Intro crime has become one of the biggest issues in U.S politics today with politicians and pundits alike preaching about a supposed epidemic of rising criminality but is crime really a national concern what does it even mean to say the U.S has a crime problem and is the issue really within High population Urban States as many June sires would have you believe or is the answer more complicated this is the The FBI United States what's the crime statistics say about the country well that's the first problem it's almost impossible to know when National crime data is cited more often than not it comes courtesy of the FBI although there are other government sources tracking statistics still the FBI's method are extremely flawed and in no way paint an accurate picture of what's happening on the ground for one thing it only counts crimes that have been reported to the authorities but nearly half of serious violent crimes go unreported on top of that not every agency reports its complete data in fact in 2021 only 37 percent gave all of their info to the FBI how can we possibly draw any conclusions from that the truth is crime is a local issue and talking about it in Broad terms only obscures the the real problems we face and the sensible solutions that can keep people safe so let's focus on murder rates on the state Murder Rates level for some reason TV Talking Heads love to fear Monger about crime in New York and California so let's start there in 2020 which has the most recent complete data available the homicide rate in California was 6.1 per 100 000 people New York was 4.7 per 100 000. how does that stack up to more rural States quite well in fact neither are among the top 10 states for homicides New York has never even been in the top 25 this Century so which are Mississippi tops the list with a homicide rate of 20.5 Louisiana is just below with 19.9 followed by Alabama with 14.2 these Crime in Cities aren't bastions of progressive police reform or new methods of rehabilitative justice and yet their murder rates vastly eclipsed the so-called Coastal Elite states that take up so much oxygen on the airwaves even then State data doesn't show the whole picture either because crime is highly concentrated in cities which makes sense since that's where most of the people are and within cities themselves a large portion of violent crimes occur in specific neighbor hoods these hot spots are more often than not some of the most poverty-stricken neighborhoods within the city predominantly populated by people of color which means that low-income black and Latin folks are more likely to become the victims of violent crimes their countless systemic and structural reasons for this disparity whether it's past or current segregation a lack of housing schools and Community Resources or experiences with police brutality making residents reluctant to call authorities these disadvantages establish a feedback loop that creates the perfect conditions for more violence and when they are so localized and so embedded in our history through racist laws and practices like redlining that have been occurring for decades if not centuries how can we possibly talk about the issue on a national level real change takes time money and effort along with the will to make things better on a local scale but when it comes to crime in this country more often than not it's purely politics