I was shocked last month when finally returning to live choral rehearsals in Manhattan for the first time since the pandemic started. It was a joy to ride on half empty subways. But I was taken aback when the conductor asked if anybody wanted to finish the rehearsal early because they did not feel safe getting home.
Nobody spoke up, the rehearsal finished at the expected time, and I travelled home on the subway safely. It didn’t feel dangerous to me. But the comment of the conductor gave me pause for thought.
The first time I visited New York City was in 1982 as a tourist. I recall how shabby the city was. Walking only two or three blocks from Times Square, I took a wrong turning and immediately felt unsafe, the subject of prying eyes sizing up my potential for robbery. I understand things became worse by 1990, before Rudy Giuliani became mayor, launched zero tolerance, and started the clean up. Coming to live in the city from 2012, I have been a beneficiary. I am not especially careful about where and how I get about, yet I have not once felt unsafe here.
New York is not alone. I first lived in London in the early 1980’s, and my landlady in Herne Hill took out an A to Z on my first night there and pointed out various local streets and neighbourhoods that I should avoid. I suspect the need for such caution is much less now.
And yet the last eighteen months has seen worrying increases in violent crime in many cities in the developed world. Of course the papers and social media and even the police exaggerate the problem, quoting eye-popping percentages. Why do we overuse percentages so much? If Covid is up 300% in my district I don’t really care if the base line is low enough, yet I have to research in order to discover what that base line is.
Still, undoubtedly there is a problem. Gun crime, homicide and violent assault are all on the rise. Eric Adams captured the popular mood to win the mayoral primary. My conductor had been taken in by the scaremongering, but increasing violence is not good, and what if it is going to get worse? It is certainly worth trying to understand the causes.
To start to analyse the possible causes of the increase in violent crime requires first trying to understand why violent crime decreased so much in the long period before. Giuliani got things started in a positive direction, but violence has continued to reduce markedly ever since until the recent uptick. And Giuliani cannot take all the credit, because the same trend took root everywhere, including places where zero tolerance never became a mantra.
Still, smarter policing surely played a role. Perhaps more valuable than zero tolerance has been the use of technology, with lots of cameras to solve crimes and lots of data to pinpoint neighbourhoods for focused effort.
Demographics always play an important role in trends. In the USA, the number of people aged 15-22, the cohort responsible for most crime, decreased steadily since the millennium, but has ticked upwards recently (though it is set to decline again soon). Smaller families offer a second benefit too, because the number of kids growing up in chaotic surroundings will be fewer.
Improved education for the most disadvantaged kids must have played a role, as well as other public policies such as rehabilitation of the homeless and those leaving prison and support for children of poor families. The USA still lags in all of these areas, but I can believe that what efforts exist have become gradually more efficient. Other policies should not be overlooked either. It is reputed that lead in the water, formerly ubiquitous, caused young brains to be anxious and potentially more violent. Nutrition does not appear to have improved much, but faltering efforts to reduce salt and sugar, especially in school meals, may have helped as well.
Then there is more professional crime. My image of the hardened criminal has changed since the 1990’s, from somebody roaming the streets stealing cars and prone to violence when provoked, to somebody at a computer terminal hacking bank accounts. The latter probably does more societal harm, but is surely less violent. Probably many gangs have taken up less violent methods as well.
Hence the context of the recent rise in violent crime is a long trend of reduction, probably caused by a combination of causes, many of which are still in play today. So what is different that might have reversed the trend?
The most obvious difference is the pandemic, and the increase in violence seemed to start around about when the pandemic struck. My image here is of somebody becoming steadily more desperate and eventually succumbing to violence. The pandemic has made life seem hopeless at times, and being cooped up in an unhappy home without the social outlets of school or activities must have been tough for many.
An extreme example of this came to mind yesterday when I attended a funeral, and the priest told a story about an incident that reminded him of his mortality and led him to think about the really important things in life, love and kindness. We should indeed live each day as if it were our last. But what about somebody in anger or despair? Might such thinking during the pandemic have led people into reckless acts? If life is truly hopeless, how about taking out the partner you have lived in misery with for that last decade?
The second factor that has clearly changed since 2020 is policing. George Floyd and the ensuing protests will have made police intelligence and community work more difficult, and some police may be choosing to avoid tough situations for fear of becoming the next Derek Chauvin. In New York, we have one more factor. The start of 2020 saw a major change to the use of bail, which had previously been used to keep habitually violent people locked away in Rikers Island for long stretches, despite not having been convicted. Now more of them are on the streets, and more violence is a likely consequence, however well intentioned the reform.
No doubt police practice will find a more healthy balance again over time as wise voices prevail and lessons are learned. The pandemic will pass too. So can we expect the more positive trends on violence to resume soon? Perhaps, but could it also be that the pandemic has simply accelerated a trend that would be occurring anyway? If the latter view is correct, we can expect more violence in the near future, not less.
Pessimists might extrapolate from my story of the one whose anger bubbles up until it explodes into violence. It is not only the pandemic that makes this more likely. In the USA, Trump stirred up enormous pent up anger that shows no sign of abating. Social media and popular culture make us believe we can achieve anything, yet most of us cannot. Many may mortgage their future on some hustle, or a self-image, or reckless behaviour, only to see everything collapse. Watching baseball nowadays, most adverts between innings are for sports betting – one more temptation for the unwary. For vulnerable young men, the wonderful march of female emancipation will have made some angrier as well.
All these societal trends are accelerating, so perhaps we are in for a prolonged period of more violence. Of course it does not help at all in the USA that guns are so readily available, so the angry have ready means to create havoc. A different possibility is all about gangs and organised crime. Perhaps something has changed recently in that landscape. If so, I have no idea what it can be.
The decline in violence has surprised many experts, and there is still much debate about its causes. No doubt the same will be true of the reversal of the trend. There are certainly many possible factors to consider. We might have reached an unfortunate tipping point, or we made simply be seeing a negative blip in a positive story. Let us hope it is the latter.
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