Editing Moral panic (section)

==== Increase in crime (1970s–present) ====
{{see also|Crime drop}}
Fear of increasing crime rates is often the cause of moral panics.{{sfn|Cohen|2011|p={{page needed|date=August 2022}}}}<ref name="Hall-2013" />{{sfn|Goode|Ben-Yehuda|2009|p=217}}<ref>{{Cite journal |last1=Byron |first1=Reginald A. |last2=Molidor |first2=William S. |last3=Cantu |first3=Andrew |title=US Newspapers' Portrayals of Home Invasion Crime |journal=The Howard Journal of Crime and Justice |date=June 2018 |volume=57 |issue=2 |pages=250–277 |doi=10.1111/hojo.12257 |s2cid=158706064 }}</ref> In fact, the rates of many types of crime have [[Crime drop|declined by 50% or more]] beginning in the mid to late 1980s and early 1990s.<ref name=cj>{{cite journal|last1=Farrell|first1=Graham|last2=Tilley|first2=Nick|last3=Tseloni|first3=Andromachi|title=Why the Crime Drop?|journal=Crime and Justice|date=September 2014|volume=43|issue=1|pages=421–490|doi=10.1086/678081|s2cid=145719976|url=http://eprints.whiterose.ac.uk/97466/1/Farrell%20Tilley%20Tseloni%202014%20Why%20the%20Crime%20Drop%20%28C%26J%20vol43%29.pdf}}</ref> In Europe, [[crime statistics]] show this is part of a broader pattern of crime decline since the late [[Middle Ages]], with a reversal from the 1960s to the 1980s and 1990s, before the decline continued.<ref name=tonry-1-2>{{Cite journal |url=https://scholarship.law.umn.edu/faculty_articles/511 |last=Tonry |first= Michael |title=Why Crime Rates Are Falling Throughout the Western World, 43 Crime & Just. 1 (2014) |journal=Crime & Just |date=January 2014 |pages=1–2}}</ref>

This phenomenon, which often taps into a population's [[herd mentality]], continues to occur in various cultures. In some cases, the perception of increased crime can be caused by increased reporting of crimes or by better record-keeping. Japanese jurist [[:ja:浜井浩一|Koichi Hamai]] explains how the changes in crime recording in Japan since the 1990s caused people to believe that the crime rate was rising and that crimes were getting increasingly severe.<ref>{{Cite journal |last1=浜井 |first1=浩一 |title=日本の治安悪化神話はいかに作られたか(I 課題研究 日本の治安と犯罪対策-犯罪学からの提言) |trans-title=How 'the myth of collapsing safe society' has been created in Japan: beyond the moral panic and victim industry |language=ja |journal=Japanese Journal of Sociological Criminology |volume=29 |issue=29 |date=2004 |pages=4–93 |id={{NAID|110006153656}} |doi=10.20621/jjscrim.29.0_10 |doi-access=free }}</ref>