There is no rise in crime, but people polled say they believe there is. It's a textbook case of Chomsky's manufactured consent phenomena. It's not a drive-by comment, it's simply concise.
Crime reported to police is fairly constant regardless of crime levels. As crime goes up people just stop reporting minor things that the police now no longer has time to handle, making the number reports not change. This makes the crime maps fairly useless, you'd think that Switzerland and Chicago has similar levels of theft since the amount of crime reports are the same, yet Switzerland is as safe a place can get while Chicago is a notorious crime area.
Therefore hard stats like "homicide rate" or soft stats like "perceived crime" are the only ones that matters.
Therefore hard stats like "homicide rate" or soft stats like "perceived crime" are the only ones that matters.