All in all, GOP fearmongering about crime parallels the party’s inflation alarms based on selective and outdated numbers. It can be effective, unfortunately; during 2022, Gallup found that 78 percent of Americans thought crime was higher nationally than in 2021. Turns out that just wasn’t the case.

  • jordanlund@lemmy.worldM
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    1 year ago

    NATIONAL trends, yes. FTA:

    “The FBI’s crime statistics estimates for 2022 show that national violent crime decreased an estimated 1.7% in 2022 compared to 2021 estimates”

    But when you look at local numbers, such as shootings in my home town of Portland:
    https://public.tableau.com/app/profile/portlandpolicebureau/viz/PortlandShootingIncidentStatistics/ShootingIncidentStatistics

    January to August shooting numbers:
    2019 - 276
    2020 - 497
    2021 - 850
    2022 - 898
    2023 - 725

    If you look at full year numbers:

    2019 - 413
    2020 - 919
    2021 - 1315
    2022 - 1309
    2023 - 725 (through August)

    And that’s not violent crime in general, that’s JUST shootings.

    • taiyang@lemmy.world
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      1 year ago

      National trends down, but yes, every place is different with different reasons behind the decline. Unfortunately it’s quite difficult (albeit not always impossible) to find the covariates responsible for these trends.

      You can point to some policy changes, public sentiment, how police are run those years, economic changes due to COVID-19, and so on, but usually it’s going to be qualitative evidence at best. There just isn’t the multiverse version of Portland where X, Y or Z was slightly different, providing an experimental conditions to test policy and natural experiments only go so far (i.e. Portland compared to other midsized, liberal cities, is still going to ignore a ton of factors).

      What makes Portland special after the pandemic? My first instinct is always check what jobs were impacted, but as an outsider, I don’t know what Portland has aside from really good coffee and higher than average propensity for handlebar mustaches.