Why the Surge in Violent Crime?

Hat tip to Prof. Doug Berman for this post, “Detailing ‘perfect storm’ of factors that may account for increase in violent crime.”  As it notes:

Sixty-three of the 66 largest police jurisdictions saw increases in at least one category of violent crimes in 2020, which include homicide, rape, robbery, and aggravated assault, according to a report produced by the Major Cities Chiefs Association. Baltimore City, Baltimore County and Raleigh, North Carolina, did not report increases in any of the violent crime categories.

If Baltimore did not report any increases, that has to mean that whatever reporting mechanism Baltimore was using was stolen in the crime spree.

But I digress.  The obvious question is, what brought about the surge in violent crime?

The article doesn’t say much, but has this little squib (emphasis added):

It’s nearly impossible to attribute any year-to-year change in violent crime statistics to any single factor, and homicides and shootings are an intensely local phenomenon that can spike for dozens of reasons. But the increase in homicide rates across the country is both historic and far-reaching, as were the pandemic and social movements that touched every part of society last year….

Experts point to a “perfect storm” of factors — economic collapse, social anxiety because of a pandemic, de-policing in major cities after protests that called for abolition of police departments, shifts in police resources from neighborhoods to downtown areas because of those protests, and the release of criminal defendants pretrial or before sentences were completed to reduce risk of Covid-19 spread in jails — all may have contributed to the spike in homicides.

Of course, it’s not just COVID that has spurred early releases, nor did such releases begin only when COVID hit about a year ago.  Early release has been gaining momentum for years, as the “criminal justice reform” movement has built momentum.

One might hope that the malign outcroppings of such “reform” would ring a bell with reformers, but it’s not going to happen.  Although they say they are guided by “data” and “evidence,” that is not true and it’s never been true.  They are guided by ideology.  It’s an ideology that, over the years, has become easy to discern:  Criminals are not victimizers, they’re victims  —  victims of a cruel, racist and Puritanical Amerika.  To the extent reformers are at all willing to understand that their programs have contributed to the violent crime surge, some may regret it  —  while others will regard it as the “reckoning” they talk about so often and so gleefully.  That the real victims of the “reckoning” are grossly disproportionately black and brown just never registers.

P.S. The report noted here is not from Breitbart or Fox News.  It’s from CNN.