Are Rising Crime Rates a Blip or a Longer-Term Concern?

Experts cite the pandemic as one reason for a surge since 2020, but trends are more complicated.

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Americans will remember 2020 for lockdowns, protests, and a controversial election—but they might also remember it for a historic surge in murders. 

The FBI won’t release its official data until September, but preliminary findings from the bureau and local law enforcement agencies indicate that murder rates rose by at least 25 percent nationally. If that bears out, the U.S. would eclipse 20,000 murders in a year for the first time since 1995. 

“We’re going to see the largest one-year rise in murder that we’ve ever seen,” Jeff Asher, crime analyst and co-founder of AH Datalytics, told The Dispatch.

The rise in murder was not limited to large cities, and it’s not just a blip. The deadly wave of violence has carried over to 2021 as the number of homicides rose about 20 percent compared to the first few months of 2020 and by about 49 percent compared to the same time period in 2019. 

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  1. Avatar photo
    Ben Connelly

    Thank you for this insightful article. I wonder if murder is up in part due to people being stuck indoors together (in other words does domestic violence make up a disproportionate part of the spike). Either way, one of the best things about this article is the acknowledgement that these are very complicated trends with a variety of factors, some of which we may not even know yet. So it’s hard to point to any single factor or group of factors as causal.

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  2. Audrey Engman

    This is an excellent explanation of an extremely invasive issue. With many anecdotes circulating about increased crime, this provides a necessary look at the real data that supports those stories. The writing is even-sided and is cautious of drawing causal conclusions that are not yet sufficiently proved. There is probably truth to many of the theories mentioned here. Great job!

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  3. Harrison.Smith

    Not even attempting to address some of the potential causes? Like the Ferguson effect? Police departments announcing the end of plainclothes officers (NYPD)? Comparing the US to Europe, where murders declined last year? Someone seems to be afraid to address the elephant in the room...

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    1. Ingenero.lux

      I find it funny that you and many others here are immediately trying to correlate issues with their favorite hobby horses without any data, and entirely ignoring something we have good data on - 2020 was a massive psychological strain on the country. We had a pandemic and subsequent lockdowns combined with protests of a nationwide scale not seen in decades and a presidential election year that will likely be a byword for political insanity for as long as people study US elections. As expected, substance abuse, depression, anxiety disorder, and more indicators of mental stress all spiked heavily. Contrary to what was assumed, suicide rates dropped - which is really weird. We don’t have the data to try to correlate gun purchasing rates with homicide spikes. We also need data to try to correlate the rise in homicide with any “Ferguson effect”. But we know the country was under massive mental strain and people didn’t respond as expected - all that is known. Maybe we should start there? But no, massive spikes in anxiety, depression, strife, and fear couldn’t possibly contribute to things, could they?

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      1. Harrison.Smith

        There was no similar strain on the people in Europe?

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        1. Ingenero.lux

          Are Americans identical to Europeans? We don’t react the same way in every situation - the US didn’t start a World War when Kennedy was murdered by a Communist, for example, nor do we tend to react to school and work stress by suicide at the same rate as is tragically seen in parts of Asia. There’s good documentation that this has been part of American character for a long time - we tend to be far more likely to resort to murder than Europeans or Asians, at least in the past 150 years. So even if the stress was identical, cultural factors change how people react. Start with what we know, explore that, and maybe start debating other issues when you have data. Otherwise it’s far too obvious that people already know what they want to blame - whatever culture war shibboleth makes a convenient scapegoat. Maybe pretend you care about actual correlations before assuming correlation is causation.

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        2. Greyjoy

          No.

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    2. Avatar photo
      Show Jay Janney the 🚪!

      I'd encourage you browse the Freakonomics books where they discuss the historic drops in crime rates, and the explanations advanced on the topic.

      As the risk of mansplaining/academicsplaining, the adjusted R-squared is very low on these studies. That means the amount of variance explained by the variables being studied is low. In other words, the various theories advanced don't explain a whole lot of the overall puzzle.

