There are many plausible explanations for the recent crime downturn: sharper policing strategy, more police overtime, low unemployment, the lure of digital life, the post-pandemic return to normalcy. Each of these surely played a role. But only one theory can match the decline in its scope and scale: that the massive, post-pandemic investment in local governments deployed during the Biden administration, particularly through the American Rescue Plan Act, delivered a huge boost to the infrastructure and services of American communities—including those that suffered most from violent crime. That spending may be responsible for our current pax urbana
Crime by ICE and the border patrol is of course excluded from these statistics
Is it less crime happening or just less reporting of the crimes?
In the PNW every LE agency is stretched so thin they won’t even show up for vandalism or theft of anything less than $500.
My neighbor discovered that the local sheriff won’t send a deputy to write a report after a traffic collision because the other driver who caused it just left.
There are also marginalized groups like immigrant communities who are finding it hard to call LE for fear of ICE.
The same phenomenon persists when you look at things like murder, which tends not to have that problem