It was an especially hard year for cities that have never seen decreases in gun violence to match the overall national trend. The rise in homicides likely translated into an additional 4,000 to 5,000 people killed across the country compared with the year before, according to early estimates. The 2020 homicide increase happened across cities and towns of all sizes, from those with fewer than 10,000 residents to those with more than a million, according to preliminary FBI data. While official national crime data will not be released for months, some trends are clear. In some larger cities, the number of homicides has remained higher than usual through the early months of 2021.
So it’s important to ask: is this homicide increase actually significant? And how much evidence is there for any of the explanations about why killings are going up?Īfter decades of a primarily downward trend in the overall number of people killed, crime experts say they expect 2020 will mark the biggest single-year national jump in homicides since national crime statistics began to be released in the 1960s.Ī preliminary government estimate shows a 25% single-year increase in killings in 2020. Fearmongering about rising crime has also been used for decades to undermine Black Americans’ protests for civil rights. Police and politicians routinely share misleading, out-of-context crime statistics to advance their agendas. There’s been a wave of media coverage this summer about an increase in homicides across the United States, with attention often focused on the same political question: will Americans still want to defund or even reform the police if “violent crime” is on the rise?Īnxiety about violent crime is often used to win elections.
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