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Final 2015 Crime Stats: Claims of Rising
Crime Overblown, Evidence Shows
As
year-end crime statistics come in, data from America’s largest cities show
crime overall was roughly the same in 2015 as in 2014, and in fact is
projected to decline by 5.5 percent, according to an analysis
of crime trends from the Brennan Center for Justice.
The analysis,
an update to a November preliminary study projecting 2015 crime data, shows
that reports of rising crime nationwide are overblown and not supported by
the available data.
Using
statistics through December 23, 2015, a team of economics and legal
researchers released updated
data providing near-final crime numbers for 2015 from the nation’s 30
largest cities.
“The
average person in a large urban area is safer walking on the street today
than he or she would have been at almost any time in the past 30 years,” wrote
Matthew Friedman, Nicole Fortier, and James Cullen in Crime in 2015: A Preliminary
Analysis. “Although headlines
suggesting a coming crime wave make good copy, a look at the available data
shows there is no evidence to support this claim.”
Among
the updated findings:
·
Crime
overall in the 30 largest cities in 2015 remained roughly the same as in
2014. In fact, our projections show a decrease of 5.5 percent, meaning the
crime rate will remain less than half of what it was in 1990.
·
The
2015 murder rate is projected to be 14.6 percent higher than last year in the
30 largest cities, with 18 cities experiencing increases and 7 decreases.
However, in absolute terms, murder rates are so low that a small numerical
increase leads to a large percentage change. Even with the 2015 increase,
murder rates are roughly the same as they were in 2012. Since murder rates
vary widely from year to year, one year’s increase is not evidence of a
coming wave of violent crime.
·
A
handful of cities have seen sharp rises in murder rates. Just two cities,
Baltimore and Washington, D.C., account for almost 50 percent of the national
increase in murders. These serious increases seem to be localized, rather
than part of a national pandemic, suggesting community conditions are a major
factor. The preliminary report examined five cities with particularly high
murder rates — Baltimore, Detroit, Milwaukee, New Orleans, and St. Louis —
and found these cities also had significantly lower incomes, higher poverty
rates, higher unemployment, and falling populations than the national
average.
The
preliminary report,
released in November, examined month-to-month and year-to-year crime numbers
using data from the Federal Bureau of Investigation and local police
departments. The authors concluded that rhetoric around a “crime rise” should
not stand in the way of federal, state, or local reforms to improve our
justice system and reduce prison populations.
Read
more about the Brennan Center’s work to reduce
mass incarceration.
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