2020–2021 Murder Surges
NPR claims that “homicide rates surged” in 2020 and 2021 because of “the pandemic.”
IN FACT, the murder surges of 2020–2021 accord in time and place with the BLM riots and activism of that era, not the Covid-19 outbreak. Association ≠ causation, but the following facts point to BLM as the primary cause for 11,000 added murders over those 2 years:
- A study published by the University of California Press found that the murder outbreaks of 2020–2021 don’t accord chronologically or geographically with the onset of the pandemic but with “the death of George Floyd” and the “subsequent antipolice protests,” which “likely led to declines in law enforcement.”
- A study in the journal Crime Science found that despite over one million reported Covid cases and 80,000 Covid-related deaths in the U.S. during the first two months of the pandemic, “there were no significant changes in the frequency of serious assaults in public” or “serious assaults in residences.”
- Murder rates in England actually declined in 2020 and 2021, even though the nation is demographically similar to the U.S. and had slightly higher Covid death rates throughout this period.
Other studies have found major murder increases in the wake of similar BLM protests and riots, like those that occurred over the death of Michael Brown in 2015. One of the most revealing was conducted by PhD sociologist Richard Rosenfeld, former president of the American Society of Criminology. An article in The Guardian explains the implications of the study:
For nearly a year, Richard Rosenfeld’s research on crime trends has been used to debunk the existence of a “Ferguson effect,” a suggested link between protests over police killings of black Americans and an increase in crime and murder. Now, the St. Louis criminologist says, a deeper analysis of the increase in homicides in 2015 has convinced him that “some version” of the Ferguson effect may be real.
Looking at data from 56 large cities across the country, Rosenfeld found a 17% increase in homicide in 2015. Much of that increase came from only 10 cities, which saw an average 33% increase in homicide. …
“The only explanation that gets the timing right is a version of the Ferguson effect,” Rosenfeld said. Now, he said, that’s his “leading hypothesis.”
