Americans are no longer safe in their cities – and Biden can’t even admit it
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While President Biden suggests that it’s “morning in America,” a great many Americans are afraid to go out at night. Although Biden insists otherwise, violent crime in the United States has risen significantly in recent years. This makes crime yet another issue on which “elite” opinion clashes with everyday Americans’ own sense of reality.
Indeed, Biden’s denial that crime has risen parallels his denial that prices have climbed sky-high on his watch. On both issues, Biden is pushing a narrative that things were badly broken, and then he rode into town as the new sheriff and fixed them. Alas, this narrative bears no resemblance to most Americans’ lived experience.
Biden apologist Paul Krugman of the New York Times gushes that the US “economy continues to look like an amazing success story” and that recent economic news has been “almost miraculously good.” In truth (based on figures from the Bureau of Labor Statistics at the US Department of Labor), only once before in the past 100 years did Americans elect a first-time president and then see prices rise more during his first 36 months in office as they rose under Biden – under whom they rose 17.9 per cent. That one time was under Jimmy Carter, who lost 44 of 50 states during his reelection bid.
On crime, NBC News recently asserted that “Americans believe crime rates are worsening, but they are mistaken.” It’s actually NBC and Biden who are mistaken, as the best crime stats show a marked increase in crime in recent years – largely driven by crime spikes in urban areas.
The most reliable US crime statistics come from the National Crime Victimisation Survey (NCVS). This is especially true now that the FBI’s crime stats, which used to cover essentially the whole country, are failing to include police forces in about one-sixth of all US towns or cities, including Los Angeles, San Francisco, and New York.
The NCVS, which dates to the Nixon administration, is the largest crime survey in the US and one of the largest federal surveys on any topic. It asks about a quarter of a million US residents annually whether they were the victim of a crime over the past year – and, if so, to give more information about that crime. So, the survey captures crimes not reported to police – and victims say that most crimes are not reported to police – as well as those reported. The NCVS is run by the Bureau of Justice Statistics, which I directed from 2017 to 2021.
In 2020 – the summer of Covid-19 lockdowns, George Floyd, and Black Lives Matter protests – Left-leaning organisations and politicians profoundly de-emphasised the importance of law enforcement. They clamored to “defund the police,” said we should stop enforcing “minor” crimes in the name of racial “equity,” and pushed to get lenient prosecutors elected, especially in major cities controlled by progressive prosecutors. Their rash experiment in encouraging lawlessness has played out in real time.
According to the NCVS, violent crime rose from 5.8 million violent victimisations in 2019 to 6.6 million in 2022 (the most recent year for which statistics are available), an increase of 800,000 violent victimisations and 14 per cent. Excluding simple assault – the least serious violent crime category and the one least likely to be prosecuted as a felony – the increase was notably worse: 37 per cent.
The real story, however, is where violent crime has risen. In suburban areas, the rate of violent victimisations was 22.3 per 1,000 residents ages 12 and over in 2019 and 23.9 per 1,000 in 2022 – an observed 7 per cent increase that wasn’t statistically significant. In rural areas, the rate per 1,000 went from 16.3 in 2019 to 15.4 in 2022 – an observed 6 per cent decrease that also was not statistically significant.
But in urban areas, the rate per 1,000 rose from 21.1 in 2019 to 33.4 in 2022 – a massive 58 per cent increase that was very much statistically significant. Excluding simple assault, the rate of violent victimisations in urban areas rose by a whopping 73 per cent over that span.
In other words, American cities are profoundly less safe than they were just a few years ago. What’s more, the reason for this change is quite clear. Not only has lax law enforcement encouraged more violent crimes, it has facilitated a decline in civilised norms. Many of America’s major urban centers are now replete with tent cities, drug addicts, shoplifting and subsequent store closures, the pervasive smell of marijuana, and a general sense of foreboding.
In Biden’s recent State of the Union address, he said, “To state the obvious, all Americans deserve the freedom to be safe.” Unlike many of Biden’s statements, most Americans presumably agree with this one – which could cause him serious problems in November.
Jeffrey H. Anderson is the president of the American Main Street Initiative, and was the director of the Bureau of Justice Statistics at the US Department of Justice from 2017 to 2021
