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Colton Rackley
Professor Justin Jory
English 2010
8 October 2015
Are We really in more danger?
The epidemic of police shootings and violent crime is majorly prominent in
todays society. The news and social media have made a lot of U.S. citizens believe that
the crime ratesbe it murder, rape, burglary, or assault, are actually increasing to what
was the darker times of the late 1960s, and all the deaths that segregation, recession,
and war brought. But is this really the case? Are we all unsafe? Is the police shootings
and school shootings going on in our country a visible cue that the world is surely
ending? News media is no doubt feeding us all of the right statistics, but we are only
seeing the bad becuase thats what makes money. Our social media favorites such as
Facebook and Twitter are doing the same thing. Some of the data I have uncovered
may actually surprise you.

Data
I too at first thought that everything was going off the hinges because of the
information I was receiving via news and social media, but to back up those who said
that we actually are safer now, a recent Gallup survey from the year of 2014 shows that
infact 63% of people believe that crime rates are actually increasing yearly. This is a
little bit lower than the 2009 survey, when 74% of people stated that crime rates are
increasing. The percentage of people who think crime is up nationally, actually think
crime is down in their respective area. Maybe a little bit of a case of the its not

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happening over here. Nationally speaking, serious crime such as murder, burglary,
assault, and drug charges since 1994 have actually been on a steady decline up to
2010. The idea that rates are rising could be based on the fact that most Americans
hear news about something happening somewhere else in the country, and therefore
have a perception that this is a trend everywhere else. A funny Statistic is that crime is
actually as low as it was when gas only costed 29 cents per gallon.
According to a graph posted by David K. Sutton, and the Article he wrote on
Leftcall.com, violent crime rates are on a 50 year low. The graph looks like this:

This is crime rates per 100,000 people from the years 1960-2010. As you can
see violent crime was on a steady increase from the late 60s up until the peak if the
drug cartel era of the late 80s and early 90s. After that, and continuing through current

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times it has been declining. Picking out the most gruesome crime in general, murder
rates are as low today as they were in 1962, about 4.8 people out of every 100,000.
Whats the big deal then? Why as a country do we think we are in shambles and
that the America we all know and love is going downhill quickly? Its because every day
when we turn on the TV to watch the daily news, According to Suttons research, the
first 10 minutes are actually all about murders, robbery, fires and so on. The news
stations are now focusing most of their attention on these issues because thats what
brings people in to watch, thats what gets those ratings up and in turn brings more
money. Sutton states, I believe that all news should be a public service, if its not
helping the public out in some way, news stations shouldnt be broadcasting it. I think
that with the media constantly showing criminal activity in their episodes, it desensitizes
us to think that this is such a normal thing, and that this much crime is happening
everywhere.
Social media plays a large if not larger role than news broadcasting does for getting this
information. Technology is at an all time peak for our day and age, with everyone
owning smartphones, tablets, smartwatches and things of the like. This makes
searching for information as easy as the click of a button, or simply asking Siri a
question using your voice. At this very moment you could log into facebook or twitter
and in the first five or ten minutes of scrolling, you will see the link to an article titled
Police Shooting, or Black citizen assaulted by police. People as young as 8 years old
have access to reading these articles on a daily basis. It seems as if social media sites
are focusing on this material because it makes their app or company profit by the
millions of hits they get on the publication. Theres a terrible saying that if it bleeds, it

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leads (in hits per article.) According to Lauren Holmes, publisher of the Article on
California State University's Website regarding social media, a recent Facebook study
was done showing that 73% of news was related to entertainment and celebrities, and
65% is related to national and local news.
In conclusion this information is intended to educate the general public. We need
to be doing more research on things before just believing the TV or your smartphone.
Crime rates are on a steady decrease, but the way we perceive information today is so
much different than it was in the past. When times were less safe, you had to either
hear by word of mouth, or tune into the radio to hear about some of the things going on
in your town. Now that we have so many different media outlets we are getting every
small altercation between police and civilians, and its blowing up our news feeds. We
need to start spreading positive news stories, and sharing community success stories
so that we can truly understand how great of a nation we really live in. Please enjoy the
infographic I have created below which includes the most important aspects of the
essay.

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Works Cited
Holmes, Lauren. Social media is changing the news- For the bad and the good.
http://sundial.csun.edu/. Web. 8 October 2015.
Mccarthy, Justin. Most Americans Still See Crime Up Over Last Year.
http://www.gallup.com/. Web. October 9 2015.
Sutton, David. U.S Crime Rates 1960-2010: The Facts Might Surprise You.
Leftcall.com. Web. October 9 2015.

U.S. Crime Rates

1960-2010: The Facts Might Surprise

You

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