"A Most Violent Year: What left and right got wrong about crime in 2015"

The title of this post is the headline of this notable new commentary by Thomas Abt via The Marshall Project.  Here are excerpts:

Was 2015 the year of the Ferguson Effect? Conservatives scream yes, progressives shout back no.  Let’s step away from the din to examine whether all this yelling is getting us anywhere, and whether we’ve missed some useful explanations and effective policies that have been under our noses this whole time.

Last May, Heather Mac Donald of the conservative Manhattan Institute penned a controversial piece arguing that recent upticks in violence might signal a new national crime wave....  Mac Donald was wrong on several counts.  First, she initially linked gun violence and homicide to crime overall, without offering evidence for doing so.  Second, any criminologist will tell you that policing is only one factor of many in determining rates of violence.  And third, the best and most thorough examination of “broken windows” policing recently revealed that when narrowly focused on solving problems in partnership with the community, broken windows is successful — when it isn’t, then not so much.

Progressives did not take these charges lying down.  Many pushed back, asserting there was simply no evidence of a spike in violent crime.  One widely cited report by the progressive Brennan Center for Justice admitted that homicide in 25 of the nation’s largest cities jumped 14.6% in 2015, but argued that the current rate is near historic lows, that rates vary widely and that any increases are localized and not part of a national trend.  Moreover, they asserted that any increase was due to “root causes,” i.e. poverty, unemployment, and other structural factors, not policing.

The Brennan Center was also mistaken in a number of ways.  First, while it is true that violence remains historically low (and that crime overall continues to fall), a 14.6% national spike in murder would be the largest single-year increase since at least 1960.  Furthermore, while local rates of violence often fluctuate, national rates are more stable, and the Brennan Center’s own data shows that murder is up in 18 of 25 of the nation’s largest cities.  As for “root causes,” there is little evidence of a direct connection between violence and structural factors like poverty and unemployment.  And none of those factors changed significantly last year, so they can hardly explain the surge of violence.

To summarize, the increase in homicides appears real, but there is no broader national crime wave.  It is unclear what is driving the problem, but my own hunch — and it is still just a hunch at this point — involves a criminological phenomenon called legal cynicism.  Multiple studies have demonstrated that, controlling for other factors, when communities view the police and criminal justice system as illegitimate, they become more violent.  When people believe the system is unwilling or unable to help them, they are more likely to take the law into their own hands, creating the cycles of violent retribution...

Cynicism about the law might also explain why the biggest homicide spikes in 2015 occurred in places like St. Louis, Baltimore, and Milwaukee, where there was unrest after controversial uses of police force, and why Boston, with its recent history of positive police and community collaboration, had the largest single decrease in homicide of any large city.  In order to address cynicism in the streets, we have to address cynicism in our public conversation about guns, crime, and punishment.  Violence can fracture a community, but so can violent, partisan, absolutist rhetoric on television, in print, and on social media.

Prior related post:

• Keeping in mind the research that may suggest crime increases resulting from a different kind of "Ferguson Effect"