I noted here last summer that the Council on Criminal Justice (CCJ) had launched an important, timely and impressive new commission titled the "National Commission on COVID-19 and Criminal Justice" and headed by two former US Attorneys General. That commission has produce a number of important works (examples here and here and here), and it helped produced a series of reports on recent crime trends under the heading "Pandemic, Social Unrest, and Crime in U.S. Cities." The latest version of this report, called a June 2021 update, is available for download at this link. Over at the CCJ website, one can find this press release titled "New Data Shows Homicide Rise Continues in U.S. Cities, but at Slower Rate," which provides this overview of the crime data and also details on additional CCJ work in this arena:
Murder counts in major American cities continued to rise throughout the first half of 2021, but the pace of the increase slowed from the first to the second quarter of the year, according to research released today by the Council on Criminal Justice (CCJ).
Examining homicide in 22 cities through the first six months of 2021, the study found that the number of murders was 16% greater than during the same period in 2020 — claiming an additional 259 lives — and 42% greater than during the first half of 2019, representing an additional 548 lives. Gun assaults (+5%) and aggravated assaults (+9%) also were up during the first half of 2021 compared to the same time frame last year, while drug and most property crimes fell.
Even with the 2021 increase, the homicide rate for the cities studied was about half what it was for those cities at the peak of violent crime rates in the early 1990s (15 deaths per 100,000 residents in those cities versus 28 per 100,000 in 1993). Nevertheless, the study’s authors called for “urgent action” to address the spike in violence.
A new CCJ panel will investigate the causes of rising violence and help decisionmakers translate rigorous evidence and lived experience into effective policy and practice. Launched this week, the Violent Crime Working Group includes 15 leaders from community violence intervention organizations, law enforcement, the public health sector, and academia. The group is chaired by violence-reduction expert Thomas Abt, a Council Senior Fellow....
Rates of other major offenses declined in the first half of 2021, the new data released today shows. Robbery (-6%), residential burglary (-9%), nonresidential burglary (-9%), larceny (-6%), and drug offense (-12%) rates all fell from the same period in 2020. Motor vehicle theft rates, however, were 21% higher in the first half of 2021 than the year before.
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