With the new presidency, most Americans have become hopeful. Maybe this new presidential regime would do something about the crimes in the US.
Just look around, whether its race-driven or an act of violence, people have started to fear for their safety. The streets are no longer as peaceful as they once were.
Right now, President Joe Biden is at the helm, watching over the wellbeing of Americans. He has launched a renewed effort to tackle crime in the country as a series of major cities have seen spikes in violent offences.
Experts have taken closer a look at the violent crime trends across America. The question is, is violent crime really going up?
Police departments have asked this question as well and the men in blue across the US have defined violent crime in ways that have shown slight differences. However, the overall data in their studies oftentimes includes crimes such as murder, robbery, assault, and rape.
Generally, violent crime had gone up by about 3 percent in 2020 as compared to the year before, but this should be seen in the context of the longer term downward trend from a peak that they have seen in the early 1990s.
Across the US, there were about 25 percent more murders recorded in 2020 than in 2019. Considerably speaking, this is considered to be a steep rise, but the murder rate is still far lower than that in the early 1990s. During the time, figures were almost double than what they’ve seen recently.
There are specific cities that are witnessing a spike in murders. The major US cities have tended to follow the national trend in becoming safer since the 1990s. Then, there are also those that have also seen a sharp rise recently. And the rise in some of the biggest cities have been of great concern to President Biden’s administration.
The New York Times reported the study on this and looked at 37 cities across the US with data for the first three months of this year, and overall there has been an 18 percent surge in murders compared to the same time period in the previous year.
Unfortunately, this isn’t the only US city that has suffered. Chicago has one of the worst records for murders, with a big increase in 2020 and a continuing upwards trend even to this day.
Shooting incidents in Chicago have also gone up by 15 percent at the same point last year, and are more than double the level two years previously.
There is also a rise in the number of shootings has been seen in many other major US cities as well. Because of this, President Biden is working hard at strengthening firearm regulations to combat gun-related violence.
New York has also witnessed firearm incidents and murders rising, continuing an upward trend that started in 2020. Through to the middle of June, there have been almost 200 murders in the city so far. This shows more than a 13 percent increase on the same period two years previously. And the number of shooting incidents have more than doubled from 2019.
Despite the recent spike in killings, both New York and Chicago, along with most other cities in the US, have seen a significant overall violent crime drop over the past two decades.
Over the last 15 months, the Covid-19 situation has placed restrictions on unprecedented social and economic pressures with the citizens. As for the gun sales during the pandemic, there has also been an increase, which has led researchers to believe that this may have contributed to rising gun violence.
For now, the Biden administration hopes strong action that is done right now can halt the violence and prevent murders. They aim to see the numbers go down by this summer and further decrease in the years to follow.
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