How Perceptions of Crime have changed over Time in the United States

Perceptions of Crime change with increased capability of the Law Enforcers to control Crime but in the United States, the change has been difficult

Introduction

Perceptions of crime should match the reality of crime. People’s perceptions of crime can fail to change over time if what are mostly gathered from crime news are distorted pictures of how crime really is with an aim of promoting selfish interests. In the United States, the perceptions of crime should match with the reality of crime, which is that crime rates have gone down compared to the way they were in the past. The media, especially the newspaper prints should report the true findings to enable the Americans to develop the right perceptions of crime, which are necessary to address social problems they have especially racism.

Overview

Gramlich (2019) conveys that even when the data collected and analyzed by law enforcers shows a decline of a particular type of crime, people’s perception of rates of crime will always be that crime has gone up or worsened. However, according to Mastrorocco and Minale (2018), people’s perceptions of issues such as crime are affected by the sources where they mostly get informed. On this basis, the media that is mostly preferred by the older people can be said to be one of the strongest influencers of public perceptions about crime than the reports generated by the law enforcers are. The results of a study done and noted by Mastrorocco and Minale (2018), indicate that when people view channels that have a wide coverage of criminal activities in the society, their perceptions of crime will go up and when the coverage is reduced, the perception levels decline. Therefore, to determine how perceptions of crime have changed over time it is easier to do it by investigating how media coverage of criminal incidences has been. In the effort to develop an in-depth study, conducting a case study on the United States would be suitable. President Trump is noted describing the United States as a nation where crime has been rampant and ending the practice was one of his main goals to be accomplished by his government (Sun, 2018).

Background study of crime in the United States

In the past, statistics show that the types of crime that were common in the United States were violent street crimes and property related crimes. These types of crime in the 1800s were measured by counting the number of prisoners in prisons and jails and categorizing them according to the crime committed by each inmate. Thus, the counting and categorization exercise allowed the use of racial differences and nationality status in describing crime in the United States (National Academies of Science, 2019). Sun (2018) conveys that the historic description of crime has influenced the actions that President Trump is taking to end the crime that has been rampant in the country. 

Nevertheless, the data collection and analyzing techniques continued to improve to categorize crimes according to their victims (the government, the society, or an individual), the techniques used to commit crime, and the intension to commit crime. Further, also, categorization evolved to consider variation of crimes among states, severity of crimes, and then those crimes that the police can know and those that they cannot know when they occur. For example, today, the police are challenged to prevent crimes committed through the internet due to lack of the required resources and rapid technological changes (National Academies of Science, 2019). National Academies of Science (2019) notes that, in the early 1900s, the reports generated by the law enforcers were mainly for use by the courts, the corrections departments, and the police. In this regard, the public perceptions of crime can be said to have been low while to the law enforcers, the perceptions of crime were high (Mastrorocco and Minale, 2018). 

Media coverage of crime in the United States

Media reports of increasing crime rates (by states and in terms of their type, severity, and the police’s ability to respond on time) are those that have made the public develop a certain perception of crime in the country and eventually weigh the degree of public safety (James, 2018). James (2018) informs that the public’s perceptions of crime have been increasing especially for those types of crimes that the police cannot not prevent before they cause harm on the targeted victim(s).

Compared to the television medium, the newspaper media formats have had the stronger ability to report crime related news with fewer constraints since the targeted audience could get informed anytime and in more details unlike the televised news (Schildkraut, 2017). However, news reporters have been having the tendency of failing to report the true picture of crime especially those that are serious and challenge the police. In light of this, Schildkraut (2017) points out that the public perceptions of crime have been wrong since they are based on a distorted picture of crime. Schildkraut (2017) continues to suggest that having wrong perceptions of crime, people in the society have developed social problems among themselves. On this basis, in the society, how people relate or social problems indicate the changing perceptions people have about crime.

Ruel (2018) seems to agree with Schildkraut (2017) in observing that television stations tend to give more time to advertisements than reporting news that are more important to the Americans such as the crime related ones. In response to the concerns raised on this matter and increased competition for audience, television stations changed to allocate more time to report crime news but overdoing it distorting the true picture of crime. Hence, people’s perceptions of crime are changing not based on the reports generated by the police but on the business interests of the television stations.

