The amazing fall in the violent crime that was in the 1990s and extended until the mid -2010 is one of the most important and most appropriate news of memory recently. That caused the displacement of reversal of his pandemic to be so worrying.
In the first full year of the pandemic, the FBI scored 22,134 murders throughout the country, compared to 16,669 in 2019, an increase of approximately 34 percent, the most acute increase of one year in the maintenance of modern crimes records. In 2021, Philadelphia only registered a 562 homicide record, while Baltimore experienced 337 almost record murders. Between 2019 and 2020, the average number of weekly visits to the emergency department for shooting shots incurred 37 percent, and remained largely high during the following year.
In the 2024 elections, for the first time in a time, violent crime was an important political problem in the United States. A PEW survey that year found that 58 percent of Americans believed that crime should be a priority for the President and Congress, compared to 47 percent in 2021.
And yet, even when the presidential campaign was developed, the increase in the violent crime of the pandemic had already decreased, and the crime rates have continued to decrease. The FBI 2023 crime report found that the murder decreased almost 12 percent year after year, and in 2024 it was still falling to approximately 16,700 murders, along with the pre-pondemic levels. The first numbers for 2025 are so promising that Jeff Asher, one of the best independent crime analysts, recently asked in a piece if this year could the lowest murder rate in the history of the United States.
All of which raise two questions: what is promoting a decrease in crime as acute as the increase in pandemia-dire? And why so many of us find it so difficult to believe?
We should reach conclusions about this year’s crime rates based on early data, especially we are starting summer, when violent crime almost always increases. The crime data in the US are also irregular and slow: I can tell him how many soy the United States raised in March, but I cannot tell him how many people have been killed in the United States this year.
But what we can say looks very good. The Crimes Index in real time, an academic project that collects crimes data of more than 380 police agencies that cover almost 100 million people, estimates that there were 1,488 murders in the US. UU. This year until March, compared to the estimate. That is a decrease of almost 22 percent. Violent crime in general has decreased by approximately 11 percent. The theft of motor vehicles, which became an epidemic duration of the pandemic, has decreased by 26 percent.
Look at the local level, and the image continues to improve. In Baltimore, that The wire Made synonymous with violent and drug -related crime, homicides fell to 199 last year, their best performance in more than a decade. In early May, the city had 45 murders, in another third of the same period last year. The emergency rooms of the city that were ever full of shots victims have been silent.
How much minor could go nationwide? The low homicide record rate, at least since the national records began in 1960, is 4.45 percent in 2014. So far this year, this year, according to Asher, the murder falls into 25 of the 30 cities that reported that the holders of the holders of the holders of the holders of the holders of the holders of the holders of the holders of the holders of the holders. Horters Horters Horters Horters Horters Horters Horters Horters Horters Support Horters. In assassination at the national level in 2025, it would link approximately 2014 due to the lowest murder rate ever registered. “
What is behind the fall?
In summary: Pandemia led to a great increase in violent crime, and as Daned pandemic, so did the wave.
The closure of schools last the pandemic, special in cities of crimes already higher in the northeast, meant many more young men, who are statistically more prone to perpetrators of violent crimes or victims of the streets. The closure of social services left less resources for them to resort; And the stress of a unique health catastrophe in life put everyone on the limit. The murder of George Floyd in the spring of 2020 led to a collapse in community confidence in police surveillance, which in turn seemed to lead to less aggressive surveillance. As the pandemic was relieved, he thought, those shock absorbers returned, providing a natural brake on violent crime.
But the government, from the national level to the cities, also took immediate measures to express the avalanche of violence. The White House under President Joe Biden poured hundreds of millions of dollars in programs for the interruption of community violence, whose objective is to break a compensation that can lead to homicide. Baltimore’s group violence reduction strategy has gathered community groups and the application of the law to deter people considered most likely to get involved in armed violence. And erosion in police forces throughout the country that occurred the duration of the pandemic has stopped largely.
The situation is far from perfect. He even thought that Floyd’s murder caused a national calculation around police violence, recent data shows that police murders continued to increase, partly because the fear of crime often stopped the impulse around the reforms. Here in New York, as well as the general crime in the Metro has fallen to historical minimums, the assaults serious crimes in the trains have continued to increase, feeding the fears of illegality.
Why can we believe it?
As the weekend of the Fallen Day marks the beginning of the summer, in the coming months they will say if the pandemic was really only an error in the long -term reduction of violent crimes. But what we can say is that most people do not see positive trends. An October 2024 survey of Gallup discovered that 64 percent of Americans believed that there were more crimes throughout the country than the previous year, just at that time in 2024, the fall in post-pandemic crime was underway.
But such results are not surprising. One of the most reliable results in the surveys is that if you ask Americans if the crime is increasing, they will say yes. Surprisingly, in 23 or 27 national surveys conducted by Gallup since 1993, American reported that they thought the crime throughout the country was increasing, just although most of those surveys were made the long decrease in crime.
Crime is one of the best examples we have of bad news. By definition, murder is an atypical event that calls our attention, inevitably leading the news nights. Sometimes, like killing pandemic, that bias can match reality. But if we fail what is happening around us, not only what Think It is happening: he won only to make us think that our cities are more dangerous than they really are. Sapirá energy for reforms that can really make a difference.
A version of this story originally appeared in the Good News Bulletin. Register here!
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