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Gilyon01 t1_j2f6b1y wrote

Reply to comment by GaijinYankee in DC's murder rate has -11% YoY change from 2021. Wanted to post this for some more positive news around crime, since negative news tends to dominate this space. by donemessedup123

To go even further back from 2017, in 2012 and 2013 (discounting the Navy Yard mass shooting) we had under 100 homicides. So in the last decade we've increased by over 100% from the city's low.

While it being lower than last year is good, 2022 was the highest in 2 decades. And going further back then two decades puts us into the 90s, when DC was one of the most violent cities in the country.

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High_DC t1_j2ffmhe wrote

Since we're providing context here...

Prior to 2012/2013, the last time DC had less than 100 murders was 1963. I think it's slightly misleading to set the lowest homicide rate in over half a century as the point of comparison, don't you?

As a further point of context, as of June 24th of this year the murder rate was up 16% over 2021.

So the entirety of the drop in killings has come in the last two months of the year. Hell, when I first started pointing this out on December 13th, the murder rate was "only" down 9%, so it's dropped an additional 2% year-over-year in just the last half of this month.

Nationwide, homicides are down 5% this year. And guess what? Nationwide, they ALSO surged during the pandemic. It's odd to me to see so much of the discussion center around DC-specific policies when we're talking about something that happened across the country.

All of this info strongly indicates to me that, while homicides are still relatively high in comparison to the lowest number of homicides in the past fifty years, the surge that started in 2020 seems to be due to macro effects that seem to be lessening. I plan to check back in halfway through the year in 2023. I would expect to see a pretty dramatic drop in year-over-year homicides.

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