Highlights
There is data stating that homicides and violence are down for select cities for the first half of 2023. Ten cities experienced an increase in homicides.
Many of America’s most violent cities were not included in the research. The Major Cities Chiefs Association stated that homicides increased by 50 percent and aggravated assaults increased by 36 percent since 2019. With increases this big, it was inevitable that violence would recede regardless of actions taken.
Author
Leonard Adam Sipes, Jr.
Retired federal senior spokesperson. Thirty-five years of directing award-winning public relations for national and state criminal justice agencies. Interviewed multiple times by every national news outlet. Former Senior Specialist for Crime Prevention for the Department of Justice’s clearinghouse. Former Director of Information Services, National Crime Prevention Council. Former Adjunct Associate Professor of Criminology and Public affairs-University of Maryland, University College. Former advisor to presidential and gubernatorial campaigns. Former advisor to the “McGruff-Take a Bite Out of Crime” national media campaign. Certificate of Advanced Study-Johns Hopkins University. Former police officer. Aspiring drummer.
Author of ”Success With The Media: Everything You Need To Survive Reporters and Your Organization” available at Amazon and additional booksellers.
Editor’s Note
All quotes are edited for brevity.
Article
There are two sources in this article for the finding that homicides and other forms of violence decreased for select cities during the first half of 2023, the Council on Criminal Justice and CNN’s reporting on the Council’s findings.
The baseline for comparisons is 2019. Note that the Major Cities Chiefs Association states that homicides increased by 50 percent and aggravated assaults increased by 36 percent since 2019.
A decrease in homicides in cities for the first six months of 2023 was first reported by Jeff Asher.
Why Use City Instead Of National Metrics?
Those writing about crime in 2022 and 2023 are using city metrics because the FBI is implemented a new reporting system (The National Incident-Based Reporting System) but is experiencing a lack of participation. The discrepancies between the FBI’s old (Summary Reporting System) and the new metrics may be resolved with the FBI combining both methods of counting crimes for the upcoming report for 2022 scheduled for the fall of 2023.
The Bureau of Justice Statistics National Victimization Crime Survey (contemplating its own redesign) does not count homicides but they do report on violent crimes.
The last full crime reports from the FBI and the Bureau of Justice Statistics was for 2021. Both are US Department of Justice agencies.
The Council On Criminal Justice
The Council On Criminal Justice examined 37 cities but homicide statistics were available for 30. Twenty of the study cities recorded a decrease in homicides during the first six months of the year, ranging from a 59% drop in Raleigh, NC, to a 2% drop in Nashville, TN. Ten cities experienced an increase in homicide, ranging from about 5% in Seattle to 133% in Lincoln, NE.
Motor vehicle thefts, which began to rise at the onset of the pandemic, continued an upward trend. Considered a “keystone crime” that facilitates the commission of homicide and other offenses, motor vehicle theft rose by 33.5% in the first half of the year, representing 23,974 more stolen vehicles in the 32 cities that reported data.
Seven of those cities experienced an increase of 100% or more, led by Rochester, NY, (+355%) and Cincinnati (+162%). Overall, the number of vehicle thefts from January to June 2023 was 104.3% higher than during the same period in 2019. While it’s likely that much of the increase is the result of thefts of Kia and Hyundai models, the authors said, rates were rising before the cars became popular targets.
In other findings, gun assaults (-5.6%), robberies (-3.6%), nonresidential burglaries (-5%), larcenies (-4.1%), residential burglaries (-3.8%), and aggravated assaults (-2.5%) all fell in the first six months of this year compared to the same timeframe last year. Drug offenses rose by 1% and domestic violence by 0.3%.
Property crime trends were more mixed as motor vehicle thefts (+104.3%) and nonresidential burglaries (+5.1%) were higher in the first half of 2023 compared to the same period in 2019 (emphasis added), while drug offenses (-38.7%), residential burglaries (-26%), and larcenies (-7%) were lower, Council On Criminal Justice.
CNN
The number of homicides in 30 US cities declined in the first half of 2023 compared to the first half of last year but has remained above pre-pandemic levels, according to a report released Thursday by the Council on Criminal Justice.
The report analyzed homicide data from cities that make it readily available, including New York, Atlanta and Chicago. In the 30 cities examined, homicides declined 9.4% in the first half of this year compared to the first half of last year, with about 200 fewer homicides in that period.
Twenty cities recorded a drop in homicides in that period, while 10 cities saw an increase, the study found. Raleigh, North Carolina, saw the steepest drop of 59%, while Lincoln, Nebraska, saw a 133% increase in homicides.
Additionally, the study said a snapshot of its findings “suggests that levels of nearly all offenses are lower, or have changed little, in the first six months of 2023 compared with the same period in 2022.”
