Nothing ‘Random’ About New York Street Violence
The media and public officials portray the city’s escalating violent-crime problem as arbitrary — but the assailants and their targets are both entirely predictable.
New York City is mired in a frightening swamp of violent crime. Assurances from proponents of criminal-justice reform that there’s nothing to worry about, as the crime rate is still well below early 1990s levels, ring hollow. These same advocates for social progress would not be consoled if they were told that maternal deaths and poverty rates were worse in the 1990s. That crime isn’t as bad as it was 30 years ago is no consolation.
People do not experience life measured in decades but as it happens — and the sudden acceleration of the murder rate in 2020 was profoundly dislocating. Even if New York logged more murders in an earlier era, the city has never experienced a 40 percent rise in homicides over just one year. This sudden plunge into violence made people feel that the streets were chaotic and dangerous — and as criminologists attest, the impression that streets are unsafe is enough to deter many people from venturing out.
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