When It Comes to Neighborhood Crime, Perception Affects Understanding, Criminal Justice Professor Says

MET Assistant Professor of Criminal Justice and Applied Social Sciences Chair Shea Cronin was recently featured in a Boston Globe article spotlighting lawlessness in Boston’s Back Bay neighborhood. In the story, which examined the rise of drag racing in the affluent area, Dr. Cronin pointed out that while such incidents might raise concerns among residents, they don’t necessarily correlate with rising crime.

“Whenever something happens that seems out of the norm, it can always make people feel like it’s a much bigger problem,” Dr. Cronin told the Globe. “Whenever there is an uptick or there are dramatic events that happened, people are more focused on those than the overall amount of crime that they might experience around their neighborhood.”

In the Master of Criminal Justice with concentration in Crime Analysis, as well as the Graduate Certificate in Crime Analysis, students learn to study and assess factual crime data, separating preconceptions from realities.