CRIME TRENDS

In John Gramlich’s article “What the data says (and doesn’t say) about crime in the United States”, he discusses many facets of crime such as national rates, type commonality, change over time, public perception, demographic and geographic influence, and the role of law enforcement. He begins by addressing how much crime is present in the United States. The short answer is that it is too hard to say for certain, but the Federal Bureau of Investigation and the Bureau of Justice statistics both produce annual data that captures a rough amount of how much crime occurs in a year in the United States. Since this data is collected annually, it is easy to track how it changes over time, which is incredibly relevant and useful, especially for this project (Gramlich, 2020).

Gramlich goes on to talk about the most and least common types of crimes in the United States. The large takeaway from this section is that property crimes which include larceny, burglary, and motor vehicle theft are far more common than violent crime (Gramlich, 2020). In project 3, we created a scatterplot to look at this exact comparison. In Gramlich’s article, he looks at 2019 data which shows that property crime is more common than violent crime. This has been consistently true throughout the years. In the picture of my dashboard at the end of this write up, it can be observed that the same comparison held true in 1990. The highest rate of violent crimes at the time was 1244 crimes per 100,000 residents, while the highest rate of property crimes was 7566.5 crimes per 100,000 (both in Florida). There was more than six times as many property crimes as there were violent crimes (Federal Bureau of Investigation, 2020). This data makes sense given what has been discussed in class in relation to criminals acting rationally and looking at the trade-offs between certainty and severity.

Since class on January 22, we have been discussing criminal rationality when it comes to crime. As with any decision, criminals weigh the costs and benefits of committing a crime before they do so. With violent crimes, the costs, such as longer jail sentences and execution, often outweigh the benefits and so they are not committed as frequently as property crimes where the sanctions are less severe and benefits are often equal to or greater than the costs. The rational decision for criminals is to commit property crimes instead of violent crimes, and that is exactly what is shown in the data. If punishments for property crimes were more severe and punishments for violent crimes were less severe, there would likely be change in the rates at which they are committed.

Gramlich also writes about the change in overall crime rates in the United States. Data from the FBI shows that both violent crimes and property crimes have fallen greatly between 1993 and 2019 with violent crimes falling 49% and property crimes falling 55%. Murder and non-negligent manslaughter fell 47% during this time period as well (Gramlich, 2020). Looking at the visualization on my dashboard that reflects murder and manslaughter rates over time, it can be seen that each region of the United States saw a decline of this rate during the same time period. In the South, for example, the murder/manslaughter rate in 1993 was 10.47 per 100,000 residents, and by 2019, it was 6.70 per 100,000 (Federal Bureau of Investigation, 2020). This is a decrease of 36%. In the Northeast, the rate declined by 48%, 35% in the West, and 31% in the Midwest during the same time period. It makes sense that the rate decreased both regionally and nationally between 1993 and 2019.

One topic Gramlich discusses that is particularly interesting is the perception of crime in America by its residents. Though the data shows that crimes rates have declined since 1993, 60% of adults in the United States say there is more crime than in previous years, although they do not believe that there is more crime in their specific areas. This is incredibly interesting and shows that people are often influenced by far more than data including political affiliation and race and ethnicity (Gramlich, 2020). It could, however, be that the people surveyed do have these beliefs because of where they live. As Gramlich mentions, crime can differ by both demographic and geographic location. If the people surveyed are from Maine and New Hampshire where the violent crimes are less than 200 per 100,000 people and they are hearing on the news about how New Mexico has over 800 violent crimes per 100,000 residents, they might be led to believe that crime rates are worse nationally, but they are not being affected in their area because their rates are much lower (Gramlich, 2020).

Finally, Gramlich writes about the police and government in relation to crime in the United States. Most crimes are not reported to the police for a variety of reasons, and those that are reported mostly go unsolved. This might deter more people from reporting crimes to the police because they believe their cases will never be solved either. That being said, the most common crimes to be reported are motor vehicle theft on the property side and aggravated assault on the violent side. On the other hand, the crime most likely to be cleared by police is murder/non-negligent manslaughter and the least likely is motor vehicle theft, even though it is reported the most often. Overall, Gramlich concludes that crime data collection is incredibly important for our country but that we need better data collection. Thankfully, the FBI is working on improving its data collection system, and hopefully soon we will have more data to provide us with better insights into crime (Gramlich, 2020).

References

Gramlich, J. (2020, November 20). What the data says (and doesn’t say) about crime in the United States. Pew Research Center. https://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2020/11/20/facts-about-crime-in-the-u-s/

Federal Bureau of Investigation. (2020, September 28). Crime Data Explorer. https://crime-data-explorer.fr.cloud.gov/.