What should be made of (and should we respond to) recent urban murder surge?

The question in the title of this post is prompted by this lengthy USA Today article headlined “Several big U.S. cities see homicide rates surge.” Here are excerpts:

After years of declining violent crime, several major American cities experienced a dramatic surge in homicides during the first half of this year.

Milwaukee, which last year had one of its lowest annual homicide totals in city history, recorded 84 murders so far this year, more than double the 41 it tallied at the same point last year.

Milwaukee Police Chief Edward Flynn said the mounting homicide toll in his city of 600,000 is driven by Wisconsin’s “absurdly weak” gun laws – carrying a concealed weapon without a state-issued concealed carry is a misdemeanor in the Badger State — as well a subculture within the city that affirms the use of deadly violence to achieve status and growing distrust of police in some parts of the city.

Milwaukee is not alone.  The number of murders in 2015 jumped by 33% or more in Baltimore, New Orleans and St. Louis. Meanwhile, in Chicago, the nation’s third-largest city, the homicide toll climbed 19% and the number of shooting incidents increased by 21% during the first half of the year.

In all the cities, the increased violence is disproportionately impacting poor and predominantly African-American and Latino neighborhoods. In parts of Milwaukee, the sound of gunfire is so commonplace that about 80% of gunshots detected by ShotSpotter sensors aren’t even called into police by residents, Flynn said. “We’ve got folks out there living in neighborhoods, where . . . it’s just part of the background noise,” Flynn told USA TODAY.  “That’s what we’re up against.”

Criminologists note that the surge in murders in many big American cities came after years of declines in violent crime in major metros throughout the United States.  Big cities saw homicides peak in the late 1980s and early 1990s as crack-cocaine wreaked havoc on many urban areas.

The homicide toll across the country — which reached a grim nadir in 1993 when more than 2,200 murders were counted in New York City — has declined in ebbs and flows for much of the last 20 years, noted Alfred Blumstein, a professor of urban systems and operations research at Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh.  Several U.S. cities —  including Los Angeles, Phoenix, San Diego and Indianapolis — have experienced a decrease in the number of murders so far this year.

Blumstein said the current surge in murders in some big cities could amount to no more than a blip.  “It could be 2015 represents us hitting a plateau, and by the end of the year, nationally, we’ll see that murder rates are flat or there is a slight bump up,” Blumstein said.

But other experts say the surge in killings suggests that the United States may be nearing a floor in reducing its murder rate as the federal, state and local governments increasingly grapple with tighter budgets.  “Why is there a synchronicity among these cities?” said Peter Scharf, an assistant professor at the LSU School of Public Health whose research focuses on crime. “One reason may be President Obama is broke. Governors like Bobby Jindal are broke, and mayors like (New Orleans’ Mitch) Landrieu are broke. You don’t have the resources at any level of government to fund a proactive law enforcement.”…

In New York City, there were 161 homicides in the city for the first half of 2015 vs. 145 during the first half of 2014.  Shootings in the city rose to 542, from 511 in the same period last year. New York recorded 328 homicides last year, the lowest annual murder toll for the city in more than 50 years. “It’s so phenomenally low that it can hardly go in any direction but up,” said Blumstein, the Carnegie Mellon analyst….

The homicide toll has risen several other major U.S. cities in the first half of the year, albeit at less dramatic pace. In Philadelphia, murders are up slightly, with the city recording 123 thus far this year compared with 117 at the same point last year. The murder rate, however, is far lower than it was in 2012, when the city had recorded a whopping 187 murders by July 7 of that year.

Dallas has tallied 68 murders so far this, up from 53 in 2014, according to police department statistics. San Antonio counted 53 homicides through June, compared with 43 last year. Minneapolis had 22 murders in the first half of 2015, compared with 15 during the same period last year.

It has often proven remarkably difficult to establish, either historically or in modern times, a strong and dependable causal connection between specific sentencing laws and practices and homicide rates. Consequently, I am not inclined to jump to any quick conclusions concerning what this murder surge might reflect or how policy makers ought to respond is sentencing term.  Indeed, for sentencing fans, the most notable part of this story may be that 2015 murders are down in the two most southern cities in California, the state that has had the most sentencing changes in recent years.