7 ms·

I know this perception is certainly true in my family. At any major family gathering it always seems to come up that everything is "so much worse" and "more dan

I know this perception is certainly true in my family. At any major family gathering it always seems to come up that everything is "so much worse" and "more dangerous than it used to be." "We used to just leave the doors unlocked and no one cared - now you can't leave anything unattended or it'll walk off!" And yet this is based on no evidence at all. If I ask if they've had anything stolen, the answer is always no; then they justify that result because they always lock things up! Sigh.

randallsquared 17y ago
If I ask if they've had anything stolen, the answer is always no; then they justify that result because they always lock things up! Maybe that's actually part of it. A culture of suspicion would seem likely to make crime less likely to be successful, so perhaps worried vigilance is part of why crime is decreasing. Edit: Underreporting might explain some of this apparent decrease, too. If you think there's essentially no hope of recovering what was lost, you might well not bother reporting a crime, and you're less likely to think that the police can be effective for you if it seems as though they're ineffective in general. Last spring, I had my G1 stolen right out of my hands while I was texting on it, in downtown DC. I didn't even realize it was taken at first; I thought I'd dropped it because someone bumped me, so it took a few seconds to even look for the thief, and by that point he was just going around the corner. If I had reported it, I wouldn't have been able to give a description other than general skin color, build, and clothing, and 90% of the people around me were wearing the same jeans-and-red-shirt as the thief (a Capitals game night). With less than a 1% chance of getting my phone back, and no insurance on it, I didn't bother to spend the next coupla hours of my life complaining to the police about it; that would have just made things worse for me.
- palish 17y ago
  Why would anyone bother stealing a cell phone? They're easy to flag as "stolen" and become useless at that point.
  - rdouble 17y ago
    Some people just enjoy stealing things.
  - BigZaphod 17y ago
    Maybe he was a secret agent on a mission and he needed to call the CIA RIGHT NOW to report some amazing world-saving discovery! By giving up his phone, he could have been SAVING THE WORLD!
  - randallsquared 17y ago
    I assume you can just flash it to a new serial number, but I don't know that much about it. The T-Mobile folks didn't seem surprised when I said it had been stolen, and had a procedure to cut off the sim pronto, so it's not too unusual.
lionhearted 17y ago
I remember having to explain to my grandmother than New York City is incredibly safe and so don't be worried. Her reaction to me working in Manhattan and spending time with my girlfriend in Queens, or worse, going to a party in Harlem - she reacted like I was going off into a warzone. No grandma, New York is a very safe place these days. She's almost 90 and I finally got her to visit NY when I was passing through on my way back from Europe last year. It was near Christmas, so we went to the Rockefeller Center, saw the tree, and saw a Broadway show and she loved it all. She kept being amazed at how little crime there was, like she was expecting robberies and muggings and cars lit on fire and flipped over every other block.
CWuestefeld 17y ago
This goes much wider than crime. When I was growing up in the '70s I used to ride my bike everywhere. Even at 10 years old I was riding clear across town, with absolutely no supervision. What parent allows their kids to do that today? One of the places I'd ride to during the summer was a nearby river. We'd all go swimming there, jumping off the bridge and such. But who would ever go swimming in some river now, despite the fact that water pollution is far better now than it was 30-35 years ago? Full disclosure: I was hit by cars twice while on my bike. And at the river I once dove off the rope swing head first and let go where the water was only 3-4 feet deep, so I'm darned lucky I didn't break my neck and drown. But I did survive.
- Dove 17y ago
  A favorite blog I read, Free Range Kids, follows this trend in parenting and attempts to counter it. http://freerangekids.wordpress.com/ http://freerangekids.wordpress.com/ The dangers to children from very mundane sources and activities seem just as exaggerated as the dangers from crime. The trend has been developing for a long time, too. When I look at the sort of stuff my dad got to play with as a kid in the 50's, I'm downright jealous.

randallsquared 17y ago

If I ask if they've had anything stolen, the answer is always no; then they justify that result because they always lock things up! Maybe that's actually part of it. A culture of suspicion would seem likely to make crime less likely to be successful, so perhaps worried vigilance is part of why crime is decreasing. Edit: Underreporting might explain some of this apparent decrease, too. If you think there's essentially no hope of recovering what was lost, you might well not bother reporting a crime, and you're less likely to think that the police can be effective for you if it seems as though they're ineffective in general. Last spring, I had my G1 stolen right out of my hands while I was texting on it, in downtown DC. I didn't even realize it was taken at first; I thought I'd dropped it because someone bumped me, so it took a few seconds to even look for the thief, and by that point he was just going around the corner. If I had reported it, I wouldn't have been able to give a description other than general skin color, build, and clothing, and 90% of the people around me were wearing the same jeans-and-red-shirt as the thief (a Capitals game night). With less than a 1% chance of getting my phone back, and no insurance on it, I didn't bother to spend the next coupla hours of my life complaining to the police about it; that would have just made things worse for me.

palish 17y ago
Why would anyone bother stealing a cell phone? They're easy to flag as "stolen" and become useless at that point.
- rdouble 17y ago
  Some people just enjoy stealing things.
- BigZaphod 17y ago
  Maybe he was a secret agent on a mission and he needed to call the CIA RIGHT NOW to report some amazing world-saving discovery! By giving up his phone, he could have been SAVING THE WORLD!
- randallsquared 17y ago
  I assume you can just flash it to a new serial number, but I don't know that much about it. The T-Mobile folks didn't seem surprised when I said it had been stolen, and had a procedure to cut off the sim pronto, so it's not too unusual.

lionhearted 17y ago

I remember having to explain to my grandmother than New York City is incredibly safe and so don't be worried. Her reaction to me working in Manhattan and spending time with my girlfriend in Queens, or worse, going to a party in Harlem - she reacted like I was going off into a warzone. No grandma, New York is a very safe place these days. She's almost 90 and I finally got her to visit NY when I was passing through on my way back from Europe last year. It was near Christmas, so we went to the Rockefeller Center, saw the tree, and saw a Broadway show and she loved it all. She kept being amazed at how little crime there was, like she was expecting robberies and muggings and cars lit on fire and flipped over every other block.

CWuestefeld 17y ago

This goes much wider than crime. When I was growing up in the '70s I used to ride my bike everywhere. Even at 10 years old I was riding clear across town, with absolutely no supervision. What parent allows their kids to do that today? One of the places I'd ride to during the summer was a nearby river. We'd all go swimming there, jumping off the bridge and such. But who would ever go swimming in some river now, despite the fact that water pollution is far better now than it was 30-35 years ago? Full disclosure: I was hit by cars twice while on my bike. And at the river I once dove off the rope swing head first and let go where the water was only 3-4 feet deep, so I'm darned lucky I didn't break my neck and drown. But I did survive.

Dove 17y ago
A favorite blog I read, Free Range Kids, follows this trend in parenting and attempts to counter it. http://freerangekids.wordpress.com/ http://freerangekids.wordpress.com/ The dangers to children from very mundane sources and activities seem just as exaggerated as the dangers from crime. The trend has been developing for a long time, too. When I look at the sort of stuff my dad got to play with as a kid in the 50's, I'm downright jealous.