It's getting worse.

Based on?

Policing was effective enough that I never had to find someone to unlock a case for me at the store unless I was purchasing something particularly valuable. It was effective enough that you didn't see videos of people looting stores or driving around breaking into cars with impunity.

I don't know, these things were cliche plot devices in 1970s-1980s films and it appears everyone was convinced America headed into Escape From New York future. Naturally, few people had cine/video cameras on them at any time.

That’s because companies have successfully PR’d their way into “shoplifting is the greatest threat to the US economy.”

But as long as the stats are not reliable, that's unknown territory. Maybe the police is getting more lazier, maybe less, maybe there are less people reporting because it is seen as useless, maybe there are more because they get tired of it, one can simply not get a picture independently of where the trend is going.

And yet, if more people you know report being victims of crime, and the official statistics point to a decrease, the people upthread are happy to declare a decrease.