alex on Farcaster

Content pfp

https://warpcast.com/~/channel/politics

0 reply

0 recast

0 reaction

alex pfp

@proxystudio.eth

I've lived in major american cities across the country for my entire life during that time period, crime has steadily declined. on the data side there isn't really disagreement about that. what explains the widespread sentiment that crime is rising? why do so many people believe that cities, in general, are overrun by crime and underpoliced? most interesting to me is that people across regions, demographics, political affiliation are extremely concerned about U.S. (national) crime & routinely think its worse than the year before. but those same respondents, again across the board, are far less worried about crime's seriousness in their local area. they still think its worse than before. it's almost accepted wisdom at this point. what explains the gap in data & sentiment? and perceptions of local crime (not bad but more than before) vs. national crime (bad & getting worse!)

38 replies

0 recast

34 reactions

kia pfp

is the data measuring what people call crime?

1 reply

0 recast

0 reaction

alex pfp

@proxystudio.eth

I’ll look to see, but I think the trend would remain similar regardless across the timeframe

1 reply

0 recast

0 reaction

kia pfp

nope, it won't *necessarily* remain the similar. for example if the data is measuring "prosecution" it might be situations like SF under Boudin where prosecutions went down but what people perceive as crime went up. Another example is what's considered crime. In SF stealing under $900 is not considered crime to the police and the district but it's considered crime nonetheless by the people. i'm not saying it's one of these cases. i'm just saying it's really important to figure out what the data is exactly measuring vs what people perceive to be 'crime' in their eyes.

1 reply

0 recast

0 reaction

alex pfp

@proxystudio.eth

gallup asks people about general perceptions of crime and also asks questions related to self-reporting victimization which includes all manner of property crime, petty theft, identity theft, and violent crime, SA, too. by trend holds I mean crime (violent & property) is down significantly since 1990 whether you measure it by available FBI & police reports or by self-reporting. and however a respondent defines crime, they tend to believe it is worse than the year prior nationally, but feel differently about crime locally. all of this data is imperfect, how you define crime, where you live, and when you're talking about matters, but I don't think a prosecutor in SF doing some lib magic on how theft is defined is going to skew things much

0 reply

0 recast

1 reaction