Perspective on Perspective

By Kevin D. Williamson

Tuesday, July 26, 2022

 

Paul Krugman writes:

 

In New York City, homicides so far this year are running a bit below their 2021 level, and in 2021 they were 78 percent lower than they were in 1990 and a quarter lower than they were in 2001.

 

That’s true, but I don’t think “New York City has fewer murders today than it did in the year when it had more murders than at any other point in its entire history” is as compelling an argument as Professor Krugman seems to think.

 

The 488 murders New York listed in 2021 are a lot fewer than it had in 1990, but a lot more than New York had in 2017 or 2018, years in which the numbers of murders were below 300. New York had thousands more felony assaults in 2021 than in 2020, thousands more grand-larceny offenses, about a thousand more vehicle thefts, etc. Total numbers matter a great deal, but so does direction.

 

Professor Krugman is writing about New York crime’s role in the national political conversation, and New York is pretty unremarkable on a population-adjusted basis. Beyond that, there are some more interesting comparisons. In recent years, New York has had a much lower murder rate than, say, St. Paul or San Antonio. But does New York, which boasts of being a city of global significance, really compare itself to St. Paul? Because New York’s murder rate is about twice London’s, six times Zurich’s, 17 times Singapore’s, and about 40 times Dubai’s, if you believe the official numbers.

 

Marseille, often cited as one of Europe’s most dangerous cities, has a lower murder rate than Madison, Wis., and a murder rate about half of Sacramento’s. Salt Lake City is more dangerous.

 

For all of our political crazy-talk, people in New York are a lot more like people in Fort Worth than the people of either city are like the people in Geneva, Edinburgh, or Abu Dhabi. We are Americans, and we are an extraordinarily violent people by most measures.

 

As the New York Times reports, the U.S. murder rate spiked almost 30 percent in 2020. It is inaccurate to make New York the poster city for American crime, but it is far from irrational for Americans to be concerned about the direction of crime in recent years.