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      1. Harrison.Smith

        Read it. So you advocate just throwing your hands up and moving on to the next topic? Pandemic here and in Europe. Homicides up here and down there. Why are my suggested causes wrong? How do you know? Why doesn't the Dispatch report any stats on the R-squared on the obvious potential causes?

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        1. Avatar photo
          Show Jay Janney the 🚪!

          No. I advocate for better research. I'm advocating for humility when it comes to complex topics, as the solutions typically make it worse.

          Consider the question about more guns. What's the theory behind more guns leading to more crime? It seems to me that more guns in the hands of criminals would be an issue, but for otherwise law abiding citizens, does it change their attitude towards criminal behavior? Does anyone have data that people who were law abiding before attaining a weapon become criminals? Test that, and see if it holds. How strong is the effect?

          Why doesn't the dispatch report any stats? Because if they are liberal arts majors, they likely were not taught how to read a regression analysis.

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    3. Avatar photo
      Kmregan7

      They addressed that. It's not just "liberal, Democratic" cities. I know you want it to be. But the facts don't support it.

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      1. Harrison.Smith

        What are you talking about??? The Ferguson Effect occurs across the entire country. You know what that is, right? Cops start to back off enforcement because they fear that the mayors of the towns they work in may not have their backs (and fear of federal civil rights charges even if mayors DO have their backs). It is not limited to crimes in the cities - it is an nationwide effect.

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        1. Daniel Rabiner

          Ferguson happened in 2014. So the Ferguson Effect only happened in 2020? It took 6 years to show itself across the entire country? You realize how that makes it seem like you're just trying to grasp at a reason without any actual evidence.

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        2. Anonymous

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          1. Harrison.Smith

            OMG. The Ferguson Effect is how people describe the tendency of police officers to disengage when a police officer is thrown to the wolves by their superiors, mayors, governors, etc. IT HAS A FORMAL NAME BECAUSE IT IS A RECURRING PHENOMENON.

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    4. Gabej1989

      “Research indicates that cities that increased their police budget were just as likely to see an increase in murder as places that decreased them—the murder rate was up in 84 percent of cities that reduced their budget and 74 percent that raised them.

      However, Asher says we shouldn’t be surprised since “most budgetary changes were relatively minor and happened later in the year.”

      Is that what you’re referring to or is it something else?

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    5. Avatar photo
      Bonzai30

      I could make a pretty compelling argument that the elephant is all of the extra guns sloshing around out there. New gun purchases have been at record levels. Aggravated assault increased 10% in 2020, compared with a 25% increase in murders. In other words, crime has become a lot more deadly, and all of those extra guns likely have something to do with it.

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      1. Ingenero.lux

        Which is why murder rates increased all over the country, not just in places with loose gun laws, even as people all but stopped traveling.

        Not only is correlation not causation, but you don’t even have a correlation yet, let alone the data to back it up. Despite the huge drop in homicides while gun ownership rates rose greatly between the early 90s and 2014, suddenly a massive disruption to our society happened and the issue must be guns. Talk about jumping to conclusions. Let’s wait for the homicide numbers, especially the relative percentages committed with firearms and the changes in areas based on gun ownership and purchase patterns, before assuming our hobby horse will bear the weight we put on it, eh?

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        1. Avatar photo
          Bonzai30

          You are wrong that, “gun ownership rates rose greatly between the early 90s and 2014.” Here’s the data…

          https://www.statista.com/statistics/249740/percentage-of-households-in-the-united-states-owning-a-firearm/

          Now it is true that the absolute number of guns rose during that period, but that was because existing gun owners bought a lot more guns, not because a greater
          Percentage of households acquired guns. I believe we will see a material increase in household gun ownership over the past two years once we have more complete data and that this will be the horrible gift that keeps giving in terms of both increased murder rates as well as increased suicide rates in the years to come. Time will tell.

