Safety is in the Eye of the Beholder: When Perceptions of Safety Don’t Match Reality, Data Can Help
The discrepancy between perception and reality should be top of mind for those working to leverage and continue the crime drops of the past year. When people feel safe, they are better able to invest and expand opportunities in their communities. Building this trust and celebrating increased public safety doesn’t require a massive overhaul of current systems or an intricate PR campaign. Rather, smart data practices can help to set the record straight and strengthen law enforcement agencies for years to come.
Recent reporting from New Orleans reveals a dissonance between public awareness and current crime data. Despite falling crime rates, there is still a prevalent notion that New Orleans East is not suited for expanded opportunities and retail investment. “Jeffrey Schwartz, Mayor Helena Moreno’s economic development director, said public safety improvements are always good for business and economic development in areas like New Orleans East.
But it'll take more than lowered crime rates to attract retail opportunities, Schwartz said.”
This problem is hardly unique to New Orleans. An August report from the Council on Criminal Justice reveals that “fear of crime is multifaceted” and not always directly correlated to the likelihood of a crime occurring. The report used polling to understand how much people feared an offense in comparison to how likely they thought they were to actually experience the offense. “An offense may show a sizable gap between fear and perceived risk even when both fear and perceived risk are relatively low. For example, fear of being slapped is ranked 26th, but the risk ranking is 16. In contrast, verbal harassment ranks 8th in fear, but first in perceived risk. In general, more serious offenses had the largest gaps between fear and perceived risk.”
Though not always rooted in numbers and facts, these fears should be taken seriously. When people feel unsafe, they are less likely to build communities and invest in an area. Increased atomization and slowed economic growth are contributing factors to a lack of public safety, and a likely eventual outcome of a disengaged, fearful population. Public officials can avoid a backslide and strengthen the systems that contributed to crime drops in the first place by ensuring that data is current, transparent, and accessible—and by using it in their own communications.
When agencies are equipped with data, they can target resources efficiently, identify hot spots for crime, and improve upon existing practices when they are too slow or ineffective. For instance, analyzing call and response times for emergencies, offering modern record management systems, and having the technology to understand where and when hot spots occur can go a long way. New Orleans has embraced this method and different departments have “have worked collaboratively in recent years to improve neighborhood conditions that often lead to crime, and to use data to target areas most in need of resources. They’ve worked to fix broken street lights, mitigate blighted property, open communication with business owners and residents…” Hopefully that trust built over time will lead to increased collaboration with economic development officials and business activity in the area.
Public facing crime dashboards can serve a different, but similarly vital role in squaring perception with reality and identifying areas for improvement. By making current data readily available, police departments can signal transparency to their respective communities and even guide lawmakers to make informed policy decisions. These dashboards can provide a broad range of insights that go far beyond crimes committed. This year, Ohio launched a statewide crime statistics dashboard that includes both arrest and conviction statistics. In New Orleans, the public safety dashboard goes into great detail and can filter its results down to individual neighborhoods. The New Orleans dashboard also includes up to date numbers regarding 911 calls, 311 calls, and response times.
A crime-riddled past does not have to define New Orleans East’s future, its economic development opportunities or its community relationships. By leveraging strong data, officials can both take residents’ fears seriously while also taking steps to build on recent progress, improving public safety while bringing perceptions of crime more closely in line with reality.