Perceived public safety refers to how safe and secure we feel at home, in the community and at work. This includes not only our physical safety but also the security of our money and belongings.

Emotions are rarely merely subjective. Emotions usually track something that exists in the world. Perceived public safety tracks threat levels in one’s inhabited environment, especially the threat of being a victim of crime.

Threat is specific to time, place and person, so measures of general threat, such as annual crime rates, have limited relevance to a person’s sense of safety. Men often feel safer than women walking alone at night. Women often feel safer on crowded subway cars than near-empty ones. A crime rate doesn’t mean that people are interchangeable and have the same risks of being crime victims.

One reason for the disconnect between perceived public safety and crime rates is that the former is often based on one’s sense of vulnerability when one is not at home* and the latter takes individuals as interchangeable units in a population, irrespective of where they are.

Without opportunity, there is no crime. The most tempting opportunities are low-risk and low-effort for the would-be criminal. Change the calculation of risk and effort and you change the behavior.

2020 was a year in which:

In other words, Americans stayed home much more than normal in 2020. As a consequence, the potential victim pool shrank for burglars, robbers and thieves**. But people aren’t just potential victims of crime; they are also potential witnesses and a lack of witnesses emboldens criminals. So even though most crimes went down in 2020, individuals who left the relative safety of their homes for the relatively empty streets (to and from bars, restaurants, work, parties, etc.) may have been more at risk of criminal victimhood than in prior years.*** At least in some areas, and especially in the evenings.

If we stay out of harm’s way by staying home more, we are less likely to be victims of crime, not counting domestic violence*. If large numbers of people stay out of harm’s way by staying home more, crime rates will go down. But that doesn’t mean that public safety has improved, at least not in the sense that people are safer when they’re out and about.

* This hints at another reason for the disconnect between perceived public safety and crime rates: the latter includes rates of domestic violence, which some survey respondents may consider a private concern and not a matter of public safety.

** Also, many behaviors are threatening but are not crimes, or at least are unlikely to lead to arrests. For example, a raging meth addict screaming “I’m going to kill you” or a mentally ill homeless person lunging at one.

*** Crime rates don’t account for the fact that most crimes (not counting domestic violence) happen to people when they’re not at home. Crime rates alone don’t provide enough information to predict the likelihood of being a crime victim in environments where most crimes (again, not counting domestic violence) happen: in unoccupied homes and away from home.

Here’s an alternative way to measure public safety: number of crimes per level of population-level “public activity” in relation to some reference year. For example, assume 2019 is the reference year and Americans left their homes 30% less in 2020 than in 2019. If the crime rate went down 10% in 2020, that would mean U.S. public safety declined that year.