Big Crime Drop Has Many Explanations

See What’s Behind the Historic Drop in U.S. Crime: Explanations for the fall range from tougher policing to societal changes like less alcohol consumption and more time spent alone by Scott Calvert and Josh Ulick of The WSJ. Excerpts:

"The homicide rate fell last year to at least a 125-year low, based on projected final-year data"

"Continuing drops in a range of other reported crimes, such as robbery and theft, point to a public-safety rebound after the upheaval spurred by the Covid-19 pandemic."

"Theories to explain decreasing crime range from an influx of federal funding to stepped-up police enforcement, along with longer-term societal shifts, like reduced alcohol consumption and increased time spent alone."

"Last year, homicide rates slid below 2015 levels to the lowest rate in a decade in more than half of 58 cities tracked by the Major Cities Chiefs Association.

Steep drop-offs extended to cities that still have some of the country’s highest per capita homicide levels. From 2020 to 2025, the homicide rate plunged 59% in Baltimore, 43% in St. Louis and 39% in New Orleans."

"there is a “strong possibility” last year’s homicide rate will be 4 per 100,000 residents"

"That would be the lowest rate recorded in public health or police data stretching back to 1900"

One cause was "a return to normal routines following the pandemic, and an easing of volatility in illicit drug markets post-Covid" 

and "the influx of billions of dollars in federal pandemic aid that restored more than one million local government jobs"

"Those jobs are teachers and counselors and clinicians and local police, all the people who work directly with young people who are at the highest risk of violence and victimization"

I like this article because major trends like this don't always have just one cause. The hard part is figuring out how important each cause was.