A few years out from the start of the pandemic, it appears that the rise in homicides in the U.S. was unique, Vox reports. According to multiple studies and a systematic review of crime data for 2020, in most countries, crime fell amid COVID-19 lockdowns, then gradually returned to pre-pandemic levels once the lockdown measures lifted. Homicides around the world, according to 46 studies, didn’t change significantly due to the pandemic and found no relationship between the implementation of lockdown measures and killings. However, U.S. homicide rates jumped 30% in 2020. The Small Arms Survey, which collects and analyzes data on global firearms ownership and violence, reported that the worldwide rate of violent deaths decreased in 2020, setting the U.S. apart from global trends. “There was no other country that experienced this kind of sudden increase in gun violence,” says Patrick Sharkey, a sociologist at Princeton University who studies the intersections of urban segregation, economic inequality, and violence.
While experts caution that it’s difficult to prove what caused the rise in violent crime, there are a few other factors that likely contributed to it. One was the killing of George Floyd by police and the unrest surrounding it, accompanied by a withdrawal in policing that followed. Previous research has shown that high-profile incidents of police violence correspond with a pullback by police and a rise in crime — specifically, robberies and murders. Data from the unrest after Floyd’s killing in Minneapolis and elsewhere shows a marked decline in policing and arrests that summer. “There was a core shift in our understanding of policing in the United States,” Sharkey says. Some of the factors that drove the surge, the preponderance of so many guns and the periodic incidents of deadly police violence, still exist. Bause of that, experts say that the violence from that period shouldn’t be dismissed as a one-time event, but should be studied to see how to prevent violence in the future.