Robberies in New York have been on the increase, according to a recent report.
Though the figures rise and fall over the last six years, instances of robbery are now higher than they were in 2018, recent Council on Criminal Justice (CCJ) data suggest.
Robbery, defined in the CCJ’s report as “theft or attempted theft involving force or the threat of force,” appears to remain a concern in New York, despite a general downward trend in several forms of crime nationally.
In January 2018 a rate of 13.74 was recorded, a number which had risen to 17.18 by June 2024.
A significant drop occurred in 2020, when the figure plunged to 7.96. This would soon rise, however. By July 2022 the robbery rate in the city had spiked to 21.03.
Jeffrey Fagan, a crime expert with Columbia Law School posited that the “dual shock” of the COVID-19 pandemic and the reaction to George Floyd‘s death in May 2020 may be behind the trend.
“The social and economic dislocations of those shocks damaged the city. There was no sustained economic recovery, there were budget crises in those years as tax revenues dropped off, a housing crisis in rents and evictions weakened the type of social controls that had flourished in the preceding years, and the flow of guns was still strong after the shocks despite the efforts of the police.
“If you spend any time in NYC, you will see how the downtown core has never recovered from COVID – empty storefronts and buildings are still common. Criminologists understand that sustained economic activity not only affects individual well-being, but also the ability of communities to regulate the street behaviors of their residents,” Fagan added.
Newsweek has contacted the New York City mayor’s office for comment via email.
Interpreting crime statistics such as these is not always straightforward.
“Robbery statistics depend on citizen reporting,” said Jeffrey Butts, director of the Research and Evaluation Center at John Jay College of Criminal Justice.
“A community might show higher rates of reported robberies because residents are more likely to trust the police and more likely to report crimes when they occur. Unreported crimes don’t show up in police statistics, but that’s not a public safety indicator,” he added.
Newsweek recently mapped which states have the highest robbery rates, according to the CCJ report. New York did not feature in the top ten, but Baltimore ranked highest by a notable margin, with a rate of 67.05 per 100,000 residents.
By comparison, the second highest was Minneapolis with a rate of 34.11.
Newsweek has also mapped which states have the most firearm deaths and which states have the strictest gun control laws.
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