United States: Fewer Crimes, Not Homicides, in the Year of COVID-19

Current data on US crime rates is difficult to come by. Most data from the US Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) is only available through 2018, a few exceptions such as offense clearance statistics go through 2019, and for 2020, the year of COVID, you have to either reference preliminary figures published in September that cover January-July or bounce from metro area to metro area to find the statistics you're looking for. So, we did both!

COVID-19's reach is well beyond health, hitting employment, education, and potentially even crime. According to preliminary data from the FBI, reported violent and property crimes for the first six months of 2020 have decreased compared to the first six months of 2019. Taking a more local approach, we found that while total crime also decreased in some metro areas as COVID took hold nationwide, the reduction was mainly due to fewer reported crimes such as larceny, burglary, robbery, and auto theft, the most common criminal offenses. In contrast, homicides, which typically constitute less than 1 percent of all offenses, have increased.

• In July, the city of Atlanta, Georgia, went into a state of emergency after weeks of escalating homicide figures: the total number of murders from January through July—when COVID-19 peaked in Georgia—was almost 60 percent higher than over the same period of the previous year. At the same time, the overall number of criminal offenses in Atlanta was around 20 percent less than the previous year.
• Similar pictures were observed in St. Louis, Missouri, and Denver, Colorado where the number of homicides were as much as 37 percent and 50 percent higher compared to 2019 during the COVID-19 peak period in July. In contrast, the overall crime level was mostly unchanged in St. Louis and about 12 percent higher YoY in Denver.

You may wonder whether the increased number of homicides was connected with protests against COVID-19 lockdown measures that took place in April and May as well as Black Lives Matter protests that swept the country for the better part of May and June (and far longer in some locations). The data suggests otherwise given the relatively localized number of violent protests and the persistently rising homicide rates through August and September. Even in cities with prolonged protests, such as Portland, you can see below that crime rates in 2020 are below 2019 levels. That said, it is interesting to note that while the homicide rates have been on the increase, so too have background checks for firearms, with the year-on-year percent increase oscillating within the range of 20-40 percent from January through May to as high as 80 percent above 2019 rates in July 2020, according to the FBI.