Is crime on the rise?

[Belsnickel]

So, I was sitting around, this morning, sipping my coffee, doing the NYT crossword, and listening to podcasts when this one cam eon my feed.

https://www.wnycstudios.org/podcasts/otm/episodes/on-the-media-media-shoplifting-panic-ai-journalism-wrong

I know we have had a thread or threads on here about stores closing due to shoplifting and of course there are many discussions on here about crime rates and what not, but this was definitely an interesting listen that pushed against some of these narratives. The link also contains links to articles that are referenced in the podcast.

Some of the key takeaways from the listen:

• The value of loss due to shoplifting is going up, but not the rate of shoplifting. The change is due to the prices of goods increasing.
• Crime data is bad, reporting on it is bad, and we should not feel as bad as we do about crime.
• Many of the numbers surrounding shoplifting reporting are even worse than general crime statistics.
• There is not evidence that more relaxed laws/enforcement have a causal relationship to increased crime.
• Some of the reports on shoplifting came from one person citing a group that cited that person that cited that group...(see the problem?)
• While crime rates are on the decline, there is a perceived increase in crime that is higher than it has ever been based on polling.
  

Very interesting stuff. I know most of you, probably all of you, will just comment on this without listening to the podcast and reading the articles. But, I tried.