Still more heat and less homicides in the United States as 2024 enters its second half

Though much of the US continues to experience high tempertures as we head into the second half of 2024, everyone should be heartened that the rising temperatures have not dramatically cooled the extraordinary downward homicide trend in the United States.   As readers may recall from prior posts, 2023 brought a considerable (perhaps historic) decline in homicides in the US compared to 2022 (which saw a small decline in homicides after very significant increases in homicides throughout the US in 2020 and 2021).  My check today at the latest AH Datalytics’ collection of homicide data for 2024 from 250+ US cities shows now an 17.8% cumulative decline(!) in murders across the nation’s cities through roughly first half of 2024. 

I have said before that I doubt criminologists and others have a clear and certain story for why we are seeing this historic  homicide declines, but I will continue to note these trends whie hoping they continue.  And, as one who focuses on sentencing law and practice, I will keep noting, as I did in a prior post, that the 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.  

As I always stress in this posts, these remarkable homicide trends could change in the weeks and months and years ahead.  But, for now, it is great to see 2024 remains on pace to break whatever yearly homicide reduction records were set in 2023.  And, if these trends somehow continue, many parts of the US might soon reach historic per capital lows in homicides.