Homicide Rates Are Down—and Why?

Are volunteers persuading people to hold fire, or does crime pay less than it did a few months ago?

Many of the nation’s biggest cities have enjoyed a reduction in homicide rates in the first five months of the year, the research firm AH Datalytics has found.

“[T]he homicide rate has fallen roughly 12% nationwide when compared with the first five months of 2022,” The Washington Times reports in a story on the study.

Big decreases in homicide have occurred in the largest cities, and smaller-percentage declines have been reported in some of the most crime-plagued midsized cities, the paper reports:

The firm, which references publicly available police data, shows that Chicago has seen a 5% drop in killings, while New York City has seen a nearly 14% decline in homicides. Stark drop-offs also were recorded in Philadelphia (24%), Los Angeles (27%) and Houston (28%).

The trend also includes mid-sized cities that typically struggle with crime, such as Baltimore (down 15%), Detroit (down 10%) and St. Louis (down 10%).

New Orleans—which had the highest murder rate in the country last year—has seen a 15% drop in its number of recorded homicides through May.

The news is not all good. Homicide has increased this year by 38 percent in Memphis, 30 percent in Cleveland, and 15 percent in Washington, D.C., the report states. The nation’s capital reached 100 homicides this year at the earliest date in 20 years, WUSA9 reports.

In addition, at this point there is no way of knowing whether the decreases will be sustained through the rest of the year and thereafter, the study author observes.

The Associated Press indicates the easing of the murder rate in these cities results from municipal governments dialing back on the Defund the Police movement and local district attorneys’ reluctance to prosecute crimes:

Officials in Cleveland; Newark, New Jersey; and Philadelphia have announced summer plans to make officers more of a visible presence in locations where violent crimes have happened, while also promoting community efforts to prevent violence and provide alternative activities.

In Baltimore, city officials—not police officers—will enforce curfews on teenagers starting Friday and continuing through Labor Day weekend. The controversial policy has long been on the books but rarely enforced.

“We are going back to the old days,” Baltimore Mayor Brandon Scott said in announcing the summer enforcement, after two teens were wounded as hundreds gathered on a Sunday night in the city’s popular Inner Harbor district. …

In Detroit, federal prosecutors are expanding efforts to help local police this summer by taking armed carjacking cases and business robberies in high-crime areas, in addition to certain gun crimes. Federal convictions typically bring longer sentences.

Crime rates rose rapidly in 2020 as cities across the nation adopted soft-on-crime policies, and they are still far above the numbers that preceded that annus horribilus.

The AP story suggests the increasing use of volunteers to intercede to defuse situation before they escalate to violence is proving effective, though providing only anecdotal evidence and not much of it at that.

The D.C. Police Union, by contrast, released a statement quoting its chairman, Gregg Pemberton, as tracing the persistent increases in crime to a simple failure to provide police protection as had been done in the years prior to 2020:

“This increase in crime is due to the DC Council's implementation of misguided 'police reform' legislation,” [Pemberton said] … “The Council's actions have had a chilling effect on professional and responsible policing and caused over 1,200 police officers to leave the agency. … Congress recently took up a disapproval of this law, which passed the House and the Senate with bipartisan support; however, President Biden vetoed the effort, leaving DC residents stuck with these radical, anti-cop / pro-criminal laws.

A decrease in homicide is certainly good news. It is important, however, to know just why it has happened, so that we can know what policies work and which do harm. At present there is nothing in the available facts to contradict the obvious, time-tested observation that policing and prosecution are necessary elements in combatting crime. When “crime does not pay,” you get less of it.