Post #79919 by AdrianC on the US Policy board

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Some good news:

U.S. murder rate approaches a record low
https://www.npr.org/2026/06/30/nx-s1-5866810/us-mu...

As the U.S. nears its 250th birthday, it's doing pretty well by at least one measure: the national murder rate. "The United States almost certainly had the lowest murder rate ever recorded in 2025, with the FBI having data back to 1960," says crime data analyst Jeff Asher. "And the available evidence suggests that we're going to go even lower this year."

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But Jerry Ratcliffe, faculty director of the master of applied criminology program at the University of Pennsylvania, says it's important to keep in mind that other developed countries did not see the same kind of big crime spikes during the pandemic. "That was really unique to us, which means it leads me to think it was more related to George Floyd," Ratcliffe says. The social upheaval following Floyd's murder in 2020, he argues, disrupted a generation-long decline in crime rates built in part on the data-driven, targeted policing strategies that emerged in the 1990s. "That's something we saw withdraw for a year or two. What we're seeing now is a re-engagement of policing a few years down the line. And we continue to see again that crime reduction," Ratcliffe says. LaMaria Pope has had a front-row seat for the recent change. She works for Choose 180, a violence-prevention nonprofit focused on young people in the Seattle area, and she remembers the anxiety of the pandemic years. "There was a lot of guns floating around," she says. "There was almost nothing to do but engage in crime. And knowing that, 'Oh, we want to defund the police, if we call they're not going to come for two hours' — kids are smart and they picked up on that."

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