Crime wave

Homicide rates in large U.S. cities jumped by more than 30 percent in 2020, on average, and those rates have climbed another 24 percent this year, according to preliminary data from criminologists. Rising crime might seem strange during a pandemic, with large cities locked down, many employees working from home, and people—in theory—meeting less in person. So, what’s behind the spike in violent crime in the United States?

Tom Clark is a professor of political science and the co-director of the Politics of Policing Lab at Emory University. Clark says that, while there aren’t definitive answers on why crime rises or falls, the continuing increase seems linked to the economic hardships and frustration caused by the pandemic. The escalation in gun sales in recent years is almost certainly a factor, as is the disintegration of trust between police and many communities after George Floyd’s killing and through the country’s longer-term cycle of high-profile police brutality and protest. Meanwhile, the slogan Defund the police has politically harmed Democratic Party–which their opponent in the Republican Party have ceaselessly assailed for its association with the slogan—but, Clark says, recent elections point to an electoral advantage not in tacking away from or toward supporting police but in balancing support for police with practical police reforms …

Michael Bluhm: Why is this happening?

Tom Clark: The answer is that we don’t know, and I suspect we will never know. A way to understand why is to think about the mirror image—the early ‘90s, where crime began to fall. Thirty years later, with a tremendous amount of research, we still don’t know why crime fell. There’s still debate.