Credit: (AP Photo/Matt Rourke, File)Former President Donald Trump, his running mate and Republicans across the country are trumpeting a fallacy. Crime is rampant, Trump and supporters claim, but federal, state and local data, paints a different and, at times, a more nuanced picture.
Violent crimes are decreasing across the nation and in New Jersey, according to several long-standing crime data reports. Some crimes, like bias incidents, have notably increased in recent years.
But the notion that crime, particularly violent crime and property crime, is rising and has become a political selling point that is gaining traction, is due largely to public perception and how crime is covered by the media, according to criminologists and others studying the issue. Another key factor in that perception is how crime rates are distorted and amplified by political leaders, they say.
“And if political leaders are saying that crime is up, up, up, and crime is not, in fact, up, but it’s going down — people aren’t jumping into the crime stats most of the time themselves — they’re going to take it at face value,” said Dan Semenza, assistant professor of sociology, anthropology and criminal justice at Rutgers University-Camden.
Widespread concerns about crime
Regardless of the data, 63% of Americans said they believe crime is a serious problem in the country, according to a Gallup poll last year.
Violent crime, which the FBI classifies as crime that involve force or the threat of force, did increase nationwide during the COVID-19 pandemic. Part of the reason for that increase, experts said, stemmed from general uncertainty about the world, lack of access to social programs and more during this time.
In some people’s minds, that pandemic period can still “stick” with individuals who perceive crime to be up, said Semenza.
“There’s still going to be residual feelings of that shakiness or that unpredictability of the pandemic,” said Semenza. “And I think not having the norms — [the] term for this is anomie — of feeling normlessness or feeling unpredictable can be really unsettling and change the way that people perceive the world.”
Since the world has moved away from the pandemic, crime has begun to decrease nationwide. The FBI uniform crime report for 2022 shows that crime went down 1.7% nationwide from the previous year. Murder and manslaughter also decreased 6.1% from 2021; the rate of rape decreased 5.4% and aggravated assaults decreased 1.1% — but burglary increased 1.3%.
Trend in New Jersey
Crime in New Jersey has been trending downward since 2012, although there was a slight increase in 2022, according to the FBI’s report from that year. About one-third of violent crimes in the state that year were committed by romantic partners or acquaintances of the victims, the FBI report said.
The FBI’s 2023 report is scheduled for release in October. Preliminary data for the first quarter of this year shows a “historic” decline in violent crime, according to U.S. Attorney General Merrick Garland.
Although most police departments submit crime data to the FBI, not every department does so, making for an incomplete dataset. In the 2022 FBI report, New Jersey’s crime data came from 545 of the state’s 578 law enforcement agencies.
To support their claims, Trump and his supporters often use the National Crime Victimization Survey, a federal survey that looks at the experiences of 240,000 people across the country. That survey shows a 44% increase in crime between 2021 and 2022.
That survey is subject to a number of variables, criminologists told The Marshall Project, like “police staffing levels, police response time and overall levels of community trust.” Results can be unpredictable — one year they can show crime is up, the next can show crime is down. The Marshall Project also noted that that survey looks at a July – November time frame, while the FBI’s report looks at data from January to December of any given year.
Other reports from criminal justice research organizations and think tanks, including the Council of Criminal Justice, corroborate the FBI’s crime trends. A mid-year 2023 report from the council showed that violent crime in cities trended downward last year, and a similar updated report shows that crime is trending even lower this year.
New Jersey State Police also publishes its own crime data. However, the last publicly available report is from 2020. Major cities including Paterson, Jersey City and Newark have all reported decreasing violent crime rates over the last year.
Perception versus data
Other large nearby cities, such as Philadelphia and New York City, are also reporting drops in violent crime. But these data points haven’t changed public perception of crime.
Semenza of Rutgers-Camden said anecdotal experience and recency bias factor into how people perceive crime rates. Some criminologists say media coverage of crime or conversations on social media can amplify fear of crime, even if people are not victims themselves.
“I think it’s entirely feasible to say if you live in the suburbs of New Jersey, you’re going to think that Philadelphia is a lot more dangerous because you’re only basing it off of anecdotal evidence, rather than your own direct experiences,” Semenza said.
Rhetoric and public perception of crime — and who the perpetrators are — can be negative for Black and brown communities, said Jason Williams of Montclair State University, who warned that political rhetoric about crime can intensify violence.
During the presidential debate on Sept. 10, and amplified since then by running mate Sen. J.D. Vance, Trump repeated a racist rumor about Haitian immigrants. Even though the Springfield, Ohio woman who first posted online about the rumor has since apologized, Haitian Americans have reported feeling unsafe, and Springfield schools have closed due to threats.
“Using his rhetoric is very harmful, very dangerous, and it manifests violence. And that has been the case historically. It has been the basis for scores of Black men during and in the immediate aftermath of slavery [who were] killed,” said Williams of Montclair State University.
