Post-Pandemic Crime Trends
2023- 2024
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Around July 2023, The Council on Criminal Justice (CJC) put together an examination of monthly crime rates for 10 Violent, Property, and Drug offenses in 37 American cities in the Pre and Post-Pandemic era.
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The findings are enlightening, perhaps even fascinating on a deeper level. There were 33.5% more motor vehicle thefts from January through June 2023, compared to the first half of 2022. And the number of Drug offenses increased by 1%.
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- Crime Trends in U.S. Cities: Mid-Year 2023 Update
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"This snapshot suggests that levels of nearly all offenses are lower, or have changed little, in the first six months of 2023 compared with the same period in 2022. The most notable exception is the large increase in motor vehicle theft."
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"The number of homicides in the 30 study cities providing homicide data was 9.4% lower - 202 fewer homicides - during the first half of 2023 than in the first half of 2022."
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"[Further, there] were 2.5% fewer aggravated assaults in the first half of 2023 compared to the first half of 2022. The number of gun assaults also dropped (-5.6%) over the same period, but this trend is based on data from just 10 cities and should be viewed with caution."
"Robberies, residential burglaries, nonresidential burglaries, and larcenies all decreased in the first half of 2023 compared to the first half of 2022. Robberies fell by 3.6%, residential burglaries by 3.8%, nonresidential burglaries by 5%, and larcenies by 4.1%."
"Though the level of serious violent crime [appears to be] far below historical peaks, it remains intolerably high, especially in poorer communities of color."
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The problem right now, though, is that when these very same crimes are analyzed over a longer period (Jan. 2018 to June 2023), with the exceptions of Domestic Violence, Robbery, Residential Burglary, and Drug offenses, all other identified crimes are trending up, evidencing upward trends that are picking-up right where the Pandemic left-off.
So, while we're being distracted by the current "Gun-Violence" pandemic playing-out all over the globe, the seriousness of which cannot be overstated, other crime rates are continuing to rise right up under our noses.
And at the same time, in several, perhaps even many jurisdictions (at least in the U.S.), Law Enforcement is suffering major setbacks such as job vacancies, resource deficiencies, etc.
This is an extremely dangerous pattern, which, if it continues to go unaddressed, could start to result in very draining and deadly consequences for our entire way of life in the U.S. and further.
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