Homicides in cities are falling at the fastest pace in decades, bringing them close to levels they were at before a pandemic-era jump.
Nationwide, homicides dropped around 20% in 133 cities from the beginning of the year through the end of March compared with the same period in 2023, according to data analyst Jeff Asher.
Philadelphia saw a 35% drop in killings as of April 12. In New York City, homicides fell 15% through April 7. Boston had just two homicides this year as of March 31, compared with 11 over the same period last year.
The declines in 2024, on top of last year’s drop, mirror the steep declines in homicides of the late 1990s. Asher, co-founder of criminal justice consulting firm AH Datalytics, said, “Nationally, you’re seeing a very similar situation to what you saw in the mid-to-late ’90s. But it’s potentially even larger in terms of the percentages and numbers of the drops.”
If the trend continues, the U.S. could be on pace for a year like 2014, which saw the lowest homicide rate since the 1960s. Police officials and researchers cautioned that crime trends aren’t always consistent and future homicide rates are difficult to predict, reports the Wall Street Journal.
Some cities, like Denver, Los Angeles, and Portland, Ore., reported rises in homicides as of early April, but such increases are outliers.
Researchers and authorities attributed the upward spike in 2020 to several factors, including crime-prevention programs, courts and prisons being unable to operate normally when COVID was spreading; young people not in school due to shutdowns; and law enforcement pulling back after social unrest following the high-profile police killings of George Floyd and other Black people.
“The police went to sleep,” said Dean Dabney, a criminology professor at Georgia State University. “The prosecution and the courts went to sleep, and the jails and prisons let people out. So you had an ideal situation for criminals.”
Now, police are more engaged and are working to hire more officers. Community-based crime prevention programs have resumed. Social unrest has cooled.
Crime researchers have been particularly struck by the drops in cities that have been the most plagued with violent crime in recent years, like New Orleans.
In the first half of 2022, it had the highest homicide rate of any major U.S. city. Through April 10 of this year, the number of killings dropped 39% from the same period in 2023.
Ronal Serpas, who was the city’s police superintendent from 2010 to 2014 and is now a criminal-justice professor at Loyola University New Orleans, said the declining numbers aren’t changing the broad public perception of crime.