Crime in America’s big cities is almost universally falling

By THE DATA TEAM

DURING the presidential debate on September 26th Donald Trump, the bombastic Republican nominee, was asked by the moderator how he might heal the divide between African-American communities and the police. “We need law and order”, he replied, “We have a situation where we have our inner cities, African-Americans, Hispanics, are living in hell because it′s so dangerous. You walk down the street, you get shot.”

At first glance Mr Trump could be forgiven for thinking the situation is dire. Fresh data released by the FBI on the same day as the debate show that America’s murder rate increased by 10% in 2015 compared with the previous year. The violent-crime rate was up by 3%. Despite this uptick, the longer-term trend is far rosier. The prevalence of murder has halved since the early 1990s and, with the exception of last year’s figures, violent crime remains at its lowest level since 1971. Property crime fell over that period, too.

Mr Trump’s concerns about inner cities also look overblown. Of the 15,696 murders last year, 4,054 were committed in one of America’s 30 largest cities. That tally represents 26% of the national total, down from 29% in 2005. And the change in the crime rate for those cities between 2004-05 and 2014-15—using two years of data makes comparisons more reliable—shows improvement across the board: murder, violent crime and property crime fell almost universally. America’s cities have indisputably been getting safer.

The outliers are few. In El Paso, Texas, murders are so rare that its 33% increase in the homicide rate constitutes a total of six additional deaths. In Chicago, the focus of many of Mr Trump’s assertions, the murder rate in 2014-15 was little changed from ten years ago. Although the number of killings in Chicago has indeed jumped by 50% year-on-year, it remains the exception rather than the rule.

As an urbanite, Mr Trump should be well aware of these gains. In his home city of New York, 2,245 people were murdered in 1990. Last year that figure was 352. But, as the debate showed, Mr Trump’s grip on the truth is tenuous at times. Hillary Clinton, his Democratic opponent, was on firmer ground when she acknowledged that “race remains a significant challenge in our country”. A staggering 27.6% of America’s murder victims in 2014 were African-American men aged between 17 and 33, a group that makes up just 1.7% of the population as a whole.

Correction (September 28th): An earlier version of this article said that 27.6% of America's murder victims last year were African-American men aged between 17 and 33. The figure refers to 2014 data rather than to 2015.