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As the midterm elections approach, Americans have gotten an earful both about crime itself and how the other side is distorting the news about it for political gain.
"Cherry-picking!"
"Fearmongering!"
"Gaslighting!"
To which we (a former NYPD crime analyst and an historical criminologist) can add only, "Oh my!" Using crime as political football may be a time-honored tradition, but the game's intensity has quickened lately amid reform efforts and changing crime patterns.
Compared to before the pandemic, we're still very much in a rise in crime — just not your grandfather's from the 1970s: it's more rural, more geographically and demographically concentrated, and involves more of those suffering from mental illness. When we consider these often-overlooked crime patterns during the past decade, we can now see the new American crime story—one frequently at odds with pieties and pronouncements from both the political left and right.
Because New York City crime attracts so much attention we'll start there.
"It was worse in the 1970s (or 1990s)" has become progressives' reflexive response to New Yorkers' growing anxiety about safety. This is not proving a winning political strategy—any more than "don't worry, mortgages were higher in the 1970s" reassures homebuyers facing doubling rates this year.
But it's also true. Violence of all kinds—particularly those violent crimes most feared—is much lower today than, say, 1976 when every hour, 75 New Yorkers fell prey to violence. Murder rates then were four times what we see today; reported rape, three and half times (and much more likely to be stranger-perpetrated then than now).
We'd like to note that police violence is also very different; it's much lower now. In 1972, the NYPD fired at suspects 2,510 times. By comparison, in 2018 NYPD officers responded to 6.1 million calls and fired at suspects in just 17 incidents, discharging a mere 35 rounds.
The recent explosion in criminal violence is real—and unprecedented. In 2020, NYC shootings doubled to 1,531—the largest relative increase in Gotham's history. Even with the recent year-to-date drop (down 13.5 percent), shootings are at a quarter-century high.
In the decade after 2008, the subways never saw more than two homicides annually; there have been nine already this year. New Yorkers who understandably became accustomed to Gotham's famous crime drop—one that started earlier, fell lower, lasted longer, and spread further than any other city's—are right something has profoundly changed for the worse.
But unlike the 1970s, when much crime was inter-racial, New York crime is now highly demographically concentrated. Nine out of 10 shooting victims were people of color last year—but so too were the suspects (as identified by victims, not NYPD). The city's rapes and assaults show similar patterns.
Geographically, too, crime has become more concentrated: no more than 6 percent of city blocks saw a shooting between 2011 and 2020—a far cry from 1970s New York when perhaps upwards of 30 percent of blocks experienced a violent felony. And those committing crime are now much more likely to be suffering from mental illness; about half of those awaiting trial for violent offenses in New York City, compared to only 12 percent in 2019. Likewise, about a quarter of arrestees for major felonies such as murder and rape now have a documented history of mental illness.
Expanding our view nationally, violent crime exploded in 2020, with murders increasing by a quarter—the largest such spike since 1960—only to rise another 10 percent the following year. But just as all politics is local, so too with crime. Murder, for example, is up 90 percent in Colorado Springs but down 16 percent in Chicago.
Unlike the 1970s surge, rural America now shares in the suffering, with murder rates increasing 25 percent in 2020—almost as large as metro areas' 30 percent jump. Indeed, for the past five years, violent crime in rural counties has exceeded national averages. That trend reverberates in the decade-long, national trend of fewer big-city residents going to prison even as far more small-town Americans do, including in blue states like New York and Massachusetts. Notably, little of this violence (or subsequent incarceration) can be blamed on the War on Drugs; indeed, drug arrests have plunged since 2009 for everyone except white women.
With Covid restrictions lessening and the economy rebounding, our national crime spike likely eased somewhat in the last year—we just don't know confidently by how much. The FBI changed how it collects data in 2021 with many local police departments struggling to meet the new reporting requirements, including large cities like New York. FBI data now covers only about 66 percent of the population, down from 90 percent previously. What limited homicide data we do have suggests good news: big-city homicides may be down 5 percent from 2021.
Amid this year's political demagogy, it bears remembering that only by understanding our new crime reality independent of ideology will we craft viable solutions.
Chris Herrmann, a former NYPD crime analysis supervisor, is associate professor of law and police science at John Jay College of Criminal Justice (CUNY). Fritz Umbach is an associate professor of history; Umbach's forthcoming third book, Modern New York in 50 Crimes, explores crime in the city since 1965. Both currently consult for New York City government on gun violence and its costs.
The views expressed in this article are the writers' own.
