Crime is falling – but the public doesn’t feel safer, study finds

Crime levels are falling for most offences across the UK – but the public doesn’t necessarily feel safer. It’s a human trait to focus on frightening information in the news or on social media – but it could also mean that people are more fearful about crime than they need to be. Reform UK’s leader Nigel Farage claimed last month that “everyone knows” law and order in the UK is in a worse place than it was five or ten years ago. Farage was launching a new Reform policy document called Keeping Criminals Behind Bars. More than eight in ten of the British public really do believe that crime has gone up in the past few years. But as a study I was recently involved in shows, this sense of increasing lawlessness is based on very faulty perceptions of trends in actual crime rates. Eight in ten of the UK public think mobile phone thefts have increased since 2010 and around six in ten believe both vehicle-related thefts and burglary have increased. In fact, all are down by 50% or more over that time period. These figures are based on the Crime Survey for England and Wales, which Farage has criticised as no longer fit for purpose. There are real challenges in accurately tracking crime over time, but the Office for Statistics Regulation recently backed the study as a robust source of data on crime trends. In any case, it is clear from our study that overly negative views of crime cannot be fully explained by one source being faulty. The murder rate, measured by police crime statistics and difficult to argue with, has come down 20% since 2010. But our study found that two-thirds of the public think the number of murders has increased or remained the same. Where do these views come from? Our sense that things are going downhill extends to many features of criminal justice. Police numbers in England and Wales have increased by 20% since 2018, but only 4% of us get that right. Two-thirds think numbers have fallen. We’re particularly wrong when our concerns about different areas of life connect, for example, when crime is linked to immigration. On average, we guess that 30% of those cautioned or convicted of sexual offences are foreign nationals, when the actual figure is 15%. Reform UK supporters guess it’s 50%. This starts to point to some of the reasons why we are so wrong about so much when it comes to crime. Our perceptions of reality are more tied to emotional reactions and identity than a careful study of the statistics. We are partly sending signals about what’s worrying us. When explaining misperceptions, the key reasons break down into two interlinked groups: how we think and what we’re told. The first covers the biases and mental shortcuts that can mislead us. This is where, for example, humans are just wired to pay more attention to negative information as it often signals a threat. The media, politicians and social media platforms know people engage more actively with that sort of information, so they feed them more of it. This interplay between how people think and what they’re told reinforces an overly negative view of reality. The personal consequences of this are real, with clear evidence that an overblown fear of crime can have negative effects on wellbeing. Academics distinguish between a “functional” fear of crime – those times when it’s sensible to take precautions – and “dysfunctional” fear, which means people unnecessarily limit what they do or are more anxious than they should be. Reform UK’s supporters’ perceptions of crime are often a long way from the truth. EPA/ANDY RAIN This is not new. Back in 2010, eight in ten people wrongly thought crime was increasing, exactly the same as today. And in 2008, I ran a study on why the government at that time was getting no credit for falling crime rates, and came to very similar conclusions. But some things have changed. Today the information environment is much more fragmented and the spectrum of political identities more polarised, from Reform UK at one end to Green supporters at the other. This results in opposing views of the same realities. Some 72% of Reform supporters think that ethnic or religious minorities receive more lenient sentences than others, while only 5% of Green supporters agree. And 51% of Greens believe minorities actually receive harsher sentences. We know people look for and believe information that fits their views, and try to ignore or discredit information that doesn’t. The information environment and the wider divides in our politics supercharges that. I wrote a book, The Perils of Perception, in 2018 on misperceptions of all sorts of social realities. It showed that, as far as we can tell from similar questions asked in the 1950s, the public as a whole is no more wrong today than then. In some ways this is reassuring. But what I was concerned about when I wrote the book is actually happening now. The real risk is not people becoming more wrong, but they are becoming more convinced that their own version of reality is the right one and that the other side is deliberately lying to themselves and to us. When that utter belief in different realities aligns with polarised political identities, you get entrenched division and no room for compromise. Everyone is entitled to their own opinions on crime and what the country should do about it. But no one is entitled to their own facts. This article features references to books that have been included for editorial reasons, and may contain links to bookshop.org. If you click on one of the links and go on to buy something from bookshop.org The Conversation UK may earn a commission.