This is why fear of crime is so high

Did you hear the good news? Crime is massively down in the last 10 years! Hurrah!

Violent crime is down by a quarter, a more rapid fall than the average across Europe. Rejoice!

The number of people treated in hospitals after violent incidents is down 14%. Booyah!

Did you not see all the front pages of the newspapers today leading with this story? You didn't? Oh hang on a minute yes, they didn't splash it all over their front pages my mistake.

I learned about it on the BBC News at 10 last night. The story was at about 10:20, probably about seventh or so in the running order.

The thing is, if a report had come out saying crime had been up hugely in the last 10 years, that hospital admissions for violence had increased by 14% and violence was up by 25% it would likely have been the main story on most newspapers and would have been leading the TV news tonight.*

But because it is a "good news story" the media considers it to be less important hence no front-page splashes and by the evening news relegated to the second half of the programme.

This is why we have the bizarre situation where crime has been falling for a very long time and simultaneously fear of crime is going up. Bad news sells so the perception is that horrible crimes are happening more and more as these are reported ad nauseum while the real picture that things are getting better seldom gets a look in.


*I tweeted about this and a number of BBC people pointed out that Radio 4 Today and BBC Breakfast covered the story as a lead item. That is fair enough and I didn't see them but my point still remains that if the story had been "bad news" it would I am sure have led the 10 O'Clock news (or been very near the top) rather than so far down the running order. The BBC are better than most but are not immune from this bias towards negative stories.