The United States Congress has created over 4,500 federal criminal laws and as a result, the United States is the world’s largest jailer. America is ranked number one in the world for total number of people imprisoned and rate of incarceration among industrialized nations. More than half of federal inmates are nonviolent drug offenders. While this is true, the violent crime rate remains at a historically low level even after a slight increase in 2015 and 2016, according to the FBI statistics. We as Americans are living in a safer society than we ever have before. Violent crime has fallen sharply over the past quarter century or so. American society is portrayed by the media to be a very violent place but we have a crime index of 49.58. As a comparison, Venezuela, the highest ranked country according to crime index, has a crime index of 82.59. Is American society over-criminalized or is it just depicted this way? I do not think American society is …show more content…
In a survey conducted by the Pew Research Center in 2016, 57% of registered voters stated that crime in the U.S. has gotten worse since 2008. U.S citizens have this perception even though FBI data shows the opposite, with property and violent crime rates declining by double-digit percentages during this span of time. Another FBI statistic shows that the murder rate in the U.S. for 2016 was 6% lower than a decade ago and the violent crime rate for the same year was 18% below the 2007 rate. There is obviously a discrepancy between criminality and citizen perceptions on these issues. I think a lot of this discrepancy can be attributed to the way certain media outlets portray this information. I will not get into politics but there has to be a reason for the misalignment of public perceptions about crime in the U.S, especially since there is data to back it