Sometimes criminality drops but at a too high price. Some cities in Latin America are "safe" from a statistical point of view but nobody dares go out at night, or even during the day, in some neighbourhoods because it's too dangerous.
- Are you implying that the statistic data on crime is incorrect and/or falsified?
- Are you including dangers besides criminality (like motor vehicle collisions or stormy weather)?
- Are you implying the police make the area unsafe (the police being, practically if not literally, the opposite of "crime statistics")?
The city might be "safe", statistically speaking, but nobody gets out of home because everybody is afraid and tries to avoid public spaces as much as possible. So you have a whole generation being raised inside apartments and closed spaces basically, this was the high price I was talking about.
There’s a reason so many tops of house walls in Latin America are covered in shards of broken glass.
Official statistics on crime have long been manipulated as well.
Remember this rule: if it’s positive, politicians try to maximize its importance with lavish news conferences and self-congratulatory declarations.
But! If the data is negative, they will be released quietly, often late on a Friday afternoon, to minimize media coverage.
You can actually map the release time of crime data in some places to show whether it’s positive or negative news.
There is also a profound difference in transparency levels and therefore data. Check out this report to see how much it varies.
https://policetransparency.vera.org/PTI-factsheet.pdf
In California, crime is up in the latest reports. Homicides included.
https://data-openjustice.doj.ca.gov/sites/default/files/2023...
So, it’s cool that “crime is down” but honestly the article that NPR published is pretty awful journalism and really doesn’t present the truth, which is more complicated.
Most of the time they are reporting on the FBI’s uniform crime reporting index:
https://www.fbi.gov/how-we-can-help-you/more-fbi-services-an...
This data has been under huge scrutiny and criticism for its inaccuracy:
The FBI Uniform Crime Report's (UCR's) 'murder and nonnegligent manslaughter' data are so seriously flawed that the only figure they can provide criminologists is the number of deaths investigated by police as potentially criminal homicides, and the weapons use data reported by the UCR and the National Crime Survey (victimization data) are unreliable as well.
Source: https://www.ojp.gov/ncjrs/virtual-library/abstracts/flaws-fb...
The “journalists” at NPR annd other news organizations even bother to mention any of this when they write their articles. The quality of their journalism should be questioned and people should be very aware of the unreliability of the statistical data, especially violent crimes like homicides.
Subtext: I'm a little skeptical one exists, unless you're looking at a place like Venezuela where stats have been entirely fictional for years.