The Psychology of Crime Perception: Exploring Factors That Influence Public Opinion

Perceptions about growth or shrinkage in the frequency of crime are often in broad conflict with crime as represented by official data. This remains a major takeaway from the results of Gallup’s annual poll gauging respondents’ perception of the movement of crime. This year’s polling showed an overall decrease in respondents who believed there was more crime in the U.S. than one year ago, although the majority (64%) still believed crime had increased. This is the same percentage that answered this affirmatively in 2019. During 2020, and the post-pandemic years 2021-23, percentage responses ran in the high 70s. 

Gallup’s results also emphasize the difference in the partisan understanding of crime between Democrats and Republicans — 90% of Republican respondents believed crime was up from 2023 to 2024, while only 29% of Democrats believed crime had increased. Independent respondents landed closer to the poll's overall results, at 68%. These results over time reveal a trend where party members of the incumbent presidency tend to think crime is reducing. In recent years this trend has accelerated with differences in partisan perception of crime reaching the most extreme disparities recorded since the annual poll began in 1989.  

FBI crime statistics and public safety trends 2024 

The FBI’s most recent release of crime, the Quarterly Uniform Crime Report, comparing January through June of 2024 to the same period of 2023, suggests that levels of both violent crime and property crime reduced across all regions and city population sizes.  

In its latest annual release, The FBI’s Uniform Crime Reporting data (UCR) shows 2023 increased in Violent Crime to a total annual count higher than any year since 2012 but shows a continued long-term downward trend in property crime. The year 2021 features a sharp drop on both charts but due to comparatively low participation in the NIBRS transition, many commentators, statisticians, and criminologists are wary of this single year of data. 

Despite the increase in violent crimes and decrease in property crimes, it is important to note that the likelihood of being victimized by a property crime remains significantly higher than the likelihood of violent victimization. Violent crimes are much more rare than property crimes. UCR data overall shows a story of reducing crime. 

Understanding the relationship between disorder and crime fear 

Why and how does the perception of the public, media personalities, and politicians seem to differ so vastly from the data? As criminologists, statisticians, and journalists unpack this problem, an emerging emphasis is placed on the connection between public disorder, and perception of crime. 

Charles Fain Lehman, a fellow at the Manhattan Institute, investigated the perception of crime since 2020 in Chattanooga, Tennessee. Chattanooga follows a similar pattern seen nationally, where many crime types experienced an increase in the years following 2020, which peaked in 2022 and have since receded. Yet, the overall perception of crime rates and the risk of victimization remains high, contrary to the official data. In early 2024, 76% of polled citizens felt that crime and public safety in Chattanooga were a major issue and 51% believed that local violent crime had increased since 2020. 

While Lehman found no substantial or long-term increase in serious crimes like homicide, robbery, or sexual assault, he did find a sharp increase in signs of disorder such as requests to the city’s 311 service regarding litter, trash, and garbage as well as 311 requests mentioning homelessness. 

Impact of homelessness on crime perception in U.S. Cities

Disorder is a complex and abstract notion, with many definitions. In his blog The Causal Fallacy, Lehman defines disorder as the “domination of public space for private purposes.” This definition encompasses people sleeping in public spaces or converting public parks into ad hoc housing, public defecation, drug consumption, littering, and smaller antisocial infractions such as people playing music loudly in public without headphones. 

Several aspects of Lehman’s definition are concerned with the visibility of homelessness in communities. There is a broad perception by many across the nation in cities both large and small that homelessness has increased. In Chattanooga, Lehman cites a sharp rise in local homelessness. The Department of Housing and Urban Development runs an annual homeless count collecting data through the Continuum of Care (CoC) program. In 2021, the count did not include unsheltered persons, accounting for the sharp dip in total population. 

While CoC data demonstrates an increase in homeless populations from the late teens that steepened in the post-COVID-19 era, the data also provides historical context demonstrating the homelessness crisis was more severe in the early 2000s. 

Lehman’s definition and example touch on several facets of disruptive behavior that passersby may find unpleasant or distressing to share space with. Many of these behaviors are not crimes, and the ones that are criminal offenses are generally of a lower priority to law enforcement. These are less severe offenses than the index crimes the FBI builds its UCR data from. 

In Chattanooga, Lehman highlights a decrease in sworn officers since 2020 and suggests a change in officer population has also affected the ability of police to pursue these lesser violations. Chattanooga’s police ratio of 2.4 officers per 1,000 residents matches the national average. 

There are additional signs of disorder such as aggressive driving and traffic accidents. Motor vehicle-associated fatalities have increased since 2019, now on level with the early 2000s. 

Retail Crime and Shoplifting Trends 

Another sign of community disorder is broad increased reports of organized retail crime and shoplifting. While these crimes and their growth are difficult to statistically verify in official data, shoppers around the country report a greater number of goods locked up.

Conversations surrounding disorder’s relationship with crime are associated with the Broken Windows Theory, which posits that visual signs of dilapidation and disorder can increase crime on a granular local level. There has been much debate for and against the virtues and efficacy of the Broken Windows Theory.  

But this modern conversation about crime and disorder is not the same as the debate over whether disorder produces more crime; instead, it is about the sense of insecurity and fear of victimization that disorder produces. Prior empirical studies into the fear of crime highlight its connection to disorder. 

Crime Reduction Strategies

Many of the tactics oriented to tackle disorder are the same practices that can reduce crime, such as Crime Prevention Through Environmental Design, where orderly, well-lit spaces and natural barriers help to produce an informal sense of guardianship, a mutual investment in upkeep and maintenance of an area, and subtle but effective cues that support access control efforts or persons the space is intended for. 

Gallup’s annual polls capture a feeling of vulnerability and uncertainty, one that is not always consistently reflected by official crime data. But many other indicators can help to account for these feelings of alarm and unease broadly felt across the nation. 

The Pinkerton Crime Index is an adept tool for understanding crime on the neighborhood level as well as placing it in a national context. Pinkerton is an excellent partner in providing analysis of extant vulnerabilities and security-minded design and can provide end-to-end services ad hoc helping organizations protect their people, places, and assets.