience way more petty crime than they did a decade ago. But it's harder to convey we live in a hellhole when the problem is more shoplifting versus more murders.
The primary complaint about public spaces is not that they're more dangerous but that their filled with foreigners and it alienates people. That's a problem, yet it's harder to convince normies to be upset with it if it's not accompanied by violent crime.
The universal sign of civilization seems to be whether everything at the local CVS is locked up.
I personally use the chick-fil-a sauce test. Are the sauces out in public for anyone to take as much as they want, or are they behind the counter and you have to request them.
When you read the travel reports of people who have visited the US, they very often comment on how disorderly our public spaces are. You are correct that these things don't translate into crime statistics. We really need to fix this as it's a terrible problem. Can "broken windows" policing and "stop & frisk" policies help?
"Another reason is that thanks to smartphones and social media, we’re more aware of individual crimes than we were 30 years ago."
This, I think, is the single biggest factor causing people to overestimate the crime problem. Nearly every altercation is caught on video and shared. Interestingly, smartphones are probably a potent crime deterrent. It's very hard to commit a crime without some identifiable information being captured on video. Of course you have those people who don't care about being caught, but that's a different story.