Violent crime up second year in a row

This isn’t good news.

It’s not “carnage,” and it’s not a reason to panic or adopt cruel, stupid policies, but it really isn’t good news.

Yes, year-to-year homicide rates are statistically noisy, especially at the city level, because homicide is a relatively rare event. But an increase of roughly 20% over two years isn’t just statistical noise. And though there are indeed dramatic increases for identifiable local reasons in places such as Chicago, that’s not what’s driving this train: the 2016 increase showed up in small tows as well as big cities. [Update: Robert VerBruggen makes a key observation: white-on-white homicide rose more in percentage terms than black-on-black homicide.]

But the real reason to be concerned isn’t that homicide has gone up for two years in a row; it’s that it was flat in the two previous years, pretty clearly breaking the 20-year downtrend starting in 1994. Yes, even after two bad years, we’re much better off than we used to be. But even at 5 homicides per 100,000 - about half the 1994 rate - our current rate is three times the Canadian rate, five times the UK rate, and ten times the Norwegian rate. That’s nothing to write home about. Getting the homicide rate moving back down ought to count as an important national goal.

But how?

Continue reading “Violent crime up second year in a row”