Vital City charts
Introduction
At the end of 2010s, NYC reached the lowest crime and gun violence numbers since the 1950s (link). It was a virtuous cycle of civic peace with fewer than 300 murders, 800 shootings, 50,000 violent index crimes, and 100,000 major felony crimes. That realignment was due in part to a fundamental shift in the way in which the police and the criminal justice operated in the city. But that peace was less organic, consolidated, and durable that many expected.
The pandemic and other factors abruptly ended that virtuous cycle replacing first with a vicious cycle of violence and retaliation in 2020 and 2021 and subsequently a sharp increase in all other forms of crime (index crimes). NYC had almost 500 murders and 1,500 shootings in 2021 and when gun violence began to stabilize and moderately decline, we climbed to over 61,000 violent index crimes and 125,000 major felony crimes. Some pundits argued that, because the old frame was broken and new reforms further tied the hands of the criminal justice system, those disruptions were to become structurally permanent and that a “new normal of criminality” was to outlast the pandemic.
At least for now, in one area, those somber predictions are likely to be proven wrong. Gun violence is fast returning to the pre-pandemic levels. The system seems to have responded to the challenge. With a 25% decrease in shootings in the first half of 2023 on top of a 17% decrease in 2022, we are on par with 2016 numbers (998 shootings) and on target to end the year under 1,000 shootings – the fourth lowest number of shootings in more than three decades. Murders have not decreased as fast as even if murders by firearm are down because there is a notable increase in murders by others means (primarily stabbings).
Does it feel like it? Do NYC residents feel safe? Have we really returned to the cycle of peace, or would it be again a short lived experience? Have we reached the limits of what the traditional structures of the criminal justice can produce in safety? What have we learned from the sudden return of violence? Are the inequalities in the system so severe that further progress is unthinkable? How do we explain the system response? Is New York City exceptional? Can we push that new normal even further? These are the questions that we aimed at addressing here. This brief data story summarizes what we know, and key takeaways based on the most recent data available from a myriad of sources as well as historical data.
NYC before and after the pandemic
Chart 1
Is the pandemic-fueled gun violence now a thing of the past? Likely, but not yet completely back to the historic lows of 2017-2019 with 2023 shootings near to 2016 levels.
Chart 2
The pandemic-fueled gun violence is likely a thing of the past shooting data shows, but gun-violence related calls for service are still higher than the pre-pandemic seasonal peak. (Note: overall critical calls for service are about 5% over 2017-2019 levels)
Chart 3
Lethal violence (murders) is down but still far from 2017-2019 and similar to 2012. Option 2: highlight the different dynamics between lethal and gun violence. POINT to the fact that even without any shootings the city still has 2 murders per 100,000 well above European average of 1.0 murders. With shootings, murder rate increas
Chart 4
Lethal violence (murders) driven by gun violence during the pandemic but murders by other means ar still quite high
Chart 5
During COVID, the NYC murder rate rose by 47% in 2020 (35% in the United States) marking the biggest year over year increase on record since the 1950s. Since 2022, the city is experiencing a return to the pre-pandemic historic lows.
Chart 6
The 2020 NYC increase in murders was spurred a sharp upward swing in gun violence in 2020 (a 97% increase in shootings: the largest year-over-year increase in shootings) and 2021 . In 2022, gun violence began to decline steadily.
Chart 7
Recently, Jeff Asher argued that shootings are decreasing in the United States. The chart below uses compilation of monthly data on non-suicide shooting victims from Gun Violence Archive and plots a 12-month rolling mean, showing the trend after accounting for seasonality. It does look like the average is going down, yet it is still far from the pre-2020 levels.
Source: substack of Jeff Asher. Data: Gun Violence Archive.
The city of New York also follows this national pattern. In the chart below, the blue line shows the same 12-month rolling mean as above. From the middle of 2022, there are fewer shooting victims every month in the city after accounting for seasonality. However, the numbers are still almost twice as large as in the pre-pandemic period (~140 monthly victims now vs ~80 monthly victims in 2019 after rolling mean). Additionally, the black lines and dots show the raw, absolute numbers of shooting victims, with high peaks in the last three summers.
The long view
Chart 8
The long view: the stable peace of the 1950s, the first wave and sharp rise thru the 1960s and 1970s, the second wave and peaking in the 1980s, and the steep drop since then only disrupted by the pandemic rise. New York City (since 2013) and New York State (since 1997) safer than the national average.
Chart 9
The long view: shootings back to 2016 level
Chart 10
Correlation story (= .97) (similar to national = 0.9)
Chart 11
Downward trend for decades. Pandemic = first wave, gun violence; second wave, index crimes. First time in four decades that violence is down by double-digits and crime is up by double digits too.
Chart 12: victims, arrests, and their ratio
Chart 9a. A similar arrests-to-shootings ratio chart should be awesome here. ALEX/Marcos (we need to do gun arrests and then murder/assault arrests)
This plot shows numbers of victims and arrestees for each type of crime.
Data: Crime and Enforcement Activity reports 2008-2021 (https://www.nyc.gov/site/nypd/stats/reports-analysis/crime-enf.page). Subset to selected offense types.
If we divide number of arrestees by the number of victims, we get a proxy for clearance rate: on the average, how many arrests are usually done for a single victim?
NYC and other countries, US states, and cities
Chart 13
Chart 14
Going local: crime and violence among places of New York City
what happened during covid in nyc by key comparative neighborhoods. I would recommend doing the 4 big boroughs and then select a precinct from each borough (73 for various reasons but it is quite clear that things have changed in the last 12 months here, 44 or 47 in the bronx, 25 in manhattan, 113 in Queens , and 120 in Staten island) MARCOS and ALEX
Chart 15: crime in selected precincts
In these particular precincts that represent four boroughs, some crimes are going up, especially in Bronx.
Chart 16: shooting victimization among places
shooting victimization rates among places in NYC. I can further develop the analysis we did with Brandon and Aaron and compare counties, boroughs, zip codes, census tracts/groups. Can also do hexagonal interpolation. I am pretty confident they will show the same story, and we can show the Lorenz curve (making it easy to grasp) about the concentration of shootings in NYC in terms of places and in terms of underlying residential population. Can also vary if we look at it at the specific year or over the whole period of data availability (at least 5 last years if I remember correctly).
While being overall safe compared to other major US cities, NYC has several areas with a high rate of shootings. For example, among police precincts, Precinct 73 experienced 289 lethal and non-lethal shootings in 2020-2022. With 89 thousand residents living in the precinct, the shooting victimization rate was 107 shootings per 100,000 people.
Depending on the geographical divisions, the exact rating of places in terms of gun violence slightly varies. However, the places of overall concentration of shootings stay the same, as city council districts show below.
Chart 17: Pockets of gun violence (patchwork quilt)
Shootings, as crime in general, is concentrated among the small number of places. Census block group, the smallest unit used in decennial census and other U.S. Census surveys, such as American Community Survey, can be used to look at the places of concentration of gun violence.