The Opening of the Sky: Summer 2027
Crime in 2020
Crime rates changed dramatically across the United States in 2020. Most significantly, the murder rate — that is, the number of murders per 100,000 people — rose sharply, by nearly 30 percent. Assaults increased as well, with the rate of offenses rising by more than 10 percent. Both increases are connected to a broader surge in gun violence. More than 75 percent of murders in 2020 were committed with a firearm, reaching a new high. Cities that report data on shooting incidents, such as New York, saw significant increases in this form of violence as well.
Murders rose in cities nationwide and in jurisdictions of all types. Relative to 2019, the number of murders jumped by more than 30 percent in the largest cities and by 20 percent in places designated by the FBI as “suburban” — cities with fewer than 50,000 inhabitants that are within a Metropolitan Statistical Area. Murders rose by comparable levels in rural areas too — an important fact that is only now beginning to receive press attention.
Despite politicized claims that this rise was the result of criminal justice reform in liberal-leaning jurisdictions, murders rose roughly equally in cities run by Republicans and cities run by Democrats. So-called red states actually saw some of the highest murder rates of all. This data makes it difficult to pin recent trends on local policy shifts and reveals the central flaw in arguments that seek to politicize a problem as complex as crime. Instead, the evidence points to broad national causes driving rising crime.
We can draw a few additional conclusions about trends in violent crime in 2020. For one, poor and historically disadvantaged communities bore the brunt of the rise in violence in 2020. In just one example, according to the New York City Mayor’s Office of Criminal Justice, the number of shootings doubled in the neighborhood of East New York (from 51 to 102) and nearly tripled in Brownsville (from 34 to 96). Both Brooklyn communities have been hot spots of violence for more than a quarter century. These increases continue a deeper and much more troubling trend that predates 2020 — what sociologist Patrick Sharkey calls “the rigid geography of violence,” in which crime remains relatively concentrated even as absolute levels decline.
Violence also remained concentrated among young people. Around 40 percent of people arrested for murder in 2020 were aged between 20 and 29, matching historical trends. Murder victims were more widely distributed in terms of age, with around 30 percent in their 20s and another 30 percent over the age of 40. Unfortunately, FBI data is too spotty to allow us to draw conclusions about the circumstances leading up to a murder. In nearly half of all cases — a marked increase over recent years, according to the Council on Criminal Justice — the circumstances surrounding a killing were “undetermined.” Finally, violence may also have become concentrated in another way. One study indicates that with violence rising and fewer people outside during the height of the pandemic in 2020, the risk of experiencing a violent crime on the street (measured in crimes per hour spent in public) climbed dramatically, even while the actual number of crimes committed dropped — potentially contributing to a perception of lawlessness not apparent from the raw numbers.
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