Yet, much of this coverage lacked critical context. While the increase in murders was significant, the overall murder rate remained far below its peak in the 1980s and 90s.
The quantity and tenor of crime coverage matters. It shapes public sentiment about crime and ultimately shapes important decisions around public safety budgets, police tactics, and criminal justice policy.
@juddlegum ... and if you just want straight no-bullshit #Headlines try indyradio.net we also do cheezy broadcasts from defunct clubs insecure landing page w. info is http://ch0.us
@juddlegum The murder rate in developed nations like the USA and Australia has been declining steadily since around 1980. people in those countries have never been safer. That is the statistical reality and nobody fully understands what drives it.
@juddlegum this is a stunningly clear example of the problem with modern "newsworthiness", i.e. something that riles up emotions: That criterion OVERWHELMINGLY favors bad news...
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Stoking Crime Paranoia is how the Right keeps folks from looking at white collar crime & wage theft that are impacting us at much higher rates. It's racist af
@juddlegum
Really appreciate the work you do.
I can’t afford the newsletter, but your threads expose me to important stories & info.
Always providing sources & links.
Brilliant.
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The extremist GOP Mississippi governor has used the murder rate in Jackson, without context, to damage our majority black, dem-run city. The constant drumbeat of “Jackson is dangerous!” has hurt businesses, property values, tourism.
@juddlegum
Some people ascribe the decline in the murder rate in the 1990s to the removal of lead from petrol (gasoline).
Is it safe to use such recent numbers for murders? Could they be low because legal process takes years?
@juddlegum@codinghorror It's also notable that other forms of crime are declining as well. The felony rate in the NYC subway, which was a major issue in our mayoral elections in 2021 and continued to drive policy through 2022 and into 2023, is down 20% YoY. Also one of the (if not the largest) drop recorded.
It does remain to be seen how seasonality affects this but this is astounding and underreported. I only know about it because of the good work of @ndhapple
@juddlegum one thing that skews public perception of crime in general is the local tele news’ insatiable need for dramatic footage, every damned morning at the murder scene or the chase crash scene, you’re fed crime daily so it must be worse than ever, right? Meantime legislative coverage, for example, is minimal anymore.
@GPJohnston@juddlegum My local newspaper was "if it bleeds it leads" since forever, but a little over a year ago it got a new editor. We still get the crime coverage, but the bulk of coverage has shifted to legislative reporting.
I need to write a letter to the editor thanking them.
Good, but now we should break down murders by categories to see WHICH types of murder have gone down.
E.g., perhaps the increased coverage by security cameras has reduced small-shop armed robberies? Or changes in domestic violence laws have reduced domestic murders?
@juddlegum Fear sells. I was just doomscrolling through bad new after bad news even here on mastodon, and this post was the first light in all that darkness. Good on you for boosting hope.
I don't understand why you think any of that data is credible.
Your journalistic colleagues have reported scandal after scandal after scandal where cops have manipulated reported crime rates to make police departments look effective at deterring crime.
Ours is a society in which there are literal tens of thousands of unanalyzed rape kits on back shelves of PDs in major cities around this country.
Ours is a society in which women of color go missing - especially Native American women - and no law enforcement thinks it worth wondering where they went.
Ours is a society in which police departments have been caught refusing to accept reports of violent crime while manufacturing petty charges to artificially make it look like "Broken Windows" policing works.
Ours is a society in which something like 95% of criminal charges result in a plea deal which has the effect of the statistical record of crime showing the less-violent pleas and not the actual crimes committed.
Ours is a society that's developed superb medical responses to gunshot wounds, so a whole lot of what would have been murders are rendered, by the grace of medical intervention, merely assault.
How can anyone believe we have the faintest notion of how much violent crime there is?
@juddlegum I know I’m going to sound snide posting this but honestly, HONESTLY, my first thought was “the low prices and high quality of pornography and video games are clearly keeping a lot of hands occupied.”
@juddlegum Just heard about it - thanks.
That said, shouldn't we also be looking at more than murders? What about injuries? Beatings? Other forms of assault? Looking at one thing in isolation seems a bit myopic. Just saying.
One night during the Clinton administration, I was driving home from work and heard over NPR that serious crime had dropped 30% from the previous year. Big news.
I got home just in time to catch the beginning of local TV news. So I turned on the TV and flipped between the three local stations' evening news programs to see if they covered this huge story.
For the first 15 minutes, all I saw on all three stations was coverage of local crime.
@juddlegum The same problem, but more persistent, with mass shootings. Every new mass shooting (however one defines that) is further "proof" that things are worse than ever, but coverage never normalizes for population. Most of the attention being given to certain kinds of shootings (like school shootings) gives a false impression that the problem is brand new and hugely increasing when there are and were many similar events in slightly different venues. I'm in favor of gun control, but the discourse on mass shootings also has a right-wing "decadent society" component, and the discourse isn't based on honest attempts to assemble an accurate picture.
And yet to maintain appropriate context:
a 12% reduction doesn’t come close to reversing the 30% increase of 2020 which was on top of a 20+% increase in the 5 years prior.
Just because it could be (and has been) worse doesn’t mean that it’s ok… and the overall trend in recent years should remain concerning.
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