Election Puzzle: Crime Is Down but People Feel Unsafe

Is crime down? Democrats point to the statistics on crime and tell us it is. Republicans say the statistics are wrong. Who’s right? Well the Dem’s are right that “violent crimes,” i.e. homicide, rape, aggravated assault, are down over a high point in 2020. But the Republicans are right, people aren’t feeling it.

People aren’t feeling it because while certain types of violent crime are down, a different category — social disorder — is up. What falls under “social disorder”? People urinating and defecating in public, shoplifting, public selling and consumption of illegal drugs, property crime, people shouting and threatening others on the bus, trash and dumping garbage cans, homeless encampments, reckless and aggressive driving, vandalism, and graffiti.

We got home from Japan to find a 40-foot RV parked across the street with a car in tow. It takes up most of the parking at a popular viewpoint park that had been used daily by hundreds of joggers and walkers, picture takers, and dog owners, among others. Usage by the general public is down now. But new users have arrived. People smoking fentanyl which they purchase from the known drug-dealers operating out of the RV.

Nothing much happens. A parking enforcement officer, who knows the RV and its occupants quite well, puts a ticket on the RV’s window. Eventually, there may be an attempt by the City to impound the RV, but so long as someone is inside, no impoundment action may take place. There is supposed to be a 72-hour limit on such parking, but the occupants know how the system works and can stretch their stay for two weeks before moving to the next spot and starting the cycle of warnings and tickets all over again.

No homicide or assault, true. But criminal activity and social disorder that makes people feel unsafe. Both are true. Crime is down. Disorder is up.

In his current podcast Ezra Klein explores how violent crime can be down but people feel more unsafe. The answer is what’s going on in our neighborhood.

I hate to find myself agreeing with Republicans, but public social disorder is widespread in this beautiful city, and Seattle is hardly unusual. (Yes, I do understand that Trump is a purveyor of social disorder himself, if of a different form.)

How has this come to pass? One answer is what you hear when you talk to neighbors about our current situation. “You can call the police, but nothing happens.” Or, “You can call the police, but they’re overwhelmed with other stuff.” One of the messages of 2020 to police departments was “police less.” Police got the message, and they stepped back. Cops resigned. Forces, as in Seattle, were cut to barebones or less.

Another reason for increased public disorder was that public prosecutors downgraded crimes that were once felonies to misdemeanors, and then turned a blind eye. So shoplifting has become routine here in our Ballard neighborhood, which means that drug stores either close altogether or lock up much of their merchandise.

A further factor is what I think of as a naive compassion that lumps criminal activity under the umbrella of “the less fortunate who need our help.” Or the tendency of progressives to view the world though the lens of two groups: oppressors and oppressed. For a more in-depth and philosophical look at the issue, check out my last blog.

More aggressive responses to social disorder are tagged as “criminalizing homelessness” or “criminalizing poverty.” Whether that is true or not, actual criminals like the drug dealers in the RV and gangs of shoplifters have slipped into the vacated spaces and thrived in the disorder and inability of government to do much more than hand-wringing.

What defines “social disorder?” Klein’s guest, Charles Lehman of the Manhattan Institute, had what seemed to me a useful definition. “The definition I like to offer is that disorder is the domination of public space for private purposes. Think about the different kinds of disorders that we talk about. We might talk about somebody defecating in public. We might talk about somebody sleeping in public. Somebody playing his music too loud on the subway. Somebody shooting up. Somebody yelling at strangers. Somebody engaging in prostitution or attempting to solicit for prostitution in public. What joins these behaviors, in my mind, is that they are private acts. They are things that we would conventionally do at home.”

The upshot is that public spaces — those that we as citizens share — are reduced and perceived as less safe, which only adds to widespread distrust and anxiety. It’s a vicious cycle.

In that previous blog I wrote of public toilets in Japan and how terrific they are. But they are just one particular of a more general difference between the two societies. In Japan public and social disorder is not tolerated, not just by the police, but more importantly by the public. There are things you just don’t do.

Here disorder is tolerated, some would say, encouraged. And that is one of the major factors making people feel that our society is in decline.