Lately, it seems that fears of menace and danger have been expressed with unusual vehemence at the national and local level. Most of these fears are not based in fact, but because we treat our fears as real they are real in their consequences.

We fear that crime is worsening in America. In every year since 2001, a majority of respondents to a Gallup poll have declared that there has been more crime in the United States than the year before. A full seven out of 10 respondents to the Gallup poll last month declared that crime has gotten worse in the nation.

While most of us fear that crime is worsening, actual reports from police officers in the Uniform Crime Reports and from crime victims via the National Crime Victimization Survey show that crime rates have sharply fallen since 2001 across the United States (violent crime rates are down 28 percent from 2001-2014; property crime rates are down 29 percent).

We especially fear for our children’s lives while in school. In that same Gallup Poll conducted last month, one in three respondents reported worrying that their child would be hurt while in school. Newspapers have declared the existence of a “school shooting epidemic.”

However, the latest available data from the National Center for Educational Statistics show that over the last 20 years, the absolute number of shooting deaths in American schools has gone down 44 percent even as the number of school-aged children in America has gone up 24 percent. The same data show the risk of our children being slain in school is infinitesimally small, a mere 1 in 4 million. The risk of our children being killed outside of school is 80 times higher than the risk they’ll be killed in school.

One in three Americans indicated in last month’s ABC/Washington Post poll that immigrants weaken our nation. For many years a majority of respondents to the Gallup poll have indicated that immigrants worsen crime and cost taxpayers through their indolence.

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But studies by the Migration Policy Institute and data from the U.S. Census Bureau’s American Community Survey demonstrate that foreign-born residents of the United States are incarcerated at a lower rate than American-born citizens. According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, the labor force participation of immigrants is 66 percent, higher than the labor force participation of American-born citizens.

Social science studies show that crime rates are getting significantly better, that our schools are safe, and that immigrants work harder and commit crimes less often than citizens.

But because we fear that crime is worsening, that our children are at significant risk of being gunned down at school, and that immigrants are lazy but dangerous criminals, we seek solutions to problems that do not exist. A renewed effort at civic education is the remedy to this situation. At the high school and university level, we who teach need to do more than merely disseminate social science facts.

We must do a better job of building information literacy so that citizens can find the facts for themselves.

James Cook has been a professor of social science at the University of Maine at Augusta since 2011. Dr. Cook’s primary areas of interest in research and teaching are political organizations, social networks, and social media, specifically applying social network theory to social media in the Maine State Legislature.


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