by Grace Hauck
USA Today
January 26, 2023

It’s widely known the U.S. doesn’t have reliable federal data on crime trends. But a new report out Thursday aims to provide a snapshot of what happened in dozens of the nation’s largest cities last year.

Homicides and gun assaults in those cities fell in 2022. At the same time, robberies and property crimes rose, and motor vehicle thefts and carjackings continued to trend upward, according to the report from the Council on Criminal Justice.

… Even within municipalities, crime trends differ neighborhood by neighborhood – and sometimes block by block. That’s part of why it’s hard to conclusively say what’s driving apparent national trends.

Crime is a “complicated social phenomenon” with many causes, said Jeffrey Butts, director of the Research and Evaluation Center at John Jay College of Criminal Justice in New York City. “Easy answers are popular, but they are never accurate,” he said.

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