In Brief:
Last year, for the third year in a row, homicide rates in Kentucky declined, dropping to 571. There were 2 percent fewer homicides in the state compared to 2022 and nearly 13 percent less compared to 2021, when there were 647.
Kentucky is not the only place where homicide rates have come down. In major cities such as Boston, St. Louis and Philadelphia, homicides continue to plummet by double-digit rates. In 32 cities examined by the Council on Criminal Justice, homicides declined by 10 percent last year.
The pandemic-era spike in homicides appears at this point to have been just that — a sudden increase but not one that is being sustained over the long haul. Instead, the nation appears to be reverting to its decades-old trend of declines in violent crime that date back to the 1990s.
“Criminologists aren’t sure why crime and murder fell in the '90s,” says Jeff Asher, co-founder of AH Datalytics, a consulting firm that examines murder rates. “We’re in the midst of this decline, but it’s a little early to be ascribing specific answers with confidence.”
During the pandemic, domestic violence rates increased by 8.1 percent, while homicide rates increased by 30 percent. Some criminologists have pointed to the 2020 protests that followed George Floyd's murder as a factor. The idea that police were pulling back from aggressive law enforcement for fear of becoming a political target was first termed the “Ferguson effect” in the wake of the 2014 shooting death of Michael Brown in Missouri. There have been plenty of studies pouring cold water on this idea, however.
Why Has Crime Dropped?
Timing at least suggests that the pandemic was a major driver of criminal activity. As COVID-19 has retreated, crime rates have come down. Still, many people — both elected officials and the public alike — continue to believe that crime is bad and getting worse. In one survey this year, 68 percent of Republicans and 47 percent of Democrats expressed a belief that crime reduction should be a top priority for lawmakers.
“Historically, the most fearful of crime and the people who think crime is increasing the most are the elderly,” says Jack McDevitt, a criminologist at Northeastern University. “And they are the least likely to be victimized, so we’ve always had this dichotomy of what’s happening in crime versus the perception of crime.”
At this point, most crime rates have continued on a downward trend. At the start of the year, the Council on Criminal Justice reported that numbers were coming down in big cities, for 12 separate criminal offenses. Not only were murders down by 10 percent, but there was also a 3 percent decline in aggravated assaults and a 5 percent drop in carjackings.
There are, however, two notable areas where crime rates have remained high. The first is car theft. Last year, the nation breached the 1 million mark in stolen vehicles for the first time. The other category is hate crimes, which also reached record levels last year and looks to be even worse in 2024.
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