Reality check: What we get wrong about crime

American concern about crime; the number of people who believe crime is increasing has not been this high in decades.

Sure, some crimes sometimes increase in some places. But overall, I have some great news: Across the country, crime has been falling steadily for 30 years.

Here are violent crimes, which murder, rape and robbery:

And here there are property crimes such as burglary and theft:

Now it is useful to ask where these numbers come from. The FBI maintains a database of all crimes reported by the police. The problem is, we do not always report crimes to the police. People report a stolen car, but very few report sexual assault.

It is for that reason that, back in the 1970s, the Bureau of Justice Statistics began surveying people every year to ask about their experiences with crime, whether or not they were actually reported. This is also a flawed method (you can’t very well interview a murder victim), but overall, the news is good here as well.

No one is quite sure how to explain the decline. Maybe it’s better police work. Maybe it’s better security technology, or rising incomes, or lower unemployment. We are also an aging society, and it is usually young people who commit the crime.

But whatever the reason, perception and reality are two different things, in a good way. Most of us believe that crime is increasing, but in fact both data sources say that it is actually going down.

So, just this once we’ll be happy to be wrong!

Story produced by David Rothman. Editor: Emanuele Secci.

See also:

David Pogue

David Pogue is a six-time Emmy winner for his stories on “CBS Sunday Morning,” where he has been a correspondent since 2002. Pogue hosts the CBS News podcast “Unsung Science.” He is also a New York Times best-selling author, a five-time TED speaker and host of 20 NOVA science specials on PBS. For 13 years he wrote a weekly New York Times tech column – and for 10 years a monthly Scientific American column.