There were 6% more murders nationally in 2021 than in2020 That’s an uncomfortable fact, however modest when compared to the previous year, when the U.S. murder rate climbed up almost 30%, a year-over-year record.
That huge boost “was a complex combination of factors related to or potentially exacerbated by the pandemic but not inherently the pandemic itself,” stated Jeff Asher, co-founder of information speaking with company AH Analytics.
The pandemic “placed the individuals who are at the highest risk of violence under enormous pressure, and they were already under pressure to begin with,” stated Thomas Abt, senior fellow on the Council on CriminalJustice “At the same time, it put the institutions that are responsible for engaging those individuals — law enforcement, courts and community based workers — all under tremendous strain as well.”
The pandemic was a significant driver in the increase in murder, however wasn’t the only element.
“There was a massive surge in legal purchases of guns during the pandemic,” Abt stated. “A larger share of those legally purchased guns were diverted into the hands of criminals more quickly than normal.”
There were an approximated 21 million weapons offered in the U.S. in 2020, breaking the previous record in 2016 of simply over 16 million weapons offered. In 2021, that number dropped a little to a little less than 19 million.
The information reveals that the increasing pattern in murder rates took place all throughout the nation.
“We saw increases in violent crime across all different kinds of geographic areas in the United States,” stated Anna Harvey, teacher of politics at New YorkUniversity “People have also looked at partisan control of cities, and there’s no evidence at all that violent crime increased more in cities that were Democrat relative to cities that were led by Republican mayors.”
However, there is some hope that the numbers might be reversing. Preliminary huge city information from the very first half of 2022 recommends that the murder rate might be decreasing year to date.
Watch the video above to discover why murder rates increased so significantly in the U.S. and what we can do to reverse the pattern.
