Crime has continued to slide in 2024. An analysis of 277 cities in the United States found that the murder rate (always the most accurate measure), declined by around 18 percent since 2023. For the ten biggest cities in the United States, the downturn was closer to 19 percent. These impressive numbers tell us that the Covid crime spike of 2020–22 is over. But the quality of policing is not what it ought to be.
The Covid years were rough for law enforcement, and this accelerated the crime burst. Police became less proactive and lost manpower because of the pandemic. Officers were demoralized by fierce public criticism (remember “Defund the police”?) and diverted from street crime to riot and protest assignments in the wake of George Floyd’s death. Murders jumped from fewer than 17,000 in 2019 to more than 22,500 in 2020, a 31 percent increase in the per capita rate. The following year was only slightly better, with 21,462 murders at a rate of 6.5 per 100,000 of the U.S. population. While crime spiked in 2020–21, arrests went down — not up. There were 25 percent fewer arrests for serious crimes in 2021 than in 2022.
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