Intriguing new accounting of recent crime trends and related data

Though I cannot find any detailed information about the Coalition for Law, Order and Safety, this Fox News article alerted me to this new report from the group titled “Assessing America’s Crime Crisis: Trends, Causes, And Consequences.”  The report gathers crime and criminal justice in some distinct ways, and here is the report’s introduction:

American communities are less safe than they were a decade ago.  That fact is undeniable.  Similarly, the evidence is clear that over the last decade, serious — especially violent — crime rose in 2015 and 2016, then briefly fell before rising again since 2020.  Early indications suggest that the steep rise in homicides in 2020-2021 has slowed, if not reversed, but not returned to levels recorded five or ten years ago.

In other words, to say crime is down is like descending from a tall peak and standing on a high bluff, saying you are closer to the ground — a true but misleading statement. The truth is that violent crime is substantially elevated in major cities (and nationally) compared to pre-2020 levels.

For other crimes, the data is often inconsistent, unreliable, or unavailable making trends difficult — but not impossible  — to discern.  The evidence we do have suggests some serious offenses (i.e., carjacking and auto theft) have continued to rise dramatically.  Other aggregate data suggests some offenses have continued their decades-long decline.

Meanwhile, Americans support for greater law enforcement and stiffer criminal penalties has increased as polls show that the public believes crime has risen, and they feel less safe.

This paper seeks to answer two important questions about public safety in America: 

• What do we know about recent crime trends and how; and
• What is contributing to this trend and why?

To answer those questions, this study will first examine the available data on crime over the past decade, analyze its value and limitations, and assess its meaning for public safety policymakers. Second, the study will analyze what policies and phenomena are driving these crime trends.