A Look At “Disorder”

Author

Bubba
30 Sep

Could rising disorder explain why Americans feel crime is going up even though the official stats say otherwise? (Manhattan Institute)

A new Manhattan Institute report: After a pandemic spike, violent crime in Chattanooga, Tennessee has fallen back to pre-2020 levels.

  • But, combined with a shortage of police officers, the focused response that led to the drop in major crime has also “led to levels of disorder and petty crime that remain somewhat elevated, compared with the pre-2020 baseline.”

  • 76% of Chattanooga residents consider crime and public safety to be major concerns and 51% of residents believe there is more violent crime in Chattanooga than before 2020.

  • A possible explanation for the discrepancy between perceptions of safety and falling violent crime is the increase in disorder: calls related to homelessness rose from 77 in 2019 to 268 in 2023, and calls about trash/litter have increased by 53%, from 5,400 in 2019 to an expected 6,400 in 2024.

Zoom out: In a new essay, Manhattan Institute fellow Charles Fain Lehman makes the case that what’s happening in Chattanooga may explain current perceptions of crime (while surveys show Americans think crime is up, FBI crime data says it’s fallen in recent years).

Lehman:

Disorder is not measured like crime—there is no system for aggregating measures of disorder across cities. But if you look for the signs, they are there. Retail theft, though hard to measure, has grown bad enough that major retailers now lock up their wares in many cities. The unsheltered homeless population has risen sharply. People seem to be controlling their dogs less. Road deaths have risen, even as vehicle miles driven declined, suggesting people are driving more irresponsibly. Public drug use in cities from San Francisco to Philadelphia has gotten bad enough to prompt crack-downs.

Bubba’s Two Cents

Crime is highly political in America, with both sides sometimes ignoring data that doesn’t fit their narrative. Lehman’s excellent essay quantifies the prevailing sense (as reflected in polls) that America’s gotten more lawless, despite falling violent crime. This is a much wiser approach to the crime debate than engaging in what Lehman calls, “crime-data trutherism.”