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          1. Ingenero.lux

            Except that gun ownership rates in the terms I give are the ones used in many studies to claim a correlation with homicide rates. It’s also caused panic every time people buy firearms, even if the primary thing that changed was number of firearms owned by current gun owners. Here’s the thing - if the number of guns owned by a current gun owner matters far less than gun owning households, why is the simply rate of gun sales such a concern? Why are gun skeptics so angered when they find out about gun owners with lots of firearms? Why are the number of firearms an individual can own so heavily regulated in gun-restrictive countries, rather than simply regulating who can own them and what type of gun they can have? Why is there a hard limit on the number of firearms current gun owners can buy in many restrictive states?

            In other words, that’s not the thesis I’ve seen the most. The handwringing I’ve seen has primarily been over the number of firearms owned, period. If new gun owning households are the REAL problem, maybe we can agree to end waiting periods and monthly purchase limits for people with a few guns already.

            But that’s not going to happen without a Supreme Court ruling. You and I both know it’s not just “gun owning households”. Otherwise I wouldn’t have a waiting period and sin tax to pick up a World War I pistol or M1 Garand - am I really more dangerous with a couple of antiques when I already have modern firearms? Nope, and everyone knows it, but the limits still happen. The worry is guns, period. When current gun owners snapped up ARs and AKs as ban discussion picked up, it was always decried as horrible and likely to spawn new murders. Now that new gun owners are picking up firearms, the story changes - it can’t be crazed white male gun loons when there are record levels of new minority and female gun owners. I can’t know what will happen in the future, but I know a panic when I see one - we have the worst pandemic in a century, the most contentious election in modern times, a bitterly angry society, record levels of depression and anxiety, and the first worry that comes out is - guns! It’s as telling as Mr. Smith who immediately blamed policing.

            I’ll give you my theory, supported by some evidence (American Homicide, Professor Randolph Roth, OSU) - unrest and distrust leads to higher homicide rates. Unrest and distrust might as well be the underlying theme of 2020 - we saw it in everything from politics to the pandemic response to the George Floyd protests and counter-protests.

            I’m not saying unrest and distrust is all bad or unwarranted - I’ve been on about police brutality, incompetence, and overmilitarization for many years now, and think things have long needed a change. More of one than is generally on offer, though on different lines than some. But regardless of the rightness or wrongness, unrest and distrust have historically led to murder, and the US has long (over a century and a half) been a place where such leads to far higher murder rates than Europe. Guns are entirely beside that point.

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      2. Harrison.Smith

        Why do the libs always target legally owned assault weapons (long guns)? In 2019, 6,368 homicides were committed with handguns and 364 committed with rifles. So which guns do the libs complain about? Not only that, the NYPD disbanded the plainclothes cops responsible for getting illegal handguns off the street in response to BLM riots last summer. But the problem is guns, especially assault weapons (rifles)... More people were killed with blunt objects than rifles in 2019 - BAN BLUNT OBJECTS - THAT IS THE PROBLEM!!

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        1. Greyjoy

          Questions: Do you or have you ever lived in NYC? Didn’t think so. Even with the “spike,” the NYC murder rate is still 25% or less what it was … say … in 1970 … or 1993. Why do “cons” who have no idea what they’re talking about feel the need to opine/hold forth on NYC crime issues?

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          1. Harrison.Smith

            I have lived in the city since the 1980s. Glad you won't complain until we get back to those murder rates - you're a real problem solver. I doubt you even take the subway.

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          2. Greyjoy

            As a service to you for next time you want to pontificate about something you obviously know little about: https://www1.nyc.gov/assets/nypd/downloads/pdf/crime_statistics/cs-en-us-city.pdf

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        Kmregan7

        Sshh....we're not supposed to talk about that. Guns never have anything to do with crimes, except for gang violence...../sarc

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    6. Avatar photo
      Mudskipper

      They addressed those potential causes by noting that murder has increased 𝘦𝘷𝘦𝘳𝘺𝘸𝘩𝘦𝘳𝘦 in the US. As much as I'm sure you want to shoehorn the data to fit some preordained narrative, it just might not cooperate with you.

