Maybe we're just watching too much television. Public opinion polls consistently show crime at the top of Americans' concerns. Most people seem to believe crime is going up. But FBI reports released last week show that in the first half of 1999, lawbreaking fell 10 percent to the lowest levels in 25 years. These latest figures continue the trend of the past six or seven years in which statistics show crime is becoming less frequent.
Crime makes the news, for one thing.
TV stations report crime. That's one of their jobs. It's not news, unfortunately, that a crime doesn't occur, only that it does. It's the aberrations from the norm that draw attention, and the further from the norm, the more media attention is likely to follow. TV viewers often see as many murders in an hour as Abilene might have in an entire year.