TheEconomistFebruary19th 2022
Graphic detail Crime in America81
Why have murders
soared?
I
twasashorthoneymoon.OnJanuary
1st, Alvin Bragg assumed the office of
Manhattan district attorney. One of a new
class of “progressive prosecutors”—crimi
naljustice reformers who aim to reduce
the number of people in prison—Mr Bragg
launched a spate of policy changes.
Offenceslike burglary and possession of
certain weapons would be downgraded;
other crimes like prostitution and resist
ing arrest would no longer be prosecuted at
all. Weeks later, New York City witnessed a
sudden surge in violent crime. Two police
officers were killed on the job. Mr Bragg
had to announce a uturn.
America has seen an explosion in vio
lence since the start of the covid19 pan
demic. The national murder rate increased
by 29% between 2019 and 2020—the larg
est singleyear jump since 1905. That wiped
out 20 years of progress on homicide. Data
for violence in 2021 are still being collect
ed, but the preliminary evidence suggests
that homicide continued to rise, albeit at a
less sharp rate. Among 22 large cities thathave alreadyreported,murdersroseby4%
between 2020 and 2021.
As Americans try to make sense of it,
some have blamed progressive policies
and reformers like Mr Bragg. These days
Republicans are criticising President Joe
Biden for being soft on crime. They also see
electoral rewards in attacking Democratic
rhetoric to “defund the police”—as at
tempted, unsuccessfully, in liberal cities
like Austin and Los Angeles. But new evi
dence suggests that the actual blame may
not lie with urban progressives.
To test this hypothesis, a trio of social
scientists examined what happened to
crime after progressive prosecutors as
sumed office in 35 cities and counties over
a sixyear period. They found no detectable
effect of policy change on rates of major
crimes including murders. The claim that
overly lax criminaljustice policy drove vi
olence looks shaky; so too does the pro
gressive contention that decriminalisa
tion would drive down offences. Separate
analysis by John Pfaff, a criminologist at
Fordham University, found that murders
went up by almost equal rates in cities with
and without progressive prosecutors.
The reality is that the murder wave has
affected every part of America—rural, sub
urban and urban. Some blame the upheav
al of the pandemic. Yet the spike in mur
ders was not mirrored in other rich coun
tries that endured disruptive lockdowns.HomicideratesinCanada,Germanyand
Sweden only marginally increased.
Trends in murder are notoriously diffi
cult to explain. Criminologists still cannot
agree on what drove the great homicide de
cline that began in the 1990s. There is thus
considerable debate about what is causing
this unfortunate bit of American excep
tionalism. It is easier to rule explanations
out than endorse any single one. Progres
sives have blamed easy access to guns,
which Americans bought in record num
bers during the pandemic years. Yet when
researchers at the University of California,
Davis, computed the correlation of new
gun purchases with murders, they found
very little.
The Economisttried its hand at this sta
tistical conundrum by gathering highfre
quency data in ten cities on covid spread,
lockdown severity and unemployment. We
found that homicide rates were worse in
areas with higher unemployment. This
was also true in areas with more severe
lockdowns, which we measured using data
gathered by Google on the change in peo
ple’s mobility patterns. These correlations,
though suggestive, cannot explain what
caused the extraordinary upsurge.
That suggests that some humility about
policy is in order. Progressive and conser
vative politicians have all failedtoarrest
the murder surge. Simple explanations, it
turns out, are often simply wrong.nProgressive prosecutors look more like
the scapegoat than the source-100-5005010010 5 0 5 10152025
Monthsbefore/afterinauguration↑Progressiveprosecutors
hadnoimpactonmurders95%confidence02.55.07.510.01990 95 2000 05 10 15 20BritainCanada
FranceGermanySwedenUnited
StatesAnchorage-43Portland Seattle+. 0
99Minneapolis 70 Rochester
60Madison 147Milwaukee 99 oo+^5Boston
47Chicago 66 Clev 61
Omaha 61 0 g Nw rk^49Indianapolis 49ColoradoSprings
88
LLo ee 8tcc + 88Fremont
101Scottsdale 162 Virginia Beach
-43rs Chesapeake 113Memphis 49Ana imm 00000Atlanta 46Lubbock
C n errrr 6 177Garland- 4iingnggg 9ChulaVista
173Tucson 41
Houston BatonRouge 47
43Laredo 198Miami 40
500 kmSpokane 279Increase Decrease 200%100%
20%
InSeattle,a 68%riseinmurders
wasaccompaniedbymorepeople
stayingathomeUnemployment in New York City
nearlydoubled between 2019 and
2020,while murders rose by 49%→ America has experienced an extraordinary, nationwide surge in violence. Less clear is what caused itMurders per 100,000 people Change in murder rate, 201-20, %Change in murder rate*, %
Since inauguration of progressive prosecutor*In 5 American cities and counties between 2015 and 2021 Sources: “Prosecutorial reform and local crime rates”, by
Amanda Agan, Jennifer Doleac and Anna Harvey, working paper, 2021; Patrick Sharkey, americanviolence.org; FBI; World Bank