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Despite less activity outside with the closure of businesses and schools, 2020 has seen a dramatic increase in homicides.
The increase is due to a number of factors, criminology experts told CNN. The pandemic has closed schools and businesses, leading to unemployment. This meant that unemployed children and adults were stuck at home, causing stress and anxiety levels to skyrocket, especially in low-income homes.
The virus has also changed the way police officers do their jobs – due to illness and social estrangement – resulting in a decrease in the number of officers on the streets in areas most in need of crime prevention.
“It’s almost like these communities just had their heads above the water and then Covid hit and they just sank,” Bocanegra said.
In addition to homicides, other violent crimes – aggravated assault and assault with a firearm – also increased in the spring into the summer. Aggravated assaults increased 15% in the summer and 13% in the fall, while firearm attacks rose 15% and 16%, according to the report.
No link between summer protests and spike in homicides, experts say
As homicides have increased, non-violent crimes – burglaries, thefts and drug offenses – have declined because many businesses have been closed and there were fewer people on the streets, according to the report.
However, according to the report, “the link, if any, between social unrest and escalating violence remains uncertain.”
Richard Rosenfeld, criminologist at the University of Missouri-St. Louis told CNN that the same neighborhoods witnessing police violence are the same where the rise in crime is concentrated. These communities have never had strong or positive relationships with the police, which leads people to take legal matters into their own hands, he said.
“We have two forces at work. We have the pandemic and social unrest around police violence, the combination of the two main factors forms a lethal combination. This explains the suddenness and timing of the increase and the magnitude same increase (in homicides), ”Rosenfeld said.
What is missing in the hypothesis linking the protests and the spike in homicides is “good, hard evidence,” Rosenfeld said.
In other words, the protesters were not committing the crimes, he said.
Bocanegra, the program director for Chicago, told CNN there were protests in the suburbs, but those areas have not seen an increase in homicides.
“Those who are behind the violence, they fought even more before Covid,” he said.
Government must approach violence like Covid, experts say
The pandemic has shed new light on how to tackle increasing violence in cities, experts told CNN.
On the one hand, coordinating local, state and federal governments to mitigate the spread of the virus has never been seen before in the United States – and criminal justice experts say the same approach must be applied to the issue of violence.
“Violence is a symptom of the turmoil and inequalities that we have seen for decades in our communities. We are not going to change that overnight, we have to come up with a 10 to 20 year plan, ”Bocanegra said. “Unless we can think of future generations … we’re going to continue having these conversations in 20 to 30 years.”
Jens Ludwig, who heads the University of Chicago’s Crime Lab, told CNN that gun violence and mental health data for people aged 18 to 24 go hand in hand.
“So if you look at the problem of gun violence. It’s usually concentrated among young people, say 18 to 24 years old. If you look at CDC data on mental health … people between 18 and 24 years old show signs of anxiety, depression, an increase in substance use in response to the pandemic and when trying to cope with the pandemic, ”he said.
Bocanegra said he hopes the country and his city of Chicago can learn lessons from Covid-19 and apply them to gun violence. He told CNN he wondered why there hadn’t been such a response in the past.
“Is it because Covid did not discriminate on the basis of sex, creed or class? Or is it because most of the gun issues impact blacks and brunettes and people with mental health problems? ” he said. “Who determines what lives are worth more than others?”
Starting in 2021, Rosenfeld said previous years will provide direction for the months to come. In 2015, there was an 11% increase in homicides nationwide after the Ferguson protests that spilled over into 2016.
“We may have an increase in homicides over the next year,” he said.
CNN’s Priya Krishnakumar, Peter Nickeas and Adrienne Broaddus contributed to this report.
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