Researchers at New York’s John Jay College of Criminal Justice found that between 2010 and 2020, taxpayers shelled out at least $350 million to care for survivors of gun violence. The report also says taxpayers are paying more than 70% of hospital costs, with inpatient stays for injuries averaging eight days in the study.
While youth violence remains a concern, data on most crimes seem to have reached a plateau, though it’s too early to spot any clear trends. Academics noted that stable crime rates aren’t unusual after a period of decline, and cautioned that yearly numbers rarely point directly to the success or failure of city initiatives.
My contributions to a discussion at Yale Law School stressed the need to build community violence prevention with credible evidence rather than progressive rhetoric.
“Crime is constantly fluctuating,” said Dr. Jeffrey Butts, a research professor at John Jay College of Criminal Justice, in a recent phone interview. “The numbers go up and they go down,” he said, and looking at short-term changes doesn’t reflect meaningful trends. “You never understand the history of something until you can look at it with a little bit of distance.”
“We can’t get to the point where we think this level of violence is normal and just grow to accept it. We have to continue to try to push down the numbers.”
Jeffrey Butts, a professor at John Jay College of Criminal Justice who has researched the crisis management system, said the city faces the difficult job of scaling up the program without losing its grass-roots bonafides.
