Tag: Violent Crime

How community groups, activists and local media turned Camden, New Jersey, into a model of police reform

Camden, New Jersey’s homicide rate in 2025 was four times the national average – still high, but a marked change from when it was 18 times the national average in 2012.
— Read on theconversation.com/how-community-groups-activists-and-local-media-turned-camden-new-jersey-into-a-model-of-police-reform-282835

Video, Audio: Heather Mac Donald | Crime Stats Don’t Lie. Why Are We Ignoring Them? | Ep. 53 – Independent Institute

Scott welcomes Heather Mac Donald, one of the country’s most important voices who exposes the truth and the data behind it. Heather is the Thomas W. Smith Fellow at the Manhattan Institute, and a contributing editor of City Journal. Her latest book is When Race Trumps Merit. In it she explains what she calls the foolish pursuit of undermining meritocracy in favor of equal outcome. They discuss critical social issues including crime, media bias, and cultural shifts, including the feminization of American society and an anti-male narrative that MacDonald sees as harmful to families and societal success.
— Read on www.independent.org/multimedia/2025/09/04/heather-mac-donald-crime-stats-dont-lie-why-are-we-ignoring-them-ep-53/

Washington, D.C.’s crime decline and its lessons for American policing – Niskanen Center

Washington, D.C., offers a rare opportunity to study how police departments throughout the country might, and in fact must, do more with less. Since reaching a dramatic peak in 2023, violent and property crime in the District has fallen sharply — even as the police force shrank to its smallest size in half a century.

— Read on www.niskanencenter.org/washington-dc-crime-decline-and-its-lessons-for-american-policing/

New York City’s Other Violent Crime Problem

New York’s leaders have been rightly celebrating the city’s major reductions in murder and gun violence. But the city still struggles with a different violent crime problem: record-high assault rates. The causes are difficult to parse from the data alone, but the trend bodes poorly for long-term safety and stability. Start with the good news. […]
— Read on www.city-journal.org/article/new-york-citys-other-violent-crime-problem

We can’t ‘incarcerate our way out of crime.’ But we can deter a lot more of it. – Niskanen Center

A post on X that went viral recently laid out a series of statistics about the percentage of serious crimes — murder, rape, robbery, assault, and so on — that are committed by people with prior arrests. All hovered between 60 percent and 79 percent. The post’s conclusion: “You can incarcerate your way out of crime. Facts.” Elon Musk, the platform’s owner, amplified the post to his hundreds of millions of followers and sharpened the point: “Either incarcerate or innocent people suffer.” To date, these two posts have nearly 50 million views each. 

The claims in these posts are worth unpacking. First, Musk uses the correct metric: Reducing the suffering of innocent people is the proper goal of any criminal justice system, and public safety policy should be evaluated primarily by that standard. Musk is also correct in an important, albeit limited, sense: Failing to incapacitate genuinely dangerous people will lead to some level of crime and suffering that would have otherwise been avoided.

— Read on www.niskanencenter.org/we-cant-incarcerate-our-way-out-of-crime-but-we-can-deter-a-lot-more-of-it/

BJS releases reports on violent and property crime in the United States

BJS has released two reports that provide insight into violent and property crime in the United States and describe the magnitude, nature, and impact of crime in the nation.

Crime Known to Law Enforcement, 2024 presents national and subnational estimates of crime offenses and victimizations for violent and property crime. Findings in this report, the second in an annual series, are based on BJS’s and the FBI’s National Incident-Based Reporting System (NIBRS) Estimation Program. NIBRS collects detailed information on crime incidents reported to law enforcement throughout the United States.
— Read on content.govdelivery.com/accounts/USDOJOJP_COMMS/bulletins/40e7eb5

Utah Takes Aim at Unsolved Violent Crime – R Street Institute

Despite a nationwide decline in violent crime rates, Utah faces a persistent challenge: too many violent crimes go unsolved. The consequences ripple through communities across the state, leaving victims and families without closure, allowing dangerous offenders to remain at large, and eroding confidence in the justice system. Recent data from Utah’s law enforcement agencies reveal troubling clearance gaps that demand attention.
— Read on www.rstreet.org/commentary/utah-takes-aim-at-unsolved-violent-crime/