Why homicide rates are falling across the country

Homicides are falling across the United States, a change that could affect the role crime, often a top concern for voters, will play as an issue in November’s election.

However, this is a phenomenon for which even experts do not have a clear explanation.

Some say murder peaks come and go in cycles, others say police enforcement has improved since the COVID-19 pandemic, and there is a national debate about how to deal with crime. Some say this is because progress is being made.

A data analysis released last week showed that homicides are decreasing in cities such as Boston, Philadelphia, Washington, D.C., and Chicago.

Many major cities, especially those run by Democrats with liberal-leaning policies and populations, have faced pushback from Republicans for being riddled with violent crime. new data Paint a picture of the situation improving.

But experts disagree on exactly why homicides have fallen so rapidly.

Boston had the steepest decline in homicides from 2023 to 2024, with homicides dropping 82 percent. In Philadelphia, homicides fell by 37 percent. Dallas saw a 27 percent drop in homicides. Chicago saw a 6 percent drop in homicides, according to estimates from city police reports compiled by AH Datalytics.

Jeffrey Fagan, a law and epidemiology professor at Columbia University, believes the typical crime cycle has changed.

“I think there’s something natural about this cyclical nature of murder and violence. One of the striking features of the recent events was that they had more to do with murder than with other violent crimes. “Other violent crimes also increased, but not nearly as much as homicides,” he said. “It’s likely to happen again, but we just don’t understand when these externalities will create the social and economic conditions that will cause homicide rates to rise again.”

Fagan outlined other cycles, such as the 1960s, when murders began to rise, peaking by 1972, and then dropping sharply. Then they took off again in the late 1970s, peaking in 1981, and then crashing. And he saw homicide rates skyrocket in the late 1980s, peaking in 1991, then plummeting again.

“So what do these episodes have in common, other than the fact that they repeat peak, crash, peak, crash, peak, crash? There is something natural about these episodes in that they follow an epidemic pattern. Epidemiology “Anyone who knows this will tell you it’s similar to any other disease outbreak,” he says.

Alex Piquero, former director of the Bureau of Justice Statistics in President Biden’s administration, outlined the factors he says are driving the spike in homicides. During the COVID-19 pandemic, community prevention programs were paused and law enforcement pulled back because of the 2020 homicides. Because of the killing of George Floyd by a Minneapolis police officer and pandemic staffing issues.

Piquero, a professor of sociology and criminology at the University of Miami, said the situation has been reset. “Staffing levels are increasing, police are patrolling more areas and using appropriate statistical methods to target violent locations and violent people.”

Piquero views crime as a local issue, and said it remains to be seen whether anti-crime funding from the Department of Justice (DOJ) under the Biden administration is helping.

Fagan agreed, noting that homicides will either peak or plummet “regardless of what criminal justice or public health policies are in place.”

Andrea Headley, a criminal justice policy expert at Georgetown University’s McCourt School of Public Policy, argued that federal investments, whether it’s bipartisan gun safety legislation or the American Rescue Plan, are having an impact. .

Biden signed the American Rescue Plan into law in 2021, providing $10 billion for public safety. The bipartisan Gun Safety Act of 2022 was signed into law to strengthen background checks on buyers under 21 and keep guns out of the hands of people deemed a threat to themselves or others. funded the Red Flag Act.

“We are looking at funding for the law enforcement agency where the incident occurred,” Headley said. “We find that perhaps more important is funding and support structures for community violence interventions, investments in comprehensive social support services as well as employment programs and mentoring. What we generally know is a correlate of violent crime. And it’s kind of a targeted approach of taking money from the federal level and investing it in the community.”

She noted that while the holistic approach is not new, the national discussion about it is. It began when the federal government provided such assistance.

“We think this kind of comprehensive strategy, where we’re investing in community safety from all angles in an unprecedented way, is really powerful, especially given what we’ve seen with some of the declines over the last year. “I think,” she said.

This data was released during an election year when crime is a top concern for many Americans. Both Mr. Biden and Mr. Trump have blamed the other for the previous spike in crime.

The Biden campaign claims the president supports law enforcement, including billions of dollars in funding, while President Trump has called for defunding federal law enforcement agencies. .

White House Press Secretary Andrew Bates said, “Joe Biden is committed to working with law enforcement to fight the violent crimes he inherited from his predecessor by opposing efforts by Republican officials to defund the police. “We have reversed the rapid increase in crime and achieved the lowest crime rate in nearly 50 years.”

Meanwhile, President Trump called for the United States to “restore law and order” and said crime prevention measures were “not working” after attending the funeral of New York police officer Jonathan Diller, who was killed in the line of duty last month. The Trump campaign did not respond to requests for comment on the declining murder rate.

Republicans have also equated crime with Biden’s immigration policies, particularly after the murder of Georgia student Laken Riley earlier this year.

However, experts reject that idea.

“It’s established, and it’s been repeated time and time again, that immigrants commit fewer crimes than native-born Americans,” Piquero said.

Republicans also often use Washington as an example of a city with a high rate of violent crime, pointing to stories of carjackings and other crimes.

Washington last year highest number of murders Since 1997, and double the amount Compare the number of carjackings with the previous year. Homicides are down 27 percent in the nation’s capital compared to this time last year, according to new data from the D.C. Police Department.

Headley said the slow pace of improvement in Washington, D.C., could be due to the city’s unique structure, given that it is not a state and has a disjointed government structure. Ta.

“In terms of reasons, we can speculate as to why the decline hasn’t been as fast or as steep compared to other cities. I think D.C. is unique because we have different levels of jurisdiction.” she said.

Fagan added that the city has extremes of wealth and poverty, which “creates a risk of conflict and violence.”

Another argument regarding crime is economics. If the economy is improving, the crime rate will also be improving. Biden has worked to combat inflation, and polls show improvement in his response to the economy.

However, experts also deny this concept.

“That argument doesn’t apply across types of crime. Even if economic growth leads to less crime, it doesn’t affect a 14-year-old kid with a gun. [couldn’t] I don’t care about work,” Piquero said. “So a lot of crimes are very unplanned and situational.”