{"id":3774,"date":"2021-05-17T15:36:23","date_gmt":"2021-05-17T22:36:23","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.crimeandconsequences.blog\/?p=3774"},"modified":"2021-05-17T15:36:23","modified_gmt":"2021-05-17T22:36:23","slug":"the-pandemic-does-not-explain-the-spike-in-violent-crime","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.crimeandconsequences.blog\/?p=3774","title":{"rendered":"The Pandemic Does Not Explain The Spike in Violent Crime"},"content":{"rendered":"

For decades, anti-sentencing advocates have blamed poverty, economic conditions, demographics, racism, and firearms for increases in crime rather than on the criminals themselves and weak policies that enable criminal behavior.\u00a0 After 2020, the pandemic has been added to the list.\u00a0 As reported in Hans Bader’s article<\/a> in Liberty Unyielding,\u00a0 Professor John Pfaff, “America’s most famous advocate of cutting sentences for violent criminals,”\u00a0 suggests that one reason for the unprecedented increase in shootings in New York City was the pandemic which upended the economy. \u00a0 Professor Pfaff was responding to a recent article<\/a> in Politico which noted that “gun violence escalates throughout the city (of New York) one year after anti-police protesters occupied the street.”<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

Bader suggests that if the pandemic caused more murders in New York,\u00a0 we should see similar increases in Europe.\u00a0 But during 2020 murders dropped by 16% in London, even though “England suffered far more economic harm than America did, with England’s economy shrinking 9.9% during 2020, compared by 3.5% in America.”\u00a0 In Italy murders fell by 14%.\u00a0 France saw a 2% drop in homicide, while murders in Japan fell by 10%.\u00a0 Even in cartel-ridden Mexico murders were slightly down for the first time in six years.<\/p>\n

“If the pandemic isn’t causing the increase in violence, what is? These crime spikes are coinciding with new soft-on-crime policies. For example, newly-elected progressive prosecutors are refusing to seek enhanced sentences for repeat violent offenders, and refusing to seek life without parole for murderers (even serial killers), which they view as too harsh. The murder rate rose 30% last year in America\u2019s major cities, after the number of people in America\u2019s prisons and jails dropped by 14% from 2019 to mid-2020.<\/p>\n

Moreover, recently, there has been ‘a notable decline in the number of police on the beat’ in the U.S., notes<\/a> Rafael Mangual of the Manhattan Institute:<\/p>\n

In a September 2019 report, the Police Executive Research Forum outlined what it declared a workforce crisis.\u00a0 A robust body of research has thoroughly illustrated that more police means less crime – a finding at odds with the ever-more-popular calls to defund the police. \u00a0 It stands to reason that a significant decline in the sizes of the nation\u2019s police forces could have helped set the stage for the violent crime uptick. There is also reason to believe that \u2014 in part because of the anti-police sentiments that characterized last summer\u2019s protests \u2014 the cops we have left became less proactive.”<\/p>\n

Bader goes on to debunk the suggestion that poverty causes increased homicides and addresses the impact of differing sentencing policies on the levels of violent crime. \u00a0 While identifying the specific factors which trigger increased crime is a complex undertaking,\u00a0 those willing to ignore the astounding swing in crime from 1970 to 2010 and the major changes in policing and sentencing that took place over that period cannot be taken seriously.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

For decades, anti-sentencing advocates have blamed poverty, economic conditions, demographics, racism, and firearms for increases in crime rather than on the criminals themselves and weak policies that enable criminal behavior.\u00a0 After 2020, the pandemic has been added to the list.\u00a0 As reported in Hans Bader’s article in Liberty Unyielding,\u00a0 Professor John Pfaff, “America’s most famous advocate of cutting sentences for violent criminals,”\u00a0 suggests that one reason for the unprecedented increase in shootings in New York City was the pandemic which upended the economy. \u00a0 Professor Pfaff was responding to a recent article in Politico which noted that “gun violence escalates throughout the city (of New York) one year after anti-police protesters occupied the street.”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[23],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3774","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-general"],"yoast_head":"\nThe Pandemic Does Not Explain The Spike in Violent Crime - 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