Determining the current Perceptions of Crime in the United States

McGill (2016) informs that Americans feel unsafe. Many of them worry a lot about the intensity of crime that compared to the historic years; the level has been higher over the last 15years. Based on what the Americans gather, it has become easy to predict which types of crime will be more common than others will be. A good number of the nationals are compelled that gunshots will increase within the next ten years since every week; there is a news report about a shooting that has left victims either injured or dead. The tendency of the shooting incidences occurring every week, to the public is a sign indicating that shooting to cause harm is a criminal activity that has become out of control and therefore, it is easy to predict how severe it may become over the next few years. On this basis, the types of crimes that are reported by the media more times than the others, cause the public to perceive that the crimes are a challenge to control, and that they may worsen over time. On the other hand, the types of crimes that the media reports less are those that the police have managed to control and that they will decline or seize to exist over time.

Gramlich (2019) and McGill (2016) agree that over the last two decades, crime rates have gone down especially murder but the public’s perception regarding this type of crime does not match with the reality. Generally, American’s perception of crime has always been up and social differences are noted to be responsible for this. Most of the nationals that support President Trump are the whites who tend to view the black people and other foreigners as persons that threaten their security structures. Putting more focus on the social differences that exist in the country has limited the nationals to appreciate how public safety has been significantly improved to a higher degree than it was in the past (McGill, 2016). What is gathered from this is that even though the media has a strong influence on the public’s perception of crime, historical classifications of crimes and their offenders have a stronger impact that create permanent perceptions of crime.

To enrich the findings further, Courtauld (2014) points out that different media companies have varying agenda, which influence the incidents of crime they choose to report and those that they are to ignore. The agenda or the choices the media mostly make eventually influence people’s perceptions they have about crime in terms of the offenders and the victims. More so, the audience is also allowed to share its views and have certain opinions. Hence, it is conveyed that the perceptions of crime in the United States have remained high because, some media news reports have upheld the historical classifications of crimes and offenders. Therefore, in the United States, perceptions of crime have been unable to change mostly in violent crimes that involve racial differences (Sun, 2018).

Conclusion

As it is, it is difficult to establish how true the crime incidences that the media have been reporting are. Nevertheless, based on the approaches President Trump is taking it can be constructed that most of the media stations have been choosing to report crimes that promote racism against the blacks and the immigrants. Thus, the perceptions of crime especially by the whites have never changed regardless of how types of crime have been evolving. The media needs to have appropriate agenda that promote equality in the society for the public to have the right perceptions of crime. When the public has the right perceptions of crime, researchers will be able to establish a meaningful statistic of how perceptions of crime have been changing to reflect how confident people are on the capabilities of the law enforcers. Having the right perceptions of crime, even the minority groups can have confident in the security provided to them by the law enforcers/the criminal justice system. In the United States, the change is possible and President Trump needs to give the minority groups a second chance by developing laws that regulate the agenda of the media companies. Making the change is for the best interest of the country, as it will contribute a lot in improving national security as required. 

References

Courtauld, A. (2014). How the media controls our perceptions of crime. Retrieved< https://www.shoutoutuk.org/2014/11/08/how-the-media-controls-our-perceptions-of-crime/>.

Gramlich, J. (2019). 5 facts about crime in the U.S. Retrieved< https://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2019/01/03/5-facts-about-crime-in-the-u-s/>.

James, N. (2018). Recent violent crime trends in the United States. Retrieved< https://fas.org/sgp/crs/misc/R45236.pdf>.

Mastrorocco, N. and Minale, L. (2018). News media and crime perceptions: Evidence from a natural experiment. Retrieved< http://ftp.iza.org/dp11491.pdf>.

McGill, A. (2016). Is violence in America going up or down? Retrievedhttps://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2016/07/is-violence-in-america-going-up-or-down/491384/.

National Academies of Science (2019). Introduction: Crime statistics in the United States. Retrievedhttps://www.nap.edu/read/23492/chapter/3.

Ruel, S. (2018). If it bleeds, it leads: Coverage of violent crime by the U.S. television news media. Retrievedhttps://books.openedition.org/psn/4850.

Schildkraut, J. (2017). Crime news in newspapers. Crime, Media, and Popular Culture. Doi:10. 1093/acrefore/9780190264079.013.32

Sun, E. (2018). The dangerous racialization of crime in the U.S. new media. Retrieved< https://www.americanprogress.org/issues/criminal-justice/news/2018/08/29/455313/dangerous-racialization-crime-u-s-news-media/>.