Murders, Gun Assaults Dipped in First Six Months of 2022

The number of homicides and gun assaults began to fall in the first six months of 2022, but they still remain at a troubling high level, according to a cautious analysis released by the Council on Criminal Justice  (CCJ) Thursday.

A study of about two dozen cities where overall crime data was available showed that the number of murder dropped by 2 percent between January and June of this year, compared to the same period in 2021. That amounted to a decrease of 54 homicides, researchers said.

The new figures represented the first statistically noteworthy drop in homicides since rates of violent crime started to surge as the nation emerged from the pandemic, triggering claims by politicians and the media of a new “crime wave.”

Thursday’s figures represent the ninth in series of analyses of crime figures by the CCJ since the onset of COVID-19,

It is not clear whether they indicate a definitive reversal of what the researchers acknowledge was an “historic” 30 percent increase in  murders between  2019 and 2020.

That had translated to 1,268 more deaths over a single year, though criminologists have noted that the bulk of the increase occurred in a small number of already at-risk neighborhoods.

‘Encouraging’ News

This year’s decline, along with a drop of 6 percent in gun assaults  was “encouraging” news the researchers said.

Researchers caution that the drop in gun assaults is based on data from just 12 cities in the survey.

They pointed out that aggravated assault numbers in the cities under review still rose by 4 percent,  and robberies spiked by 19 percent.

“It is heartening to see the homicide numbers fall, even slightly, but American cities continue to lose too many of their residents to bloodshed,” said study co-author Richard Rosenfeld, professor emeritus at the University of Missouri – St. Louis.

“As we’ve said before, these elevated levels of violence require an urgent response from elected leaders. We must put evidence-backed strategies in place now to make communities safer.”

The report updated earlier reports with new data through June 2022. It examined crime rates for 10 offenses in a total of 29 cities, including Atlanta, Detroit, Baltimore, Boston, Chicago, Denver, Memphis, San Francisco, Washington, D.C., and Philadelphia.

The smallest city in the sample was Norfolk, Virginia, with 245,000 residents; the largest was New York, with more than 8.4 million residents

Not all cities reported data for every crime.

Drug Offenses Declined 7%

Other notable figures include a 7 percent drop in recorded drug offenses, and a 5 percent decline in domestic violence incidents between January and June, 2022. Researchers also noted that the domestic violence figures should not be considered conclusive because, like the gun assault numbers, they were based on data from just 12 cities.

At the same time, nearly all categories of  nonviolent theft have increase: residential burglaries, up 6 percent; nonresidential burglaries, up 8 percent; larcenies, up by a striking 20 percent; and motor vehicle thefts, up 15 percent.

The study authors said the increases in burglaries and theft could presage a return to the kind of “normal” environment that existed before the COVID-19 pandemic.

“Opportunities for retail theft and commercial robberies have increased as shops have reopened,” the study noted. “Likewise, more people on the streets means more targets exist for street robbers.”

But the authors suggested a rise in inflation also plays a role, as well as a slowdown in policing

“The reduction of enforcement actions against certain property offenses due to the legacy of the pandemic, or for other reasons, may have contributed to the increase in larcenies in some cities, but likely did not fuel increases in the violent crime of robbery,” the study said.

The latest figures occur against a background of what has been a long-term, pronounced decline in  murders since the early 1990s.  Despite occasional annual increases,  the homicide rate for the cities included in CCJ’s analysis was about half what it was for those cities 28 years earlier.

That amounts to 15 deaths per 100,000 residents versus 28 per 100,000 in 1993.

Nevertheless, the study acknowledged that the pandemic and post-pandemic increases in violence represented a  public safety challenge which could not be ignored.

“The homicide rate remains 39 percent above the level prior to the COVID-19 pandemic (in the first half of 2019) and requires immediate action from policymakers,” the study said.

The report was co-authored by CCJ Research Specialist Ernesto Lopez and Bobby Boxerman, a graduate research assistant the University of Missouri-St. Louis.

The full report can be downloaded here.

This summary was prepared by TCR executive editor Stephen Handelman