New York is statistically safer relative to its population than other places in Republican and swing states, such as Jefferson County, Ark.; Robeson County, N.C.; Montgomery County, Ala.; and Bibb County, Georgia, according to Jeffrey Butts, director of the Research and Evaluation Center at the John Jay College of Criminal Justice.
After a string of shootings near schools, the police and the city are grappling with how to deal with an uptick in incidents both perpetrated by and victimizing young people.
“Hipotéticamente, los desafíos de enjuiciamiento introducidos por la ley estatal podrían haber contribuido al aumento de los delitos violentos, pero ese efecto no es evidente en los datos policiales de la ciudad de Nueva York”, agregó el reporte.
Youth aged 17 and younger still account for a small portion of violent crime in New York City. As the incidence of interpersonal violence shifted in recent years, the changes among people under age 18 generally mirrored the scale and direction of trends among adults aged 18 and older.
Jeff Butts, a sociologist at John Jay College who led a study in New York, told me that interrupter programs are fundamentally difficult to assess — it’s hard to know whether a decline in shootings in an area is due to the interrupters or to all the other factors at play.
The annual number of people under 18 shot across the city has more than doubled since 2019, and the number of kids committing shootings is also on the rise. “Do you have an indication why it’s happening?” McNicholas asked Professor Jeffrey Butts, with the John Jay College of Criminal Justice.
