According to official national statistics, crime is down across all categories of violent crime. Despite this fact, the public often perceives problems as worsening or that crime is out of control. This mismatch between experts’ measures of crime trends and the public’s perception of reality highlights the need for greater community awareness about local crime issues.
Many police departments publish crime statistics, often at the district level, for residents to view and use. This information may include details of specific crimes, safety tips and broader patterns in local crime. A number of commercial companies also provide online crime forecast reports. Typically, these reports are based on police data and provide numeric crime scores for individual sites as well as a comparison of these scores at the county, state and national levels.
People obtain this type of local crime news from a variety of sources, with the most common being friends and family members, social media and local news outlets. Americans who prefer to get their local news on TV are more likely to say they sometimes or often receive crime news from these sources than those who get theirs on other platforms. However, these same viewers are more likely to say that their local news outlets exaggerate crime coverage.
By staying informed about local crime, residents become part of a network of individuals engaged in their neighborhood’s safety narrative. This shared vigilance plays a critical role in creating safer communities.