Crime stats should inform the public. Trump is misusing them to scare us instead.
The administration appears to have little regard for facts or good data on crime and terrorism.
By Philip M. Stinson February 10
Philip M. Stinson is an associate professor of criminal justice at Bowling Green State University.
President Trump wants the federal government to start publishing weekly lists of crimes committed by undocumented immigrants. An executive order on “Enhancing Public Safety in the Interior of the United States” that Trump signed last month calls for the reports, which would also identify “sanctuary jurisdictions,” cities and counties where local law enforcement authorities don’t report immigration status violations to the federal government.
But from my own work building a national database of crimes by police officers, I’ve learned that collecting and distributing reliable stats in real time may be much harder than Trump thinks. Especially for an administration that seems to have little regard for facts, good data or scientific integrity.
Trump regularly claimed in last year’s campaign that crime was worse than it really is, and he has continued to do so as president. “The murder rate in our country is the highest it’s been in 47 years,” Trump said Tuesday in a meeting with county sheriffs at the White House. “ … I’d say that in a speech and everybody was surprised, because the press doesn’t tell it like it is. It wasn’t to their advantage to say that.” By the FBI’s count, the murder rate is actually near its lowest point of the past five decades. The same day, White House aides insisted that the media had ignored or underreported 78 terrorist attacks, some of which had been among the biggest news stories of the past few years. A few weeks earlier, Trump claimed that “in Philadelphia, the murder rate has been steady — I mean just terribly increasing.” That, too, was false.
Presidents from both parties have used scary rhetoric for political purposes to tell us about some “most important problem” facing the nation during the war on crime and the war on drugs. But Trump’s White House seems determined to create confusion and uncertainty about crime and public safety, insisting that there’s far more danger than the data really shows. With the weekly report of crimes by undocumented immigrants, for instance, Trump seems to be assuming that such crimes are frequent and mostly take place in sanctuary jurisdictions. In fact, research has consistently shown that immigration is often associated with lower crime rates in some of the most disadvantaged urban neighborhoods across the country. Besides, an arrested person’s immigration status is often not known at the time of arrest. It is not clear what trustworthy statistics are readily available that would provide the information required by the order, or even how it would be collected.
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https://www.washingtonpost.com/posteverything/wp/2017/02/10/crime-stats-should-inform-the-public-trump-is-misusing-them-to-scare-us-instead/?utm_term=.76219c249fa0&wpisrc=nl_headlines&wpmm=1
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