Homicides went up in 2020 and 2021 and are now rapidly coming back down. Violent crime nationwide hasn't increased. But the perception of a crime wave still colors U.S. politics.
Conservatives use the lie of ever-increasing crime as a bogeyman to scare suburbanites into voting for their "tough-on-crime" (read 'anti-poor + anti-minority') policies. That homicide rates went up during the pandemic has been falsely used to demonize Biden, immigrants, and anyone else that Fox News dislikes.
We need people to actually have and care about data like this so they can resist misinformation and propaganda.
Well, it continued to increase post-pandemic as well. And even this dip in crime may be a transient state that does not keep decreasing.
My best explanation for this is that obviously people got desperate and the economy is one of the biggest predictors of crime. So inflation is also partially responsible for crime.
Not to mention that, despite me being very opposed to conservative narratives, I can see that policing was greatly disrupted by the protests in 2020/2021. They continue to be ineffective in most large cities basically. The US still has a long way to go on handling crime and criminals.
In Seattle a paper found out that the police department supported defunding (moving certain responsibilities and their associated funds to civilian authorities).... but once people called for the same they started a massive campaign against it.
Violence is changing in the US, and the "dip" is .. temporary.
( the calm before the storm )
Notice that mass-shootings are now over 2x per day in the US.
That isn't a decrease, that is skyrocketing.
After economic collapse destroys Biden in 2024 ( incumbents lose when the economy wrecks, and right-wing "getting even" often/usually wins on that circumstance, exactly as Hitler did, nearly a century ago ),
and the kkk rules the US, you won't see low violence statistics, you may well not see any statistics, because it might be illegal to collect them, just as the NRA lobbied until it got child-deaths-by-guns to no longer be monitored ( anti-evidence on that, is evil ).
People like Steven Pinker, who insists that "economic violence doesn't exist" ( really? double the unemployment rate, & see if violent-crime changes, and in which direction, if your ideology permits you to see the evidence, Pinker ), and others who look at short term ( some years, a decade or 2 ), but who ignore the consequences of the now-normal working-destitution, of the enforcing learned-helplessness into more & more & more of the population ( learned-helplessness produces nihilism & sadism, as Russian culture, and all the torture-chambers Russians create throughout Ukraine, or Wagner-territory )...
There are consequences that take a generation or 2 to "flower".
The chickens are coming home to roost, soon.
Nobody on the planet, who has intellectual integrity, is going to claim "violence has decreased" once the now-inevitable slaughter has got going.
Wait until 2026 & try claiming that lethal violence has decreased in the US, on average, I dare you/anyone.
Humanity wouldn't correct the real/fundamental problems, and so .. the distractions .. didn't work, and the fundamental problems now get to take possession/ownership of our world.
Oh, well: I guess people can't learn until experience-induced-understanding forces learning into one, so it's natural, but .. it's going to cost an ocean of lives.