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      1. Harrison.Smith

        You are obsessed with me! I am flattered. Due to the BLM protests and calls for de-funding the police as well as blue state leaders denouncing officers as racist before even getting the basic facts in many cases, you had the Ferguson effect 𝘦𝘷𝘦𝘳𝘺𝘸𝘩𝘦𝘳𝘦 in the US. Explain to me why it didn't happen in Europe?

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        1. Avatar photo
          Kmregan7

          How much did guns play a part in the rising crime rate? Perhaps that had something to do with? Some countries in Europe had stricter and longer lockdowns than we did, perhaps that had something to do with it?

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          Mudskipper

          Don't be flattered. I merely have a bad case of SIWOTI.

          The Ferguson Effect--whether real or not--applies to blue urban centers. There is no reason to believe it applies to largely white, rural America. I doubt that there were any calls to defund the police in these areas or a reduction in policing. And yet murder rates have increased in these areas as well.

          As far as why murder rates have increased in the US but not in Europe (if true), there could be any number of reasons that account for that. For example, gun sales have increased rather dramatically since 2014 in the US, with a huge increase in 2020. I suspect, though, you'll automatically discount this as a cause.

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          1. Harrison.Smith

            It is a nationwide effect. Please show me one study showing otherwise. You don't want to mess with perps ANYWHERE for fear of being the star of the next viral iphone video and going to jail.

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  4. Avatar photo
    Ms. SSM

    It makes sense that murder (which Is almost always between people you know) and other violent crime that’s stranger based have devergent rates during the pandemic. I expect their rates will merge again as the pandemic effects go away.

    However I do wish we knew what decreases crime. There is no consensus in what it takes. Literally nothing is constant in America except the crime rates fell almost everywhere in the 90’s and have never gotten anywhere near those rates again. If we knew why we could replicate the trend. But every reason put forth is just conjecture. It’s a huge policy mystery.

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    1. Avatar photo
      Show Jay Janney the 🚪!

      I note above, most of the studies on this have (IMHO) low explanatory power, including the "unwanted children" hypothesis.

      A regression model tries to explain the variance in the data (e.g. the crime rate). The adjusted R-squared tells you how much of the variance is explained (and by inversing it, how much is unexplained). The unexplained is more than the explained.

      That means it's complicated, and messy....

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      1. Ingenero.lux

        Gee, life complicated and messy, what a shock. But it’s far easier to fall back on pet theories than admit we don’t know. You can’t run campaigns on “I’m Bob Smith, and I’ll admit we have no idea how to fix the crime rate. Vote for me and I’ll do my best!”, for one thing, and books on the subject would be liable to go from printing press to remainder bin almost instantly. Uncertainly doesn’t sell.

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      Bonzai30

      There’s pretty compelling (and controversial) evidence that legalized abortion in the early 70s was one of the most important drivers of the decline in crime we’ve seen since the 1990s. Unwanted children are much more likely to become criminals, so the fewer unwanted children who are born, the fewer criminals. Following the legalization of abortion, the states with the highest rates of abortion had the largest declines in crime.

      Here’s a discussion of the initial study, the criticism of the study, and the follow up analysis that seems to strongly consider form the original study.

      https://freakonomics.com/podcast/abortion/

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      Nick H

      I think the problem is too complex to ever define with a simple consensus, and public policy is not very good at dealing with complexity. Actions that government can take to reduce crime may be somewhat effective in the short term but have long term consequences that negate the benefits entirely. (This is a one sentence description of the war on drugs.) With so many factors that influence crime, it's difficult to measure what impact any one policy has. And it doesn't help that we go from one extreme to the other. There has to be a middle ground between the "lock them all up and throw away the key" plan and the "don't prosecute any minor crimes at all" mentality that seems to be dominant in some cities these days.

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    Jason Gibson

    And so it begins. The post Mortem on the social costs that no one wanted to see a year ago.

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