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CRIME IS DOWN. WHY DO SO MANY RURAL AMERICANS THINK IT’S GOING UP?
 
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Rachael Hanel
October 16, 2024
Barn Raiser
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_ False claims of “migrant crime” echo the Ku Klux Klan’s fear
mongering. _

Colorado GOP chairman Dave Williams speaks before Republican
presidential nominee former President Donald Trump at a campaign rally
at the Gaylord Rockies Resort and Convention Center Friday, Oct. 11,
2024, in Aurora, Colo. (David Zalubowski, AP Photo), (David
Zalubowski, AP Photo).

 

Even though statistics show a consistent downward trend in violent
crime since the early 1990s, conservative politicians and media are
trying to convince voters that America is under attack. Often these
messages are geared toward rural voters to make them think large
cities are rife with crime.

Colorado GOP chairman Dave Williams speaks before Republican
presidential nominee former President Donald Trump at a campaign rally
at the Gaylord Rockies Resort and Convention Center Friday, Oct. 11,
2024, in Aurora, Colo. (David Zalubowski, AP Photo)

The overarching message: the only way to keep this crime from
infiltrating rural areas is to vote for conservatives.

Examples abound. On Monday, vice-presidential nominee J.D. Vance
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Minneapolis, stopping at the site of the Third Precinct, which burned
in protests after the 2020 murder of George Floyd. Conservatives often
criticize Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz, Kamala Harris’s running mate, for
not doing more to stop the protests.

“The story of Minneapolis is coming to every community across the
United States of America if we promote Kamala Harris to president of
the United States,” Vance told a phalanx of media and supporters.

Nearly 6 in 10 Americans (58%) say that reducing crime should be a top
priority for politicians. That number is nearly 7 out of 10 for
Republican voters or those who lean Republican, according to the Pew
Research Center. In comparison, three years ago the number of
Americans who said reducing crime should be a priority was at 47%.

Experts on politics and political rhetoric say that voters in rural
areas may be susceptible to claims of violent crime rampant in large
cities because instead of seeing cities for themselves, they rely on
news reports and political speeches.

“Conservative media has painted a wholly false picture of urban
centers as ‘Mad Max’ wastelands where you can’t step out the
door without getting stabbed or there are people dying of fentanyl
overdoses on every corner,” says Brian Hughes, a research assistant
professor in the Department of Justice, Law & Criminology at American
University.

Hughs calls it a “divide-and-conquer” approach. “People who
watch these reports are more fearful, less likely to connect with
neighbors, less likely to visit the cities and experience lives of
people who live there.”

The facts of violent incidences are often cherry-picked by politicians
and held up as examples emblematic of a wider problem.

“The right is totally comfortable perverting the truth and the
circumstances of a crime to fit a particular narrative,” says
Seyward Darby, editor-in-chief of _Atavist_ magazine and the author
of _Sisters in Hate: American Women on the Front Lines of White
Nationalism_ (2020, Little, Brown and Company).

While voters say violent crime is up and that politicians should make
fighting it a priority, they are more likely to believe it is a
problem elsewhere rather than where they live. According to the Pew
Research Center, 55% of people say there is more crime in their local
area, while 77% believe crime rates are up nationally.

It’s only logical to realize that crime exists in rural areas. But
in small towns where everyone seems to know each other’s business,
it can be easier to explain away criminal actions, says Kevin
Parsneau, a professor of political science at Minnesota State
University, Mankato.

“You look around your hometown and let’s say somebody had a drug
problem. Well, the thinking goes, they never had their life together
to begin with. So then it becomes a personal thing.” Or, he adds,
“You either misunderstand what’s going on in the city, or you
don’t see what’s going on right in front of you.”

Exaggerating, misleading or simply false claims about crime is not a
new tactic from the right.

“Fear mongering is one of the classic propaganda techniques. What it
does is it softens us up, softens up our critical faculty,” Hughes
says. He says this type of propaganda does an end run around
intelligence, logic and reason, making it especially effective. This
can be particularly true when the suspension of critical thinking is
used as a pretext to dehumanize certain groups like immigrants.

A constant refrain from both the Trump campaign and Fox News warns
that “dangerous criminals” are flooding across the southern border
at unprecedented rates, causing a wave of so-called “migrant
crime.” The category may be invented but the rhetoric has real
consequences, with Trump claiming that criminal illegal immigrants are
“poisoning the blood” of this country. Aside from a few highly
publicized cases, data show there is no increase in crime
attributable to immigration
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According to border officials, most migrants are families fleeing
violence and poverty.

