Partisanship shapes what Americans believe about crime

Polls released this week show that American views on national crime rates have moved closer to reality. But it is less likely that we will come to our senses than that partisanship will send the data in a more precise direction than normal.

‘Americans’ perception of crime in the US has improved’ writes Megan Brenan of Gallup, “with the percentage saying national crime increased by 13 points in the past year to 64%.” The number of respondents who say crime in the US is “extreme” or “very serious” also fell 7 points over the past year to 56 percent.

At first glance this is good news, because it increasingly reflects reality.

“Both FBI and BJS (Bureau of Justice Statistics) data show dramatic declines in violent and property crime in the US since the early 1990s, when crime in much of the country peaked,” said John Gramlich of Pew Research. wrote in April 2024. “Based on FBI data, violent crime fell 49 percent between 1993 and 2022,” while property crime fell 59 percent over the same period. The BJS statistics were even more impressive, Gramlich found, when he wrote that “U.S. violent and property crime rates each fell 71% between 1993 and 2022.”

And yet people don’t seem to believe the good news. “In 23 of 27 Gallup polls conducted since 1993, at least 60% of American adults have said there is more crime nationwide than the year before, despite the downward trend in crime rates for most of that period” , Gramlich added. According to a chart on the latest Gallup releaseThe last year in which fewer than 60 percent of respondents – 53 percent – ​​said crime had increased from the previous year was 2004.

While the latest Gallup survey continues this trend, with a clear majority of people still thinking crime is increasing, it also indicates that the numbers are moving in the right direction. But unfortunately, people’s perception is unlikely to simply correspond to reality.

As Gallup’s Brenan notes, partisanship appears to be playing the biggest role in the decline. “The October poll shows that partisans hold sharply different views on crime in the U.S., with Democrats’ much more positive perception driving the overall change since last year.” While 68 percent of independents and as many as 90 percent of Republicans said crime had risen in the past year, only 29 percent of Democrats said the same. (Overall crime fell in 2023 and the trend seems to be to do the same in 2024.)

This would make sense, as a pure show of partisanship: former President Donald Trump has supported each of his three candidacies by to claim that violent crime is out of control, so maybe Republicans will be more likely to believe him.

But the Gallup trend shows that since 1993, as violent crime rates have steadily declined, Americans’ perceptions have shifted based on their party affiliation and who occupied the White House: in 2004, during President George W.’s first term. Bush, the 53 percent of respondents who thought crime had increased were 39 percent of Republicans, but 67 percent of Democrats. (FBI statistics for that year indicated that both violent and property crime each decreased by just over 2 percent that year.)

On the other hand, Americans in general seem particularly bad at assessing crime trends: In 2014, 63 percent of all respondents told Gallup that crime had increased from the previous year, including 57 percent of Democrats and 72 percent of Republicans. Meanwhile, 2014 turned out to be the year least violent year in decades.

But Americans’ views on crime and criminal justice, however erratic and ill-informed they may seem, are extremely consistent. After all, while the president likely has very little direct influence over criminal justice trends in your local precinct, voters have the power to choose prosecutors, who wield enormous power in deciding who faces prison time and how punitive their sentence can be. And there is evidence that voters’ perceptions of crime influence the type of prosecutor they are likely to prefer.

“The growth in incarceration in the United States over the past four decades is historically unprecedented and internationally unique,” ​​a spokesperson said. Study from 2014 found. “Local elected officials—including state legislators who set sentencing policies and, in many places, judges and prosecutors who decided individual cases—were highly attuned to their constituents’ concerns about crime. Under these circumstances, penal policy evolved in a more punitive direction. “

Prosecutors recognize this too. In one Draft policy memorandum 2022Research candidate Chika Okafor of Harvard found that “being in an election year (district attorney) increases the total number of admissions per capita to state prisons and the total number of months sentenced per capita,” meaning that prosecutors are seeking earlier prison sentences and longer sentences for offenders during election years.

And despite the fact that with some exceptionsAlthough crime has been on an overall downward trend for three decades, America is still experiencing that trend highest incarceration rate from any country.

While polls may or may not seem particularly compelling as examples of political trends, the way people think about crime directly affects the way they vote—and the way the state treats those it arrests. As Okafor wrote, “collective approaches to transforming American public opinion, not just technocratic approaches to policy, can be instrumental in reducing mass incarceration.”