Post-pandemic, it’s hard to get a clear read on the extent to which violence is actually declining.
For the New York City Police Department, from the mid-1990s through the late 2010s, ringing in the New Year provided an opportunity to celebrate its achievements, usually in the form of crime declines. The yearly announcements of safer streets became something to which many of us New Yorkers grew accustomed; they also became something we’d take for granted. This exacerbated the shock of the city’s massive spike in serious violent crime in 2020, driven by upticks in homicides and shootings of nearly 50% and 100%, respectively. Homicides and shootings increased again in 2021, and 2022 saw major crimes spike 22% in the Big Apple while homicides fell 11%. The preliminary 2023 data show another nearly 12% decline in homicides, but an overall major crime figure that essentially held steady (down 0.3% for the year).
Recent crime increases have drawn heightened attention to the city’s year-end crime data for 2023. Everyday New Yorkers are looking to the data, hoping to find some signal of forthcoming relief, while criminal justice and police reform advocates are hoping to find evidence dissociating the last few years of crime data from their broader project. While we should all be encouraged by the recent declines in murders, there is also good reason to remain skeptical of those who’d have us believe that America’s largest city is out of the proverbial woods.
Continue reading the entire piece here at Vital City
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Rafael Mangual is the Nick Ohnell Fellow and head of research for the Policing and Public Safety Initiative at the Manhattan Institute and a contributing editor of City Journal. He is also the author of Criminal (In)Justice: What the Push for Decarceration and Depolicing Gets Wrong and Who It Hurts Most.
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