Professor Kubrin advises media to take a “hyper local” look at crime in America
To understand what is really going on with crime and policing in America, you need to drill down to the neighborhoods—and even actual streets—where incidents mostly occur, agree two scholars who monitor, collect and closely analyze U.S. crime and policing data.
Criminology, law & society Professor Charis Kubrin of UC Irvine and criminology & criminal justice Associate Professor Justin Nix of the University of Nebraska, Omaha were the expert panelists for “Crime, safety, and policing,” a July 18 webinar presented by the American Association for the Advancement of Science’s SciLine.
The world’s largest multidisciplinary scientific society, the AAAS is editorially independent, nonpartisan, and funded by philanthropies. A free service for journalists, SciLine has the singular mission of enhancing scientific evidence in news stories. “Crime, safety, and policing” is among a series of SciLine webinars covering key issues in the 2024 election.
Following introductions by SciLine Director Rick Weiss, Professor Kubrin led the first of two brief presentations, which she titled, “Crime in the U.S.: Dynamics and Social Facts for Reporting.”
Gallup polls show a large majority of Americans believe crime is worse now than it was a year ago, but FBI data show crime, and in particular violent crime, decreased dramatically during the first three months of this year compared to the same period in 2023, Kubrin explained.
The perception that crime is rising versus the reality that it’s decreasing spur reporters to contact Kubrin and other criminologists asking, “Why?”
“Why, in this case, did crime decrease so substantially? But one of the things I want to talk about today is that we cannot address the why about crime until we truly understand the ‘what.’ And we have a good handle on that,” Kubrin said.
That understanding derives from comparing different time periods, places, populations, social groups, etc. In other words, by examining crime data in a comparative context.
For instance, if you look at data starting in the 1980s, when the country experienced high-crime rates, through to today, there has been a dramatic drop. But if you zero in on the past few years, you see the crime rate has spiked, although nowhere near the historic highs of the past.
Any increase is troubling and warrants examination, Kubrin said, but she advised reporters to share in their stories the full context of what exactly crime data show.
“Once a comparative context is provided,” Kubrin said, “the reality of violence comes into sharper focus, and we gain a better understanding of what’s really going on.”
Beyond time frames, state context is also critical. Kubrin shared that there were 6.3 homicides per 100,000 population in the U.S. in 2022 but revealed how this average varied drastically across states. The states that exceeded this rate at the highest levels in ’22 included Louisiana, New Mexico, South Carolina and the District of Columbia (with a whopping 29.3 homicides per 100,000 population).
City context, however, is equally important. Thanks to data compiled by the nonpartisan think tank the Council on Criminal Justice, we know that cities such as Baltimore and Memphis, for example, surpassed the national average while cities like Austin and Arlington, Texas, fell well below it.
But even within a given city, we find substantial variation in crime rates across neighborhoods that warrants attention. That is, neighborhood context also matters. Unfortunately, neighborhood-level crime data are not publicly available, so Kubrin and her colleagues collect the data themselves, through the arduous practice of contacting individual police agencies across the nation.
From that effort, Kubrin shared data during the webinar that displayed crime rates across neighborhoods in the city of Los Angeles. In additional maps that displayed street segments within LA neighborhoods, Kubrin showed that, in fact, a majority of violent crimes happen on only a handful of individual streets revealing a key social fact: crime is hyper local. This social fact, she continued, reveals something important we often lose site of when discussing crime; that is, a neighborhood might be disadvantaged and have high crime rates but most streets in that neighborhood have little or no crime. Violence, homicide especially, is a truly rare event. At the same time, it is rarer for some groups than others, which is why it is also critical to compare different social groups.
Nix’s presentation “Policing in the U.S.” made similar points about localizing data as it can help identify the exact places that require more attention. But he cautioned that may not necessarily mean putting more officers on those streets, as that can exasperate problems, especially among residents who do not trust police.
The entire presentation, which includes Kubrin and Nix fielding questions from reporters, is available online.
— Matt Coker