And yet, public disorder is increasing. Sure, it is better than the 90s, but that can hardly be the standard. Those days were awful, we can and should do much better than that.
Which is it, crime or disorder? These are not the same thing.
In terms of actual crime, we're doing about as well as we were back in the late '50s.
You sound like many people here in Seattle who gripe about "public safety", but this is a very safe city - it's kind of absurd. When you press them on it, you find out that they simply don't like to look at homeless people, or junkies, and they mistake the discomfort they feel when witnessing such sights for actual danger.
Statistics show that homeless people and street junkies are far more likely to be the victims than the perpetrators of violent crime. Merely seeing them does not harm you; nor are they likely to do anything which would harm you.
I'm a little suspect of any claims or numbers outside of murder counts nowadays. Unreported crime was an issue before but now that police have embraced a sort of slacker/work-to-rule/soft-strike attitude to their jobs since they don't feel appreciated after civilians dared to protest their bad behavior, there's a feedback loop of: crime happens, cops are called, nothing is done, another crime happens, no one bothers to report it. It's not just the cops that are a problem either, the revolving door where criminals that do get brought in are right back out on bail is demoralizing cops and civilians alike. If real crime rates were decreasing, wouldn't we see the system that handles them also improving? Instead it looks like a shit show, thus the numbers are probably kinda bullshit.
Every serious study of this was done by people entirely aware of that problem, who use multiple data sources to mitigate the effect. And yet every time this comes up on HN a bunch of posters are all “well I push buttons on keyboards for a living, so I know better than experts in every other field, even about their own field!”
I’ve seen posters complaining about unreported crimes on here in response to posts citing studies that directly and prominently address that exact problem, because I guess they just assume everyone in the social sciences is a total dipshit who can’t possibly have thought of this obvious thing (and didn’t bother to read the study and perhaps learn something).
Victimization surveys agree with police report data. Crime’s down in general, way down in some cities, and violent crime especially is down, versus the 90s, and very much so versus any decade before that. There’s been a little bump post-Covid but it’s not ongoing and last I checked it was trending back down again, and it wasn’t anywhere near wiping out the progress from before.