Murder rate expected to drop sharply

The United States is expected to end 2023 with one of the largest annual drops in homicides on record, according to preliminary data from law enforcement agencies.

Despite a majority of Americans believing that crime was on the rise, figures suggested that the homicide rate dropped nearly 13% on 2022, said Jeff Asher, a former crime analyst for the CIA and co-founder of consulting firm AH Datalytics.

Some of the country’s most dangerous cities have recorded significant falls in the number of killings, according to data compiled by Asher.

The figures challenge Americans’ perception of disorder, with a Gallup poll released in November finding that 77% of people in the US believed that crime had increased since last year.

America’s homicide rate spiked during the pandemic, with a 30% rise in 2020. Murder was almost certainly still higher in 2023 than in 2019, wrote Asher, even with the record decline this year, but not by much. Most of the surge in murder that occurred in 2020 and 2021 had abated across the country.

There are now signs that police forces are making progress.

New Orleans had the highest murder rate in the country in 2022 but recorded a 25% drop this year. Baltimore, another city that has struggled with crime, had its homicide numbers drop by 25%, while Atlanta’s fell by 18% and Miami’s by 15%.

Lisa Monaco, the US deputy attorney-general, said almost 70 of America’s largest cities were expected to post a double-digit drop in homicides over the last 12 months. She said the federal government had helped local authorities take the most prolific violent offenders off the streets.

Other local police forces have put their success down to working more intensively with the community.

James White, chief of police in Detroit, where the homicide rate dropped by 18%, said that following a series of shootings in the city centre in April, he instituted a crime fighting plan that included more patrols.