America’s murder rate increase in 2020 has ‘no modern precedent’

Murder rates saw a “historic” increase in 2020 compared to 2019, with more than 1,200 additional killings year-over-year in a sample of 34 American cities, according to a study released Monday.

“The coronavirus pandemic, continuing incidents of police violence and rising homicide and violent crime rates each pose massive policy challenges in their own right, but the interplay between them creates even more difficult decisions for policymakers,” states a report from the National Commission of COVID-19 and Criminal Justice (NCCCJ). “Despite this difficulty, leaders at all levels of government should take bold action in responding to all three crises.”

Homicide rates jumped by 30 percent from 2019 to 2020, while gun assault and aggravated assault rates climbed 8 percent and 6 percent, respectively, experts found.

“Homicide rates were higher during every month of 2020 relative to rates from the previous year,” the report states, calling the 30 percent surge “a large and troubling increase that has no modern precedent.”

Experts analyzed the data from as many as 34 US cities, which varied in size and population, for year-over-year changes in 10 different areas of crime for the year-end update of an NCCCJ report called Pandemic, Unrest, Crime and Violence in US Cities. In addition to the three offenses listed above, the report examined the rates of domestic violence, robbery, residential burglary, nonresidential burglary, larceny, motor vehicle theft and drug offenses.

The rates of homicides, motor vehicle thefts, gun assaults and aggravated assaults rose year-over-year. Meanwhile, those related to drug offenses, larcenies, nonresidential burglaries, residential burglaries and robberies all decreased during the pandemic and during the year as a whole compared to 2019, analysts found.

Not every city provides the same kinds of data and sample sizes for certain types of offenses were smaller than others.

As for domestic violence, analysts were only able to examine data from 12 cities. They found that there was “a significant increase” in these types of offenses during the early months of the COVID-19 pandemic, but the rate then leveled out to be roughly the same as it was in 2019.

The average population of the cities whose homicide rates were examined was 978,000, but the cities range in size. The largest city in the sample, New York, boasts a population of approximately 8.42 million people, while the smallest, Norfolk, Va., has...



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