&gt; have never had an incident (and I in fact know many of those young men)<p>You don&#x27;t think those two things might be related?<p>&gt;  But its also true that the actual incident rate is much exaggerated by the media and perceptions of neighborhood differences are greater than reality.<p>&quot;Reality&quot; is a tricky concept here. Public (out-of-neighborhood) perception of risk will depress the incident rate by keeping victims out of the area. If you magically caused people to believe that the risk was at some level that you felt reflected the current incident rate, and the incident rate rose because people started going where they shouldn&#x27;t have, whose beliefs were more accurate?<p>People don&#x27;t really care about &quot;how often do muggings take place in this neighborhood?&quot;. They care about &quot;if I go in there, am I going to get mugged?&quot;.