Despite Media Hysteria, Violent Crime Is At Record Lows

Author: Kresta in the Afternoon Published on: July 12, 2016 Published in: A World in Pain

crime

It’s not 1968 yet. It’s not even 1993.

It’s fashionable to freak out about everything. So much of the discussion in the media over the last week has been conducted with a tone and focus that suggests violent crime — gun crimes, in particular — are at historic highs and society is on the cusp of unraveling into mass violence.

There are plenty of ominous signs about cohesion, but we’re not exactly in a civil war just yet. While long-term trends don’t alleviate individual injustices or mitigate the grief and anger we experience about what’s going on, context matters. It matters mostly because discussing these events without placing them in some historical framework creates the type of hysteria that leads to false perceptions and then counterproductive policy.

I realize there’s a lot of parsing to do with data, but a broader look at the numbers tells us we’re not only living in an age that’s seen a big drop in violence but perhaps the least violent age in American history. The year Greta Van Susteren first made her name on CNN offering legal expertise on the O.J. Simpson trial, violent crime rates had peaked in the United States. For the next 20 years, they would precipitously fall on every level —including murder, rape, and aggravated assault. People have always been shooting — punching, stabbing, kicking — each other. They just do a lot less of it today.