Gun assaults, defined as aggravated assaults committed with a firearm, committed during the first half of this year are 5.6% lower on average than during the same period last year, “representing 514 fewer gun assaults in the cities that reported data,” the report found.
Overall, this year’s crime numbers are still high compared to pre-pandemic crime levels, the report said. Most “violent crimes” – described in the report as homicides, aggravated assaults, gun assaults, domestic violence and robberies – committed in the first six months of 2023 are generally higher than pre-pandemic levels in 2019, CNN.
Analysis
The are multiple metrics when counting crimes in the United States beyond the FBI and The Bureau of Justice Statistics National Crime Victimization Survey.
To suggest that 2021 (latest national data) numbers are massively complex (based on their methodologies and problems collecting data) would be an understatement. You could legitimately state that violent crime did not increase in 2021 based on numbers from the FBI and the National Crime Victimization Survey.
But it’s equally correct to state that, per the FBI, homicides increased considerably between 2019 and 2021 (nearly 30 percent in 2020 and 4.3 percent in 2021) and that murders have been traditionally used by criminologists as an indicator of all violent crime. Rapes also increased in 2021.
The 2021 US firearm homicides (81 percent of all murders) were the highest since the 1990s, Centers For Disease Control (CDC) data show. They recorded an 8.3 percent increase in 2021, CNN.
The risk of victimization while a person was out in public rose by nearly 40% by April 2020, National Academy Of Sciences.
From 2020 to 2021, the violent victimization rate increased from 19.0 to 24.5 victimizations per 1,000 persons in urban areas while remaining unchanged in suburban or rural areas. The rate of serious (excluding common assaults) violent victimization in urban areas also increased, per the Bureau of Justice Statistics National Crime Victimization Survey.
Per Gallup, there is a big increase in the criminal victimization of urban households in 2021, 30 percent compared to 22 percent in 2020. Seven percent of urban residents were violently victimized compared to 3% of U.S. adults. The collective data (urban crime victimization-computer crime) indicates a growing crime problem for at least half of American households.
Per other reputable sources, there were increases in aggravated assaults, firearm assaults, and motor vehicle thefts.
Yet it’s the official position of the US Department of Justice via the FBI and the National Crime Victimization Survey that overall violent crime was flat for 2021.
Are Property Crimes Really Down?
Jeff Asher states that growing police response times (due to thousands of police officers quitting) may have an impact on the reporting of property crimes. There is data from a variety of sources stating that property crimes are up when property crimes have traditionally been decreasing or flat per the FBI and the Bureau of Justice Statistics.
Per Gallup, Americans are most likely to have experienced theft. Retail shrink hit $94.5 billion in 2021, a 53% jump from 2019, according to the National Retail Federation’s annual survey of around 60 retail member companies, CNN. The data on vehicle theft (above) is astounding. The media is offering endless reports of retail stores leaving cities because of crime.
The finding that property crimes are down seems to conflict with other data sources.
Final Analysis
The projected decrease in homicides and violence for the first half of 2023 is good news “but” readers need to understand that the FBI recorded decreases for the first six months of a given year in the past only to find that violence was either flat or increased for the full year.
There are major cities throughout the United States reporting an increase in violence and homicides.
Per Forbes’s 15 Most Dangerous Cities in the US in 2023, the following cities were not included in the Council’s report: Birmingham, Alabama, Baltimore, Maryland, Cleveland, Ohio, New Orleans, Louisiana, Shreveport, Louisiana, Baton Rouge, Louisiana, Oakland, California, Milwaukee, Wisconsin, and Kansas City, Missouri. See the Council’s list of cities.
Even if the Council’s data from select cities hold for an entire year, violence in cities is a major issue creating record fear of crime. I’m not sure if high-crime cities are willing to suggest that a 9.4 percent decrease in homicides is a cause for celebration. There are smaller decreases for other forms of violence. If you live in high-crime cities, does your quality of life improve? Will you notice a difference?
All this is in comparison to a report from the Major Cities Chief Association stating that homicides increased by 50 percent and aggravated assaults increased by 36 percent in select cities since 2019. Fear of crime remains at an all-time high. With increases this high, there is a point where decreases to the mean (average) are inevitable.
Crime and violence was a major topic in the recent Congressional elections and will remain a topic of importance in the upcoming presidential elections. In a poll by the Pew Research Center, violent crime ranked as the third most important issue for registered voters in the congressional election, with 60% of the vote, tying with health care and trailing only the economy (77%) and gun policy (62%), USA Today.
Statistics are only meaningful when you can see, feel and touch the difference as to citizen safety.
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