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The research team analyzed violent crime data from 2018 to 2022 from 590 municipal law enforcement agencies
RESEARCH TRIANGLE PARK, N.C. — In 2020, the U.S. experienced a spike in some severe violent crimes such as murder, and a new study from nonprofit research institute RTI International has found that the increase might have been attributable to a small percentage of cities rather than a widespread trend.
The study comes as national data from the FBI shows violent crime decreased in 2023.
“I think there is a perception that severe violent crime has increased universally across all U.S. cities and that it coincided with the COVID-19 pandemic and social unrest related to the murder of George Floyd,” said Nicholas Thomas, Ph.D., a research analyst at RTI and co-author of the study. “An examination of the data, though, shows that a small proportion of cities were driving that trend and that rates were stable or even decreasing in other places.”
Thomas and his colleagues analyzed violent crime data from 590 municipal law enforcement agencies that reported complete crime data for their municipality to the National Incident-based Reporting System from 2018 to 2022.
The research team used group-based trajectory modeling, which revealed the outsized impact of a small percentage of cities on violent crime trends and further illuminated that using a national average to understand violent crime rates does not account for starkly different violent crime trajectories found city to city. For example, of the 590 cities included in the study’s sample, only 24% experienced a sharp increase in their murder rate between 2018 and 2022.
The study suggests that to best prevent trauma and the loss of life following an event that is likely to increase crime, the greatest number of resources should be directed to cities with the highest violent crime rates.
Notably, the study found carjackings increased in 2020, despite an overall decreasing rate of robbery. As with severe violent crime, the increase was largely driven by a small subset of cities that had relatively high rates of carjacking prior to 2020, the authors note.
“The variation in violent crime rates we observed may mean that some cities have policies and practices that more effectively reduce violence,” added Thomas. “Better understanding the relationship between public policy and crime rates is vital to informing future violence prevention efforts.”
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