• usernamesAreTricky@lemmy.ml
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    2 months ago

    Wish we actually covered crime better in the news. The public perception of crime rates has been out of sync with actual crime rates for decades, largely due to how crime is portrayed in the media

    https://www.pewresearch.org/short-reads/2016/11/16/voters-perceptions-of-crime-continue-to-conflict-with-reality/

    Or another interesting thing is how people are more likely to think that crime is up in the US overall, but not as much when they look at where they live

    https://news.gallup.com/poll/323996/perceptions-increased-crime-highest-1993.aspx

    • Keeponstalin@lemmy.world
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      2 months ago

      It makes no sense for Democrats to capitulate to Right Wing Framing on immigration, the idea that immigrants are bringing in crime and drugs are straight up lies. I don’t know why they are, the Pro-immigration messaging in 2016 was popular too

    • Mayor Poopington@lemmy.world
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      2 months ago

      People love clicking on crime articles and the news organizations are well aware of that. I noticed my mood changed a bit since leaving reddit, my local regional sub must have been half crime posts.

    • CharlesDarwin@lemmy.world
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      2 months ago

      I was checking out Kurzweil’s latest book and he made a decent point about how good news tends to get overlooked. For specific examples, he was talking about how not only is violent crime trending down, so has property crime.

    • ryathal@sh.itjust.works
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      2 months ago

      There’s a few factors. The news reports more events from further away, so there’s always crime to report on. Stats mostly focus on violent crime, someone breaking the window of every car on a street isn’t violent crime. Smaller property crimes only get reported if the police know about them, less people are contacting the police because they won’t respond anyway. Drug use leaves a bigger impression than the actual crime, it doesn’t take many people to litter an area with needles or other paraphernalia.

      People also remember negative events more, you remember replacing your catalytic converter a lot more than all the days you didn’t have to replace it