Encouraging homicide data as the first quarter of 2024 comes to a close
A few days ago, I received an alert from my local paper about this article reporting that “data from the Columbus Division of Police showed that the city is experiencing some of the lowest levels of violence in a decade.” According to this press piece, the biggest city in Ohio has recorded only 18 murders in this calendar year, compared to 41 at this time last year. The article also flagged that a number of other cities have also seen significant homicide declines.
Conveniently and encouragingly, Jeff Asher posted yesterday this new substack entry detailing that Columbus, Ohio is not alone in experiencing a significant homicide decline to start 2024. Folks should read his full posting for lots more context and details, but here are some highlights:
[M]urder is down around 20 percent in 2024 in more than 180 cities with available data this year compared to a comparable timeframe last year (as of the moment of this piece’s publication). Murder is down 20.5 percent in 183 cities with available data through at least January, down 20.2 percent in 174 cities with data through at least February, and down 20.8 percent in 59 cities with data through at least March 20….
We could still see, and perhaps should expect to see the sample’s murder decline to regress towards a more normal rate of decline as the year goes on. It’s only April and there is a ton of time left in 2024 for these figures to regress, but murder is down roughly twice as much with a sample that’s twice as large as what we had last year at this time…. Murder is down more than 30 percent at the moment in Washington DC, New Orleans, Las Vegas, Cleveland, Milwaukee, Detroit, Columbus, Nashville, Philadelphia, and I could keep going….
It’s not just murder data in cities pointing to a large decline. Shooting data from the Gun Violence Archive shows a decline of around 12 percent in terms of shooting victims through March compared to 2023. This matches the trend of declining shootings in 20 of the 25 cities with available shooting data through at least February this year.
As readers may recall from prior posts, 2023 saw a considerable (perhaps historic) decline in homicides in the US compared to 2022 (which had itself recorded a small decline in homicides after significant increases in homicides throughout the US in 2020 and 2021). But the latest AH Datalytics’ collection of homicide data for 2024 from a large number of US cities shows now over a 20% cumulative decline(!) in murders across the nation’s cities through roughly the first quarter of 2024. Of course, these remarkable homicide numbers could change in the months ahead, but the many hundreds of fewer murders to start 2024 is certainly something to celebrate and hope it will continue.
Though not mentioned by Asher, I will note that the notable 2023 and 2024 declines in homicide come at a time of relatively low use of the death penalty and relatively lower rates of incarceration by US standards. The last eight or so years, as detailed in this DPIC fact sheet, have seen historically few death sentences and executions across the US for the modern capital punishment era. Also national incarceration totals and rates have been in relative (slow) decline for about a decade, and the US likely now has its lowest total incarceration rate since the mid 1990s. Critically, I do not think these punishment trends can in any way directly explain recent homicide declines, but I had seen some claims that the spike in homicides in 2020 and 2021 might be atributed in part to these punishment trends. Recent homicide declines would seem to partial couner worries that recent punishment trends a chief cause past homicide increases. And if homicide levels keep dropping at the pace we have seen in 2023 and so far in 2024, we may soon hit modern record low levels in both homicides and severe punishments in the US.