My father was once driving with a friend when his friend, Dave, said, “Hey, look at that black Datsun.”
My father immediately - and for no particular reason - lied, “All Datsuns are black. That’s how they save money.”
Years later, Dave wrote him a postcard with one sentence: I saw a red Datsun!
(yes, I’m aware of the Ford quote)
Beliefs are, essentially, opinions that people hold to very tightly without any evidence to support them.
Folks believe in gods, aliens, ghosts, trickle-down economics, eugenics, and all sorts of interesting things. They believe that crime rates are rising in exactly the same way.
While it is possible for someone to have a change in their beliefs, that change does not come easy. Certainly it does not come by presenting them with data that contradicts. Our best chance to change mistaken beliefs is in a dramatic and shocking event. The nature of a suitably dramatic and shocking event to shift a belief in the rise of crime eludes me completely.
Which gives us only plan B in two parts:
It occurs to me that we could speed this up by killing all the older folks, but that would obviously have an impact on crime statistics.