Like most of our issues it is in my opinion a result of our culture. And in particular the cultural rot in our society. Too many kids raised in broken or single parent homes, loss of faith, loss of a sense of belonging to a community and so on. As the culture goes, so goes society.
I would also say that another aspect of this is the 24/7 ubiquitous access to news. Until the last year or two crime was going down but people felt less safe because we never heard of similar events that had happened in the past. Now we hear about everything due to social media and the 24/7 news cycle. Gives the impression that things are really worse than they are and going in the wrong direction. So there is an element of perception based on unlimited access to information that we did not have when we were younger.