By Amaury Abreu
Lancaster, PA- Today we were able to do a thorough review on crime statistics and answer the question of “is crime on the rise or not?”
Before we share data about crime we must define it first. According to the Oxford dictionary crime is any action that constitutes a violation and is punishable by the law of the state. Based on that definition we were able to find that data around crime is broad and not unified.
Some aspects crime have decreased but other aspects of crime have increased to some degree. The argument leads for us to say that we need to create better systems in how we track data around crime instead of saying that crime is on the rise or declining.
We can make the argument as well that not all crime is reported therefore there could be gaps in the available information about how much actual crime is happening.
When we make assessments about crime from a political point of view, the goal is usually to appeal to the emotional biases that people from a certain political spectrum may have therefore they find themselves believing what they want to believe without really looking at the objective data.
Another mistake that is made when looking at the topic of crime is where some individuals do not pursue further independent research on the topic and instead accept the information given to them.
Why would that be? Well we can assume that it is easier to accept someone else’s research than engaging in our own because not everyone has the time or energy to dedicate themselves to find more data and inform themselves
Author: Amaury Abreu
