In late October, the FBI reported, “The FBI’s crime statistics estimates for 2022 show that national violent crime decreased an estimated 1.7% in 2022 compared to 2021 estimates.” As NPR pointed out, though property crime increased from 2021, data showed that “the homicide rate fell significantly last year, by slightly more than 6% compared with 2021.” Overall, violent crime, including rape and aggravated assault, also dropped from 2021.
However, we now have strong evidence the trend has continued in 2023. The FBI’s crime tracker for the first three quarters of 2023, compared with the same period in 2022, shows violent crime down 8 percent and property crime down 6 percent, NBC News reported, using analysis from criminologist Jeff Asher. Rape was down nearly 15 percent, and robbery dropped roughly 9 percent. The only exception to the positive trend was car thefts, which were up about 10 percent.
Some caveats are in order. The data, only through the third quarter, do not include Chicago and Los Angeles. Although it covers 78 percent of the population, Asher explained, “The quarterly data shows violent crime down in big cities, small cities, suburban counties, and rural counties, pretty much across the board.”
To put the numbers in perspective, even a 4 percent drop in violent crime “would lead to the lowest violent crime rate nationally since 1969.” (If the rate of decline in property crime holds up, that rate would be the lowest since 1961.) At the very least, we know violent and property crime dropped, with the final data available next year.
Why the big drop? The answer might rest with why it spiked. We know what didn’t cause the spike.
The Brennan Center found, “Despite politicized claims that this rise was the result of criminal justice reform in liberal-leaning jurisdictions, murders rose roughly equally in cities run by Republicans and cities run by Democrats.” So local policing policies likely played no role. Part of the explanation might have been glitches in reporting, but in truth, “attempting to isolate a single factor to explain crime trends, especially during a once-in-a-century global pandemic, would be a mistake.”
The best explanation for the rise is that covid made things much worse; ending the pandemic and nurturing a fast recovery made things better. “The covid-19 pandemic led to a severe recession, one categorically different from those of the past,” Brennan reported. “While many white-collar workers were able to shift to remote work, people in the service industry, gig economy, and other sectors faced extended unemployment, making the covid-19 recession ‘the most unequal in U.S. history.’” Moreover, all those factors heavily affected people with criminal records, which might have caused a greater than usual recidivism rate.
The pandemic brought other challenges that also might have contributed to more crime. “Research shows the pandemic also exacerbated mental health problems among millions of Americans, worsening preexisting inequalities in the delivery of mental health services,” the Brennan report said. And consider that “the trauma and isolation created by the pandemic appear to have contributed to an increase in antisocial behavior at all levels of society, from aggressive driving to heavy alcohol and drug use.”
In short, when you tackle the pandemic, increase economic prosperity and fund police departments, perhaps it shouldn’t be a surprise that crime dramatically declined. There has been much discussion about the difference between public perception of the economy (lousy) and the economic reality (quite strong). Likewise, the crime data suggest there is a similar gap in the perception of crime. News coverage of sensational events (“If it bleeds, it leads”) certainly skews Americans’ sense that crime is “everywhere.”
Whether it is the economy or crime, if one wants to blame President Biden for tough times, one should give him credit for policies that hastened the recovery, leading to better economic times and lower levels of crime.
The data also suggest Republicans’ incessant efforts to tie a lack of border security to crime is entirely misplaced. For one thing, immigrants have lower crime rates than native-born Americans. Therefore, if crime is declining while the border situation (at the very least) persists, it really is time to delink once and for all immigration and crime.
Finally, there is something we can do to further reduce crime: Take weapons off the streets and pass sensible gun reforms. We know that blue states with robust gun safety laws have fewer murders than red states that don’t. In other words, if Republicans really want to address the crime problem, they could pass gun laws that have proved to be effective.
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