
Scare stories about crime have been a staple of Republican campaign ads for decades. This year is the worst I’ve ever seen. That’s a big part of the reason that fear of crime is rising, even when crime is not.
In Minnesota, lying Republican ads attack Governor Tim Walz and Attorney General Keith Ellison. Even Fox News, never a Democratic partisan, calls one of the Republican ads a “five-alarm falsehood.”
Finding facts about crime rates is complicated. The most reliable numbers come from FBI and Bureau of Justice Statistics reports. Even these two sources are incomplete, though they are the best we have. FBI statistics rely on voluntary reporting by local police departments. Complicating matters further, the FBI just changed some of the ways it compiles reports.
With that caveat, the official numbers and reports are still 100 percent more reliable than political attack ads or “gut feelings” about crime. I’ve been reading and collecting news reports, and this post is a brief summary, with links to articles that I found most informative.
Continue reading