Crime Falls Across U.S. Cities, Study Shows Big Drop (Full Transcript)
[00:00:00] Speaker 1: Crime is down and down a lot according to a new study by the Council on Criminal Justice. In a study of 40 U.S. cities, murder rates in the U.S. have fallen another 25 percent since 2019, pre-pandemic, and have not been lower in about 125 years. Shootings are down 13 percent since then, carjackings are down 29 percent. In fact, most major felonies are down and all at once. Now that's the big picture, but that's not the case for every city. Milwaukee, Minneapolis, and Austin are all up in murders between around 30 and 40 percent. But for most cities, the news is good. Why is crime going down? Experts will give you complex theories, but this discussion has already turned political with claims by Democratic mayors that smarter policing and social programs are a driving factor here. But Republicans say that the National Guard and federal immigration agent surges into U.S. cities are the main drivers of lower crime. But many cities that didn't see those federal surges had similar declines. So let's not look a gift horse in the mouth. The fact that crime is down dramatically in most places is just good news.
- Crime in 40 surveyed U.S. cities is significantly lower than in 2019, with murder down 25%.
- Shootings and carjackings also fell notably (13% and 29% respectively), alongside declines in most major felonies.
- A minority of cities buck the trend, including Milwaukee, Minneapolis, and Austin with higher murder rates.
- Competing political narratives attribute the decline to local policy choices versus federal surges, but declines appear in places without federal interventions.
- Regardless of cause, the broad-based reduction in crime is presented as a positive national development.