Mentions of “migrant crime” on Fox News from Nov. 1, 2023 to Oct.
14, 2024. Source: GDELT Television Explorer, Internet Archive.

Frequency of “Migrant crime” as a Google search term. Source:
Google Trends. Numbers represent search interest relative to the
highest point on the chart for the given time.

Darby says that this tactic can be found in the post-Civil War era.
The Ku Klux Klan, founded in rural Tennessee, rose to prominence by
promoting the idea that the end of slavery posed dangers to a white
populace, particularly white women. Then, as now, the racial component
of imagined crime was emphasized.

“I really don’t think a lot has changed,” she says. Over time,
too, the American public has overestimated crime rates. Pew Research
Center data shows for the past 30 years, in 23 out of 27 surveys about
crime rates, at least 60% of adults said crime is on the rise, even
when statistics show the opposite is true.

These attitudes on crime reflect media coverage, Parsneau says.
Indeed, the saying “If it bleeds, it leads,” is a given on local
television newscasts.

“Fear of crime correlates more with media coverage of crime than
actual crime. So crime can be going up, but if the media aren’t
talking about it, people aren’t that concerned. But if crime is
going down, but the media is still talking about it, the fear of crime
goes up,” Parsneau says. It’s the “mean world syndrome,” a
phrase coined by communications scholar George Gerbner in the 1970s.
When people learn about the wider world only through media reports,
the media can shape a false reality.

People generally do not directly consult sources of crime statistics,
such as the FBI or Bureau of Justice Statistics. Instead, they rely on
local news reports or social media. Even for official statistics,
there’s an atmosphere of distrust.

“Increasingly we see that people on the right do not care about
official statistics and say, ‘No, that’s fake’ or ‘That’s
someone lying,’ ” Darby says.

Even mainstream media don’t always remind voters of the hard facts,
Parsneau says. Reporters, when asking politicians questions, might say
something like, “A big issue for voters is crime. What are you going
to do about violent crime?” without noting that violent crime rates
are actually down.

In rural America, emphasis on crime takes attention away from other,
more pressing issues, such as the agricultural economy and
infrastructure needs.

Even though rural voters know those issues are important, “that
doesn’t seem to overwhelm their fear that somebody from Mexico is
going to sneak across the border and sell them fentanyl,” says
Parsneau says. “It makes the assumption that we could reduce the
amount of drugs if we could just stop them at the border. Well,
they’re actually cooking the meth a few blocks away, so work on
that.”

Hughes, who is also the associate director of Polarization and
Extremism Research and Innovation Lab (PERIL) at American University,
uses “attitudinal inoculation” to combat manipulative messages.

“It’s a tried-and-true practice demonstrated effectively hundreds
of times in lab environments,” he says.

Attitudinal inoculation involves showing people a short sample of
propaganda and warning them about manipulative methods they will
see—for example, the use of deep, ominous sound effects to produce
an unsettled feeling.

Hughes would like to see more money invested in helping people
understand how political messaging can be manipulative. But it can be
an uphill battle. Propaganda comes out of the big-money advertising
industry. Show people how they are being manipulated politically, and
they may also start to see how they are manipulated by advertising.

“It’s a tall order to get people with money to fight this,”
Hughes says.

Even though political manipulation around crime is not new, it’s
disheartening to see it continue to wield influence, Darby says.

“It reveals how little people learn, how prone we are as a society
of making the same mistakes over and over.”

But Parsneau says to some degree, this could be politics as usual.

“If you’re the out party,” he says, “you want to portray
everything that’s happening now as bad, as a justification as to why
the Democrats should be thrown out.”

_Rachael Hanel began her career as a newspaper reporter and now
teaches creative nonfiction at Minnesota State University, Mankato.
She’s the author of Not the Camilla We Knew: One Woman’s Path
from Small-Town America to the Symbionese Liberation Army (2022)
and We’ll Be the Last Ones to Let You Down: Memoir of a
Gravedigger’s Daughter (2013)._

_Barn Raiser publishes independent news, analysis and information to
support diverse, civically engaged and dynamically connected rural and
small town communities. We champion the free exchange of public
dialogue by bringing together underrepresented voices and perspectives
on the intractable issues facing communities and policymakers. We seek
to convene a space where big ideas and bold questions enliven local
connections, where daring criticism, rational debate and compassionate
care will renew the social imagination to build common ground,
encourage democratic participation and inspire change._

* Rural communities
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* crime rate
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* media
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