It's not hard to find people who are both terrified of visiting cities, and completely unconcerned with Covid-19.
And I get it:
Microscopic diseases are hard to imagine, and thus hard to fear.
Crime... like sharks, and lightning, and bombs, and tornadoes.... are easy to imagine... and thus easy to fear.
By extension, places that have a lot of people and therefore a larger number of crimes would naturally seem scarier than places with few people, and thus fewer crimes.
But, that's not how "probability" or "safety" works.
Probability is the likelihood of one or more events happening... divided by the number of possible outcomes.
The Classic example is rolling a dice (1/6 or 16.6% probable) or tossing a coin (1/2 or 50% probable).
Safety is all the time spent NOT being harmed by the infinite number of things that COULD harm you.
So, while there are always lots of things that COULD harm you, safety is when you succeed at avoiding all of them at the same time. Which is quite often.
Calculating safety probability is difficult, but there are also regular errors because:
Calculations are not applied consistently (human error)
There are still several fundamental errors in formal Safety calculations (so even when applied perfectly, they are incorrect)
When calculating safety we make the following errors:
1. We simply count total events, without total outcomes, which makes:
Calculating probability impossible (only 1/2 the equation)
Calculating amount of harm impossible
It's like saying having 100,000 people flip coins 365 times each, but then calculating their 'chances of a toss landing heads' solely based on the number of people flipping and the number of total heads landed, leaving out the number of coin flips that actually occur.
It's also like judging how good of a driver someone is by how many accidents they've been in, without knowing the severity of the accidents, how many miles they've driven, the circumstances of the accidents (their fault?), or their driving awards (safe driver? professional driver?), among other things.
2. We don't account for when harm is NOT occurring
For Example, when people are perfectly safe and/or thriving
If I get 1 case of the flu this year, how much of my year was flu free?
It's like counting number of times you've rolled snake eyes in dice, but not how many times you've rolled everything else.
3. We don't count varying severities of harm
Ex. Was it mild harm, or severe harm?
We can know that there was 1 case of the flu, but not if it was mild symptoms, or if were they hospitalized?
4. We don't count different types of harm
Ex. physical, mental, emotional
Maybe there wasn't any physical harm from the crime, but the emotional harm was enough for the person to want to sell their home and move
Or, the physical harm may have only been to one person, but it was seen by several, and so the mental and emotional harm wasn't just limited to the immediate victim
Equally, once a harmful incident occurs, what are we doing to minimize it's harm? And how is it measured?
What kinds of harm are permissible and encouraged (ex. roller coasters, scary movies, and violent video games)?
5. They don't count harm over time
Ex. 2 hrs of flu like symptoms vs 2 weeks
Clearly, having the same symptoms for 2 hours is far better than 2 weeks. But this isn't tracked. a 2 hour flu and a 2 week flu are still simple 1 case of the flu. In the same way that someone leaving their car door unlocked and rummaged through with nothing of value stolen, is the same as someone breaking several windows and stealing something of financial and personal value from a vehicle. It counts as 1 "larceny from auto".
6. They don't count visitors
Tourist areas have crime rates based simply on how many people live in the area, not how many people are in the space
This means that every person who commits a crime or is a victim of a crime in a high traffic area because or work, fun, school, or some other reason to visit, their crime will count toward total crime, but they aren't counted toward the people crime could happen to.
For instance, Ocean City Maryland has a resident population of 7,100 people, but up to 8 million visitors annually. That means that 8 million people can commit and be victims of crimes, but ONLY the resident population of 7,100 people are used to determine Ocean City's CRIME RATE, which is used to compare how safe places are
This would be like calculating how much customers spend on average in a store, based on the total amount purchased, divided by the number of employees. Employees aren't the only customers, just like residents aren't the only possible victims.
This really makes no sense and is a primary reason why high traffic areas get reported as "High Crime", even though the calculation is clearly flawed, artificially inflating the odds in these areas.
7. They are often absolutist, where any deviation is failure
"Any crime is too much" isn't a reasonable request or expectation.
Nowhere is crime or harm free. Wishing for, expecting, or promising it is counter productive.
8. They don't compare across all causes
Ex. Sports hospitalize more people than crime
So do a lot of other things
Crime makes up an incredibly small percentage of ways of being harmed
Another example, you are twice as likely to kill yourself than to be killed by someone else. Then, if someone else killed you, you are almost certainly going to be killed by a loved one, or someone you know. Very few people are deliberately killed by strangers. But, that's not how we prioritize how we keep people safe from being killed... we don't spend huge budgets protecting us from killing ourselves and our loved ones. Instead, we spend it on far rarer (but easier to fear) events.
If our goal was truly to prevent and minimize harm, crime would be a lower priority than all the other things that cause us more harm.
9. They don't account for how sharing of information impacts well-being
Ex. sharing crime info on Facebook, or Citizen, or public announcement, or in the news
One of the key reasons people FEEL less safe today, is because information about safety is far more accessible
How much scary information about the world was available to people 50 years ago... you had newspapers, magazines, and TV. And there weren't many alternative sources, so everyone consumed essentially the same information in fairly low doses. Not so today, where information is constantly available, all pushing content for ad revenue profits, and alternative sources can easily 'look' authentic.
Any meaningful conversation about community safety must include a conversation about how information is managed, with a deliberate strategy for NOT sharing -minimizing information as much as possible, while also making that information accurate, open, and available.
People don't want to be constantly drowned in every painful moment someone has.
10. They don't consider personal / individual variability
Ex. a broken car window for someone with insurance is a nuisance, but could be severe for someone living paycheck to paycheck
11. Deaths are poorly accounted for
We don't contextualize murders among all deaths.
We also don't calculate the impact of someone's death to them personally (time / value lost) or the impact in harm to others. There are ways to memorialize and mourn untimely deaths that honor the dead and help the living. There are also ways to do it poorly, and pile on additional harm. If you don't have a plan for how you avoid the latter, you aren't.
What's a better option? How can we calculate safety / harm effectiveli?
An accurate equation of harm and safety would:
Calculate incidents as "hours of harm", instead of just "1 incident"
Calculate simply as "states of well-being", which account for both good & bad states
Calculate well-being severity across 3 amounts (High, Medium, Low)
Calculate well-being across 2 types: Physical (Health) and Informational (Happiness)
Include visitors to a place, not just residents, in calculating rate/probability
Report in hours and probability percentages
Calculate well-being across all causes, contextualizing crime as a subset of all possible causes of harm
Include how Facebook, official announcements, the news, Citizen, and other information sharing tools increase harm
Include a process for individuals to establish their own standards of well-being, and account for them in both personal and overall well-being summaries
Create a loss calculation for deaths, beyond simply harm
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