Murder Rates Are Plummeting. What Should We Make of It?
A few weeks ago, I watched as several people, myself included, stepped on a bit of a digital landmine. The landmine: celebrating declining murder rates .
Homicides spiked in 2020. The trend was real and worrisome. It understandably put many people on edge, particularly in the context of a 24-hour news cycle that favors content that bleeds. But those murderous numbers dropped substantially in 2023 and are, quite thankfully, continuing to retreat significantly. So what should we make of the new data? What are the appropriate caveats? And where are we now in comparison to the Before Times (in this case, before COVID-19)?
First, the big picture: In data from over 200 cities, murder rates are down a little over 19 percent when compared to a similar time frame in 2023. Specifically, New York's homicide rate is down about 18 percent, Washington, D.C.'s has declined 21 percent, Baltimore's has dropped 39 percent, Philadelphia's is down 40 percent, Chicago's has decreased by about 9 percent, Detroit's has fallen about 28 percent, and Cleveland's is down by approximately 33 percent. The list goes on. There are a few outliers—Los Angeles' rate, for instance, has increased by about 6 percent—but overwhelmingly the trend is highly encouraging.
How can we be sure that cities are reporting crime accurately? That concern is a very legitimate one—for certain crimes. Tracking burglaries, for example, is notoriously difficult; the bulk of people simply don't report them . Murders, however, are usually reported to police , which follows basic logic. It is generally pretty difficult to conceal from the government that someone has died. So while it's true that police may not actually solve the crime—law enforcement cleared just over 52 percent of homicides in 2022—they are at least typically aware that it happened.
