Anyone eager to help spread cheer by highlighting Festivus (sentencing) miracles?

Happy Festivus to all those who celebrate! 

A cranky internet this morning got me off to an early start on the airing of grievances.  That tends to be the best known of this faux-holiday's grand traditions, and I have done posts in prior years in which I encouraged airing of sentencing grievances in this space (see, eg, posts from 2021 and 2015).  But, circa 2023, it certainly seems alomst every day in almost every online space almost everyone is busy airing grievances.  Thus, I am disinclined to encourage the airing of grievances in this space.  Instead, let me encourage discussion of any and all Festivus miricles.  (Of course, feats of strength are also appreciated on this silly special day, though this onlne space is not quite an easy place to show off.)

I will get the good (miraculous?) news going with a link and a quote from the substack of data analyst Jeff Asher (who is founder of AH Datalytics which provides great real-time accounting of big city murder data).  Specifically, this post from the Jeff-alytics Substack earlier this month, titled "Crime in 2023: Murder Plummeted, Violent and Property Crime Likely Fell Nationally," provides this accounting of 2023 crime data (with links from the original):

Murder plummeted in the United States in 2023, likely at one of the fastest rates of decline ever recorded.  What’s more, every type of Uniform Crime Report Part I crime with the exception of auto theft is likely down a considerable amount this year relative to last year according to newly reported data through September from the FBI.

Americans tend to think that crime is rising, but the evidence we have right now points to sizable declines this year (even if there are always outliers).  The quarterly data in particular suggests 2023 featured one of the lowest rates of violent crime in the United States in more than 50 years.

Murder is down 12.7 percent in our YTD murder dashboard as of this writing (December 7th) with a decline in 73 percent of the more than 175 cities with available data.  The sample suggests either the largest or one of the largest national declines in murder on record occurred this year (both in terms of percent and absolute decline).

Of course declining murder does not mean there were not thousands upon thousands of these tragedies this year.  Nor does it mean that there was an acceptable level of gun violence, even in places seeing rapid declines.  It simply means that the overall trend was extraordinarily positive and should be recognized as such.

Detroit is on pace to have the fewest murders since 1966 and Baltimore and St Louis are on pace for the fewest murders in each city in nearly a decade.  Other cities that saw huge increases in murder between 2020 and 2022 like Milwaukee, New Orleans, and Houston are seeing sizable declines in 2023.  There are still cities like Memphis and Washington DC that are seeing increasing murders in 2023, but those cities are especially notable because they are the outliers this year, not the norm.

Happy Festivus for the rest of us!