Old North News

The U.S. has seen a significant increase in violent crime — an outcome that should have been expected, former Attorney General Jeff Sessions said, as Democrats have implemented various policies that he believes hamstring law enforcement.

“New FBI statistics show that our nation is suffering a historic surge in violent crime — one that was entirely predictable,” Sessions wrote in an op-ed for the New York Post. “From 2019 to 2020, the U.S. murder rate rose by an astounding 27%, the largest annual increase in at least the past 100 years. This spike is so far off the charts, it’s hard to fathom.” 

FBI Crime Data Explorer nationwide numbers show that in 2019, there were 448,783 violent crime incidents, and 520,209 offenses reported by 9,042 law enforcement agencies. In 2021, the number increased to 694,050 violent-crime incidents, and 817,020 offenses reported by 11,794 law enforcement agencies. 

North Carolina has not escaped the national trend, as the state saw more violent crime incidents and offenses in 2021 than in 2019.

The FBI report lists 29,507 violent crime incidents and 37,093 offenses reported by 118 North Carolina law enforcement agencies in 2019. Two years later, the number increased to 31,682 violent crime incidents and 41,996 offenses reported by 387 North Carolina law enforcement agencies. 

City Journal published an article by Jeffrey Anderson on the findings of the National Crime Victimization Survey (NCVS) by the Bureau of Justice Statistics (BJS), the nation’s largest crime survey. Anderson is president of the American Main Street Initiative and served as director of the Bureau of Justice Statistics at the U.S. Department of Justice from 2017 to 2021. 

The numbers reveal a dramatic spike of 29% in violent crime in cities and urban areas from 2020 to 2021, according to the NCVS. Crime in rural and suburban areas did not change significantly, according to the U.S. Department of Justice. The survey shows the number of violent crime victims increased to 24.5 persons per 1,000 people, up from 19. The violent crime rate in urban areas from 2018 to 2020 was anywhere from 29 to 42% higher than rural areas, according to the NCVS. In 2021, that number rose to 121%. 

“The property-crime rate in urban areas was nearly twice as high in 2021 as in suburban areas (157.5 to 86.8 victimizations per 1,000 households) and nearly three times as high as in rural areas (157.5 to 57.7 victimizations per 1,000 households),” the City Journal reported.

The report notes this data, taken from asking people if they were a victim of a violent crime, does not apply to murders, for obvious reasons. City Journal cites the FBI’s statistic that murders rose 27% in 2020, the highest increase in more than a 100 years. However, the City Journal notes the data from NCVS is not as reliable because of the COVID-19 pandemic. 

The City Journal claims the rise in violent crime is not random but rather is the result of policy-making and ignorance of the “broken windows” theory. According to Britannica, this theory suggests ignoring minor crimes will lead to more serious crimes, especially in an urban environment. 

Sessions backs that theory in his op-ed piece, too. 

“Tragically, they (Democrats) ignored the warnings of law-enforcement officials and abandoned policies shown to work, replacing them with naïveté and wishful thinking. The results are now clear for all to see,” Sessions wrote.

He argues the big cities, with the largest increases in crime, abandoned their police and cites an FBI statistic that arrests dropped 25% in 2020, coinciding with the 27% increase in murders. 

Portland homicides tripled from 2016 to 2020 and are on the rise. Sessions says Portland sees a homicide every four days on average. In Minneapolis and New York, slayings have almost doubled since 2019. Sessions blames “the left,” saying, “Woke policies make America more dangerous.” 

Reuters, meanwhile, is projecting that the rising crime rate gives Republicans an upper hand in the upcoming midterm election. 

A Reuters poll asked 4,415 U.S. adults across the country and found 39% of registered voters would choose a Republican to “solve crime” while 30% would choose a Democrat. 

"A lot of voters care about crime and a lot of voters care about immigration… Right now, those are winning issues for Republicans,” Republican strategist Alex Conant told Reuters.

Respondents cited inflation, the economy, immigration and crime as the top issues on the ballot.

The poll, conducted from Sept. 27 to Oct. 3, had a “credibility interval, a measure of precision, of between two and five percentage points.” 

Reuters notes some cities have seen murder rates fall slightly in the first half of 2022, but robberies and assaults are both up. An important demographic, women who live in suburban areas, said they favor Republicans on crime by eight points, according to the poll.