Surveys show people know crime rates are up. Democrats argue that crime rates are down, they cite arrest rates for murder, other violent crimes, and property crimes.
The arrest rates are truly down, but the offense rates are not down, at least for large cities. RealClearPolitics argues "Law Enforcement Collapse Masks Rising Crime Rates."
FBI data shows arrest rates plummeted over the last few years, starting in 2020. For cities with over 1 million people, the arrest rate for reported violent crime averaged 41% in the 24 years from 1996 to 2019, but it dropped to 20.3% in 2022 – a 50% drop. The lowest arrest rate in the preceding 24 years before COVID-19 was 32.6%. That is still 61% higher than the rate in 2022.
The arrest rate for murder fell by 37%, rape by 58%, robbery by 50%, and aggravated assault by 54%. The collapse in the arrest rate for property crime is even more dramatic. The average arrest rate for reported property crime fell from an average of 13% in the 25 years from 1996 to 2021 to 4.5% – a 64% drop.
All of the above is for reported crime only; as arrest rates drop, so does the willingness to report crime.
If you look at arrests as a percentage of all crime (reported and unreported), in these large cities only 8% of all violent crime and 1% of all property crime results in an arrest.
And then, big city prosecutors aren't charging many of those actually arrested. Knowing this, police aren't as likely to arrest. The enforcement of our laws is a mess, soft-on-crime prosecutors bear much of the blame.
It is no longer clear that crime doesn't pay. It is increasingly clear that certain kinds of retail businesses located in big cities suffer unsustainable losses.
