What can explain the spike in homicides during 2020, when almost every large city saw an increase compared
to 2019 and the average urban area experienced a jump of almost 30%?
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Murders were slightly elevated in January and February of 2020 and remained consistent in March as the U.S. entered the COVID-19 pandemic. Homicides began to increase rapidly in mid-April when Americans started leaving home more often as the weather grew warmer and stay at home orders eased.
What could have caused murders to surge in 2020 after people started to socialize again? Just before the national spike in homicides began, U.S. cities experienced two shocks, says new research published by the Brookings Institution's Rohit Acharya and Rhett Morris.
Large numbers of teen boys in neighborhoods with concentrated poverty were pushed out of school
in March 2020. Every public school closed during the first month of the pandemic. Students
who lived in low-income areas were far more likely to lack internet access at home, which forced many teens
to leave school when they could not participate in virtual instruction.
Even students with internet access often spent weeks out of school, as many districts that serve low-income communities did not offer online classes for several weeks and some took more than a month to begin distributing laptops to students in need. By the time “distance learning” was launched, teachers in these districts reported that around one third to as many as half of local students did not participate in online classes.
Large numbers of young men in neighborhoods with concentrated poverty also lost their jobs in
March and early April of 2020. National unemployment reached the highest levels ever recorded in April of
2020 and young adults in low-income neighborhoods had it worse than almost every other group.
Job losses among people under 30 in neighborhoods with concentrated poverty were two times greater than the levels in the nation as a whole. This is likely due to the fact that residents of these
neighborhoods were more likely to work in restaurants and other service industry sectors that experienced
the greatest job losses.
By mid-April, young men laid off due to the pandemic and high school boys whose schools were shutdown made up around 1 out of every 30 people living in low-income neighborhoods.
These two shocks were quickly followed by proportional increases in violence. The places with the largest spikes in homicides in 2020 tended to have something in common. Cities where more teen boys and
young men were pushed out of school and work in low-income neighborhoods during March and April,
generally had greater increases in murder from May to December.
Why did homicides remain elevated in 2021 and 2022 before falling rapidly in the second half of 2023 and
the first nine months of 2024?
The shocks that occurred in low-income neighborhoods during March and April of 2020 lasted for several years. Large numbers of teen boys from these neighborhoods remained out of school as chronic absences skyrocketed across the country.
Large numbers of young men in low-income areas also remained out of work during 2021, even as national
unemployment levels fell. This is likely because employment in restaurants and other hospitality sectors was slower to return than in other industries.
Things improved significantly in 2023 as employment among the least educated workers once again reached the rate seen before the pandemic. In early 2024, the number of people working in the hospitality sector also
returned to pre-pandemic levels.
How can civic leaders prevent future spikes in murder and reduce current violence?
There is an urgent need to find ways to prevent the types of shocks seen during the pandemic and reduce the number of young men and boys currently involved in violence, says the report.
Archaya and Morris suggest seeking a broad improvement of general conditions and systems that influence crime. This includes programs to increase access to mental health care, strengthen community-building organizations, and improve local infrastructure by installing streetlights or removing abandoned buildings.
They also urge "focused improvement of specific practices among police and others involved in criminal justice."
Initiatives in this area include directing more resources to solving local murders and reducing incarceration
rates for non-violent offenses so that those who commit low-level crimes are not placed in prison, which
often causes them to lose their jobs.
Another suggesion is focused reengagement of specific people already involved in violence. There is promising research on programs like READI in Chicago, which identifies young men currently involved in violence or at high-risk to do so in the near future and connects them to services like therapy to help them complete their education and become employed.
Finally, the authors call for focused prevention of violence involvement among the specific children and teens at greatest risk.
They say, "The children at highest risk of violence involvement likely need more than just a single program. Data can help to identify the local recipe of programs that best provide young boys with the tools they need to graduate from high school, become employed, and avoid involvement in violence.
"Leaders also need to understand how well these programs are performing to help them adjust and improve over time. Plans to provide this sort of data and transparency are often left out of local efforts and can cause those that are otherwise well designed to be ineffective in the long run."