The crime problem is made up. And an amazing example of the power of propaganda to sway the thinking of an entire nation. Much as our individual psyches are filled with memories, old beliefs, admonitions from parents, etc. that must be addressed in order to raise consciousness, so must we ferret out the beliefs, etc. embedded in the national psyche and address those. I think this one is a major point of consciousness that could shift a lot.

I first became aware of the big lie about crime when, as a graduate student, I landed on “The Reaction to Crime Project”, an LEAA funded research project conducted by Northwestern’s Center for Urban Affairs, starting in 1976. My first assignment was a “literature survey” involving reading hundreds of studies and articles on crime statistics.

I was stunned to discover that the wide-spread perception of crime being rampant everywhere was basically a manufactured problem, created by changing how crime stats are reported with a lot of help from TV creating a national audience for news that until then was largely only locally reported.

In study after study and article after article covering several decades of research, I read that the old reporting was based on the probability of being a victim of any given crime. Then law enforcement decided to change to reporting gross numbers; i.e. total number of murders, total number of burglaries, etc. Since the population is always growing, the total numbers of crimes is pretty much guaranteed to grow. But through all the years of screaming about the awful, ever growing crime problem, the probability statistic–the chance of any given citizen being a victim–never changed.

For most crimes the PROBABILITY OF BEING A VICTIM HAS NOT CHANGED IN 100 YEARS unless you’re a male POC between the ages of 15 and 25. Take that in. You have no more chance of being burglarized or assaulted, etc. than the people in the 1930’s and 40’s who didn’t lock their doors because they felt so safe. The constant bombardment with “news” of the “terrible crime problem” has literally shifted an entire population from feeling safe to being convinced they live in a violent world where criminals are lurking around every corner.

The literature didn’t offer much of an explanation as to why the government decided to change reporting from probabilities to totals, but the first thing I noted was that it led to huge increases in budgets for law enforcement. And over time I could see how the change also made it easy to take the second step of blaming the huge “crime problem” on POC and immigrants even though statistics don’t support those conclusions either. These groups are unfairly targeted by law enforcement with little protest from the populace at large because everyone has bought into these made up tales of crimes and who commits them.

The LEAA project was a huge one, requiring a lot of funding. What shocked me once the literature review was complete, was that they were funding the research knowing that people’s fears about crime far exceeded the reality but they had no interest in trying to change that false perception.

The only thing they wanted us to do was figure out whether programs like Whistle Stop, community involvement, etc. could reduce the fear a little. In other words, whatever the original purposes were in government changing the reporting and creating the perception of rampant crime, LEAA didn’t want to take down the manufactured belief in rampant crime.

Over the years since my time on the Reaction to Crime project, I periodically checked in on the crime stats to see if there was any big change. There was not. Outside of certain neighborhoods and the young male POC demographic (and a few crimes that were added to the roster since then like car-jacking…) and more recently the mass shooting issue, the chance that you will be a victim of most crimes has not changed in 100 or more years.

Because people believe this false scenario, huge amounts of money are spent on policing and various law enforcement efforts in cities, towns, etc. in general instead of focusing funds on the programs that would reduce crime in the particular places where it tends to actually be rampant. Spending money on the fake problem instead of developing solutions for the real problems.

This is not the only instance over years of doing lots of research and reading wherein I’ve noted that politicians and the media manipulate “truth” in order to convince the populace to believe whatever they want them to believe. Because the belief is so widespread, I’ve brought it up over and over through the years and noted most people just glaze over when you try to tell them there really is no rampant crime problem. The belief is so ingrained, people can’t take in the truth.

How do we wake people up from the manipulation?

• https://www.legalexaminer.com/home-family/your-risk-of-being-a-crime-victim-likely-not-as-high-as-you-think/
• https://youtu.be/WmiFShBQDIs

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