Violent crime is rising in American cities, putting criminal-justice reform at risk?

AFTER GEORGE FLOYD’S murder a year ago, Atlanta’s mayor scolded the rioters who were smashing up parts of her city. “This is not a protest…This is chaos,” Keisha Lance Bottoms said. “If you care about this city, then go home.” The speech was so well pitched that some overexcited pundits wondered whether she might one day run for president. One year on, Ms Lance Bottoms has declined even to run for re-election as mayor, in part because Atlanta is suffering from a violent-crime wave which she has been unable to calm. One affluent neighbourhood is keen to secede from the city altogether.

What is true in Atlanta is also true in other American cities. Property crimes are down, but violent crime has risen. Murders increased by about 30% between 2019 and 2020, a rise that shows little sign of slowing. This change puts at risk what has been perhaps the most benign social trend in America so far this century: the great crime decline. It also threatens liberal reforms, designed to reduce the prison population and to rethink policing, which have spread across much of the United States in the past decade.

Arguments for criminal-justice and police reform are easier to make when crime is falling, as it had been for 25 years. When voters are fearful, they become...