Only 10% of Local Violent Crime Makes the News

According to the Bureau of Justice Statistics, in their August 2012 Victimizations Not Reported to the Police, 2006-2010 (NCJ Number; 238536) report, they indicated that 52% of violent victimizations go unreported.

The fact is, there isn’t much data on crime at all, and what we have is often not up to the standards that one could consider timely/relevant. For instance, internet searches for numbers in my local area turns up very little recent relevant data. The best I can find is from the City of Baton Rouge for the year of 2017.

Violent Crimes In Baton Rouge, 2017 (City of Baton Rouge)

This is a total of 2,316 reported incidences of violent crime in 2017. Including the 52% that are unreported, this turns the 2,316 violent crimes into a more realistic 4,825 violent crimes in 2017, which is 13 every day in our local area.

Looking at the local news, WAFB reported 9 local violent crimes in the last 7 days while WBRZ reported 5 local violent crimes in the last 7 days.  13 violent crimes per day for 7 days is 91. The news appears to report around 10% of the actual violent crime here locally, at best.

It appears to be common for people to look to their news and make assumptions about their relative safety. The first, best thing that I can do is to warn you of unknown problems. Maybe you can take steps to avoid them.

Stay safe, I hope to see you in class.

http://city.brla.gov/dept/brpd/csr/default.asp

https://bjs.ojp.gov/content/pub/pdf/vnrp0610.pdf