During the Oklahoma governor’s debate last week, Joy Hofmeister, the surprisingly competitive Democratic candidate, addressed Kevin Stitt, the current Republican governor who — like many in his party — is running as a defender of law and order.
“The fact is, violent crime rates in Oklahoma are higher under his tenure than in New York and California,” she said.
Stitt responded with a laugh and turned to the audience: “Oklahomans, do you believe we have more crime than New York or California?”
But Hofmeister was completely right. In fact, when it comes to homicide, the form of violent crime that can be measured most reliably isn’t even close: in 2020, Oklahoma’s homicide rate was nearly 50% higher than California’s, nearly double that of California. New York, and that ranking probably hasn’t changed.
Did Stitt not know this fact? Or was he just relying on the ignorance of his audience? If it was the latter, he may, unfortunately, have made the right choice. Public perceptions of crime are often at odds with reality. And this election year, Republicans are trying to exploit one of the biggest misconceptions: that crime is a big city and blue state (Democrat) problem.
Americans are not wrong to be concerned about crime. Across the country, violent crime increased substantially in 2020; We don’t have complete data yet, but murders appear to have grown even higher in 2021, although they appear to be decreasing again.
No one is quite sure what caused the rise — just as no one is quite sure what caused the epic decline in crime from the 1990s to the mid-2010s, which I’ll talk about more shortly. But given the timing, the social and psychological effects of the pandemic are the most likely culprits, with a possible secondary role for the damage to police-community relations caused by the murder of George Floyd.
While the rise in crime was real, however, the idea that it was just big cities run by Democrats is false. This was a purple crime wave, with murder rates increasing at roughly the same rate in the red states, which voted for Trump, and in the blue states, which voted for Biden. Homicides have increased sharply in both urban and rural areas. And if we look at levels rather than rates of change, both homicide and violent crime in general are generally higher in red states.
So why do so many people believe otherwise? Before we get to politically motivated disinformation, let’s talk about a few other factors that may have skewed perceptions.
One factor is visibility. As Justin Fox of Bloomberg has pointed out, New York City is one of the safest places in the United States — but you’re more likely to see a crime, or know someone who has seen a crime, than elsewhere, because the city has a much higher population density than anywhere else, which means there are often plenty of witnesses around when something bad happens.
Another factor may be the human tendency to believe stories that confirm our prejudices. Many people instinctively feel that being tough on criminals is an effective anti-crime strategy, so they tend to assume that places that are less tough — for example, those that don’t prosecute some non-violent crimes — must suffer more crime as a result. This doesn’t seem to be true, but you can see why people might believe it.
Such misconceptions are facilitated by the long disconnect between the reality of crime and public perceptions. Violent crime halved between 1991 and 2014, but during most of that period the vast majority of Americans told opinion polls that crime was on the rise.
However, only a minority believed it was growing in their own area. This tendency to believe that crime is terrible, but mostly elsewhere, was confirmed by an August poll that shows a huge gap between the number of Americans who consider violent crime a serious problem at the national level and the much smaller number who do. sees it as a serious problem where they live.
Which brings us to efforts by the right-wing media and Republicans to use criminality as an accusatory weapon in the midterm election — efforts that, it must be admitted, are proving effective despite the scale of the crime wave, affecting more or less equally red and blue states, rural and urban areas, and so on, suggest that it’s no one’s fault.
It is possible that these attempts would have gained traction no matter what the Democrats did. It is also true, however, that few Democrats have responded effectively.
In New York, Governor Kathy Hochul arrived very late to the party, apparently realizing just a few days ago that crime was a major issue she needed to resolve. On the other hand, Eric Adams, the mayor of New York City, seems to feed the fear, declaring that “I have never seen crime at this level”, a statement belied by data from his own Police Department. Even after the 2020-21 spike, serious crime in New York remained far below its 1990 peak and, in fact, was still lower than when Rudy Giuliani was mayor.
I’m not a politician, but that doesn’t seem to be difficult. Why not acknowledge the validity of concerns about the recent rise in crime, while pointing out that rightists who talk tough about the issue don’t seem to be good at keeping the crime rate down?
Translated by Luiz Roberto M. Gonçalves
With a wealth of experience honed over 4+ years in journalism, I bring a seasoned voice to the world of news. Currently, I work as a freelance writer and editor, always seeking new opportunities to tell compelling stories in the field of world news.
