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Crime dominated local news headlines in August. How worried should people be and what can they do to fight back?

As a criminologist, I’m often asked about changes in the crime rate or what a spate of crimes means for our community. Any shooting is a tragedy, and it can be especially frightening to have multiple shootings in a short time, as happened recently. But I try to look at the data to make sense of what’s going on.

Shootings and other incidents of serious violence tend to be rare enough events that you can have clusters just by coincidence. I always want to know whether these crimes are related events — is something going on or is it a coincidence?

Even if they aren’t directly related, other factors — including the heat! — can lead to short-term increases in the crime rate. Most importantly, I always want to see the long-term trends in the crime rate to see if recent events are part of a statistical fluctuation (anomalies) or part of a trend.

The Honolulu Police Department provides us with providing statistics on violent crimes. When I see crime in the headlines, I check that dashboard to see how we are doing relative to last year. That tells me if a spate of headline-grabbing incidents indicates a trend or just a temporary uptick.

If I see that our crime rates are consistently and significantly higher than last year at the end of each of the several months, that would tell me we should start to worry.

In fact, the number of murders this August was comparable to the number last August: there were five murders this August and four last August. This slight increase is actually within normal statistical variation. For example, in July this year, there were no homicides, and there were two last July.

As horrible as any crime is, we have to look at the larger pattern, and beyond the headlines, to see if there’s a statistical reason to panic.

So far, our homicide rate this year is not statistically distinguishable from last year’s rate: By the end of August last year, we were at 16 homicides for the year; by the end of August this year, we were at 19. Again, a slight uptick that is within expected variation.

Statistics aside, real people are afraid. Real people are getting hurt and dying. Real people are mourning their family members or neighbors and the peace of their communities.

Strategies And Prevention

So what do we do about it? We need to think about both short-term and long-term strategies to reduce crime.

The police are an effective means of crime prevention, but they can’t do it all; they can mostly respond to crime as it’s happening or after the fact. Crime prevention has to be everyone’s responsibility, not just the police.

How do you do that? Support each other, check in on each other.

One of the cases in August stemmed from domestic violence. Something you can do to help prevent domestic violence is to check in with family, friends, and neighbors. Ask them how they are doing.

A lot of people are stressed right now — for a lot of reasons. And then add the summer heat. These are the sorts of conditions that can lead to fights and other violence. And if someone has access to a gun, fights can very quickly become fatal.

Look for patterns of irregular or escalating behavior. You know what your family, friends, and neighbors are usually like, which means you can also tell when something is wrong, when something is off.

That doesn’t always mean they are going to commit a crime or be a victim of a crime, but it might be a sign that they could use some extra support, some checking in.

If you see someone starting to go off the rails, this might be a time to call in backup — get family and friends involved and talk to each other and see how you can help the person, or if you think the situation is sufficiently volatile, call the police.

This advice might make some folks hesitate because West Oahu, the focal point of many crime-related news stories, is home to many Native Hawaiians and other Pacific Islanders, who face issues of over-policing and over incarceration. I’d guess a lot of folks are worried that bringing in more police or sending in a tip could negatively affect members of that community.

At the same time, crime victims often come from the same social, cultural, and racial-ethnic groups as the perpetrators of crime, in part because most victims know their victimizers. And here in Hawaii Native Hawaiians in the crime victimization statistics. If we want to protect our Native Hawaiian community, we need to help protect them from crime.

We also need to focus on long-term crime prevention. Situational or short-term crime prevention strategies like tipping off the police are useful, especially to get things under control.

But the most successful solution is to focus on the underlying factors that lead to crime in the first place: providing adequate housing, reducing unemployment, ensuring high-quality education and after-school programs, providing prenatal and childhood nutrition as well as daycare and pre-K education, and other evidence-based strategies identified in a recent .

Basically, we need to be doing the things that help build a strong community and help develop robust people who can thrive.