One million and counting: Students' estimates of the annual number of homicides in the U.S.

Abstract

We administered questionaires to 323 introductory students and 45 seniors majoring in criminal justice to determine how well students grasp the magnitude of the crime problem relative to other mortality conditions. Almost 50 percent of the introductory students estimated that 250,000 or more murders were committed each year in the United States; 15 percent estimated that one million or more murders occurred annually. Senior criminal justice majors' estimates were significantly more accurate but both groups tended to overestimate crime-related mortality. We attribute the poor grasp of crime-related mortality to the media emphasis on crime, the “mean world” syndrome and innumeracy.