In 2020, the United States experienced one of its most dangerous years in decades.
The number of murders across the country surged by nearly 30 percent between 2019 and 2020, according to FBI statistics. The overall violent crime rate, which includes murder, assault, robbery and rape, inched up around 5 percent in the same period.
But in 2023, crime in America looked very different.
“At some point in 2022 — at the end of 2022 or through 2023 — there was just a tipping point where violence started to fall and it just continued to fall,” said Jeff Asher, a crime analyst and co-founder of AH Datalytics.
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There are some outliers to this trend — murder rates are up in Washington, D.C., Memphis and Seattle, for example — and some nonviolent crimes like car theft are up in certain cities. But the national trend on violence is clear.
I still don’t believe it, at least not where I live. Once you have someone in your friend group get murdered, for no good fucking reason, it becomes harder to pretend everything is ok. It doesn’t help that the local news reports another stabbing or shooting most days of the week.
Sounds like where you live sucks. But it’s always possible to have something random and unlikely happen even in the safest of places. Getting bitten by a shark doesn’t mean sharks all need to die. You’re just exceptionally unlucky.