Violent Crime

Media Misperceptions and Violent Crime

Many Americans believe that violent crime is becoming more of a social problem despite the decline in violent crime rates. In fact, violent crime rates in the past 2 decades peaked in 1994 and have been steadily declining ever since then. One of the main reasons for this misperception is that the media focus on violent crimes, in both television crime dramas and news coverage. Crime is the fourth largest category of news coverage, after sports, business, and general interest/ entertainment categories. Some studies show that about one fourth of crimes that are reported in the news are murders, although its percentage of total crime is quite low (generally under 0.1 percent) and it constitutes only 1 percent of all violent crime.

The UCR Crime Clock in 2006 revealed that every 30.9 minutes a murder occurred, every 5.7 minutes a forcible rape, a robbery every 1.2 minutes, and an aggravated assault every 37 seconds. Clearly, murder is the least common of the aforementioned crimes. Although murder grabs the newsmakers' attention, not all murders are equally likely to show up in the news. Rather, homicides involving unusual victims, like children or the elderly, or homicides involving celebrities are more likely to make the news. Additionally, even though about 90 percent of all homicides are intraracial, the media are more likely to report on a homicide wherein an African American kills a Caucasian.

Generally, when people think of violent crimes, they think of crimes committed by strangers. Again, this is based on media portrayals of crime in which the media focus on the rarer, more sensational crimes involving strangers. Yet crimes like child abuse, sibling abuse, elder abuse, and intimate partner abuse are much more common than assaults by strangers, and the violence committed by a loved one is often more likely to have a longer-lasting negative effect on the victim. Further, even in the most violent of crimes—murder—perpetrator and victim are more likely to have known one another.

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