Homicides Are Plummeting in American Cities

Killings in cities including New York, Philadelphia and San Francisco are falling from their respective pandemic-era increases

from Wall Street Journal, April 14, 2024 (excerpt)

…If the trend continues, the U.S. could be on pace for a year like 2014, which saw the lowest homicide rate since the 1960s. But police officials and researchers cautioned that crime trends aren’t always consistent and future homicide rates are difficult to predict.

Some cities, like Denver, Los Angeles, and Portland, Ore., reported rises in homicides as of early April, Asher’s data show. But such increases are outliers. More typical is Baltimore, where homicides have declined 30% so far this year. 

During the pandemic, homicide rates shot up around the country, sparking concerns that the progress made during a decadeslong drop in violent crimes had been undone. The number of homicides in the U.S. rose nearly 30% in 2020 from the prior year to 21,570, the largest single-year increase ever recorded by the Federal Bureau of Investigation.

Researchers and authorities attributed the upward spike to several factors, including crime-prevention programs, courts and prisons being unable to operate normally when Covid was spreading; young people not in school due to shutdowns; and law enforcement pulling back after social unrest following the high-profile police killings of George Floyd and other Black people. 

“The police went to sleep,” said Dean Dabney, a criminology professor at Georgia State University in Atlanta. “The prosecution and the courts went to sleep, and the jails and prisons let people out. So you had an ideal situation for criminals.”

Now, police are more engaged and departments are working to hire more officers. Community-based crime prevention programs have resumed. And nationwide social unrest has cooled….

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