“Crime is not increasing, on the contrary, it is decreasing, that’s what the statistics say.” “The shoplifting epidemic is an invention.” It’s easy to find headlines like this in American media, which we consider progressive and therefore the Biden administration can be classified as close. The implicit message: The feeling of insecurity is pure paranoia, the crime crisis and public order problems are exaggerated, without any connection to the real situation.
This type of “denial,” aimed at countering the propaganda of right-wing politicians about the laxity of the judiciary and the impotence of the police, goes hand in hand with what happens to Joe Biden at his rallies across the country when he speaks of economics . The president tells voters the good news: the American economy is brimming with health, inflation is almost defeated; No matter how much he repeats this message, polls still show the cost of living as the main reason for distrust and pessimism among the population. Who is right? When it comes to crime, the gap between the official version and citizens’ perceptions is growing.
The most recent FBI report, released in October, described a decline in violent crime in 2022, returning to pre-pandemic levels. But in November, a Gallup poll found that 63% of American adults believe “the crime situation in the United States is very serious.” It is a negative historical record (the survey). As Josh Zumbrun noted in the Wall Street Journal, there are three possible explanations. First, the official FBI data is incorrect. Secondly, citizens’ perception is negative for no reason. The third reason is that people are actually suffering more crimes, but these are not recorded in the statistics.
A look at the way the official data is packaged supports this third explanation. In the “violent crimes” category, the FBI only records murders, rapes and armed robberies involving violent physical aggression. Many other crimes therefore escape detection. In addition, the year-on-year comparison loses sight of developments over longer periods of time: for example, the number of homicides in 2022 decreased compared to 2021, but is still 43% higher than in 2014. Most of the improvements are in the Security and in public The order achieved in the 1990s has been destroyed in more recent times. Finally, there is a phenomenon known in all countries of the world that undermines official statistics: these data are based on reports to the police, which almost always underestimate the extent and frequency of crime. In particular, the more crime increases, the less the reports are a reliable indicator.
It is an understandable phenomenon, because as crime increases, trust in the police and the judiciary decreases, so many crimes are not even reported. This is not a hypothesis, but a reality confirmed by other research. Including that of the US Department of Justice itself, which is conducting its own parallel investigation called the National Crime Victimization Survey. The most recent such research found that only 40% of violent crimes committed in 2022 were reported to the police. This year, the number of violent crime victims increased by 42% compared to 2021, but reports only increased by 29%. If you think that there is no point in reporting a criminal because the police will not arrest him or because the justice system will release him immediately, then why should you expose yourself to the waste of time, psychological stress and all the other risks by Waste hours? Your time in a police station?
Then there is another problem. When it comes to the perception of insecurity, it’s not just violent crimes that count. In the November 2023 Gallup poll, 28% of respondents said their family had suffered a crime, a sharp increase (+20%) compared to 2020; According to the FBI’s restrictive definition, not all of these crimes are violent. Armed car thefts, raids on supermarkets, drugstores and department stores are on the rise. Even to this last type of crime, the systematic theft or looting by organized gangs against large retailers, it is easy to find a counter-narrative in the media: those who want to discredit the issue of insecurity claim that they are urban legends, far beyond the scope of the phenomenon enlarged. But a recent study by the Jay College of Criminal Justice found that in New York City alone, the number of major retail thefts and raids increased from 31,000 in 2014 to 54,000 in 2022.
Those who try to downplay it in any way lump it into the category of “crimes against property,” as if that diminishes its seriousness. The implication is that anyone who steals from a supermarket ends up harming a large company that is rich enough to be able to absorb the losses. This leniency underestimates other aspects: theft and looting create a climate of insecurity among honest customers who witness these crimes; cause serious psychological stress among employees, some of whom, in addition to humiliation, also face threats of physical violence; After all, the economic costs are borne not by the large distribution company at all, but by customers who have to pay higher prices to “compensate” for losses due to theft. It is no coincidence that the recent epidemic of raids and looting has led to labor disputes among mass retail workers who feel at the mercy of criminals. Again, the statistics on complaints are lies.
As many jurisdictions (from California to New York) have decriminalized theft below a certain value ($950 for California), the principle that “the poor steal” has prevailed, making it a social rather than a legal problem “. The large sales companies report a small part of this. They have no interest in bearing the costs of a court case if it ends in an acquittal or release of the thieves. The average Californian or New Yorker is now used to the spectacle of drugstores where even toothpaste is stored in plastic cabinets with locks. To buy them, you have to ring the bell and summon a salesperson; He’s used to seeing gangs of young people helping themselves and leaving without going to the register. He must endure the further ridicule of being called a liar by pundits who handle convenient statistics. The same goes for residents of crime-ridden neighborhoods who are watching many businesses go bankrupt and close: even these distribution centers will no longer report thefts because they have disappeared. Their bankruptcy reinforces the sense of degradation in some working-class neighborhoods.
But “the statistics” prove that people’s insecurity is wrong. The perception of the economy is similar. All surveys say that Biden’s unpopularity can be explained primarily by the state of the American economy: dissatisfaction and mistrust prevail not only among Republican voters, but also among Democrats. Nobel laureate Paul Krugman, a left-wing commentator and New York Times editorialist, has had his own answer for some time: The economy is doing well, it’s the people who don’t understand it. Now added is the voice of another economist who is equally authoritative and equally ideological: Adam Tooze claims in his newsletter that “poll respondents give incorrect answers because their desire to indicate political and tribal affiliations prevails.” Again, people make mistakes, they don’t realize they’re doing well, it’s us experts who have to explain it to them.
This reminds me of the famous saying of the German playwright Bertolt Brecht, who was a convinced communist but knew how to joke about the shortcomings of the communist leaders: “The Central Committee has decided: Since the people do not agree, a new people must arise. “To be appointed.” In the specific case of the American economy, the cost of living is the sore point. Biden is at pains to say that inflation is under control, it is falling, it has fallen below 4% (after peaking at 10%) and in the not too distant future it may return to the more physiological and tolerable level of 2%. Yearly. True, but the problem that concerns the population is different. At the start of the pandemic and immediately after, there was a huge price shock, a spike that reduced purchasing power. To say that inflation is slowing is to talk about something else: the statement is correct and yet it only tells us that prices are no longer rising as quickly as they used to. This does not mean that prices are back to their original level. Therefore, many families are feeling the pressure of the high cost of living, even though the high cost of living is no longer getting worse from month to month. Krugman and Tooze accuse them of being liars because American consumption is booming. This also means talking about something else.
Most American families have seen their incomes get a big boost from government aid during the pandemic. Wages have increased in real terms, in both union and non-union categories. We are not in a situation of mass impoverishment, quite the opposite. What remains is that the concern about high prices is well-founded and anchored in reality. The attitude of the establishment when it uses statistics to prove people wrong is a sure recipe for stoking distrust of elites and giving voice to populism. Populism is not a bubonic plague transmitted by a germ, but the result of mistakes repeated over and over again.