After Deanne passed along Decatur’s annual crime trends by year from DPD yesterday, Matt was good enough to put the trends into a graph for us so the information could all be better visualized. Click the graph above to enlarge.
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interesting. in the aggregate, crime is trending down by 20% from its high. too bad there wasn’t a graph showing the uptrend of our paranoia. one of the dominant features of the American zeitgeist is our fear of (mostly) imagined threats lurking behind every corner.
USA!
USA!
USA!
My working theory is that it’s not so much an American trait, but a part of the generally neurotic, obsessively risk-averse upper middle class.
Yes, particularly the American, neurotic, obsessively risk- averse upper middle class.
i think it’s a particularly American phenomenon.
example: relative to the actual threats posed, our country’s military and homeland security budgets are disproportionally gargantuan. that’s not power—that’s fear, and the osmotic effect this has on our population is profound.
and yes, the affluent are particularly neurotic—it’s a luxury the poor can’t afford.
as a brilliant philosopher once said, “mo money, mo problems”.
Which is why I’m glad this chart was posted and I hope it gets as much attention as the ones about individual crimes. I admit to being guilty myself of reflexively broaching the subject of spending more money on police, mostly because of what I’ve seen here and on other sites. Not that there isn’t value to reporting information about those crimes, but it’s important to keep things in perspective.
People worry about crime – but what is really dangerous is driving an automobile! In Decatur we drive much less than those in the distant suburbs, and we are therefore much safer overall.
True. You have a greater chance of being in a serious car accident than being a victim of crime, which is what my wife tells her coworkers when they ask about “safety” on the MARTA train.
I agree to an extent, though that’s the first time I’ve heard neurosis referred to as a luxury!
“i think it’s a particularly American phenomenon.” Probably because unlike most countries, America has fully armed 13-17 year-olds roaming the streets. The stakes are high when juvenile criminals carry guns. But call it paranoia if you want.
Fair point. But it’s members of the underclass who are much more likely to be victims of them than members of the upper-middle class.
Look at the spike we had from 2005-2008 versus the much smaller one over the last two years. Would anyone have thought that was the case? Now couple that with the fact that social media use has exploded since 2008.
During the same time period as this graph the population has increased by 10-15%.
Yep. So per capita the crime rate has dropped even more than it appears from that graph.
I would also factor in an increase in reporting crime since the 1990s – particularly property crimes. Thus the rate of actual occurrences may have declined even further.
Economists know that a poor economy reduces crime
Our recession started in early to mid 2008 and ended (sorta) in 2009 and for real in 2011.
Seems like Decatur fits the trend.
New list is out that ranks the Top 50 safest cities in Georgia. Decatur is #38. Not too shabby, all things considered. Safer than Doraville and Lawerenceville. http://www.safewise.com/blog/50-safest-cities-georgia/
How many cities are there in Ga?
About 370.
Over 500
Are you including counties in that?
722 cities
159 counties
If you trust wikipedia it says:
“As of May 2013, there were 536 incorporated municipalities in the U.S. state of Georgia. The municipalities are labelled cities or towns, although there is no legal difference between a city or town in Georgia..”
That’s how I got about 370, by subtracting the 159 counties from the number of incorporated municipalities. I mistakenly thought the 536 number included counties.
I notice that the article says top 50 cities with population over 5,000.
Well that would probably knock about a hundred off the list.
I would like to see a graph that correlates the crime rates to when the schools are out. Seems like there’s been a noticeable uptick during the Decatur schools’ Winter Break this past week. There was definitely more crime over the summer.
I haven’t seen any stats lately, but I’m pretty sure crime is always higher everywhere in the summer and around holidays like Christmas.
Are there any statistics that show crime rates south of Ponce v. north of Ponce?
I think the property crime bars are accidentally following the total crime numbers. They are precisely correlated without leaving any room for the violent crimes.
I think correcting it will still show a general downward trend but might raise the recent property crime bars . . .
The property crime numbers and the violent crime numbers are stacked. The violent crime is at the bottom of each bar in red.