Studying Crime Trends: Introduction to the Special Issue

Abstract

The study of change over time in crime rates is as old as criminology itself. A fundamental question about crime rates is whether they are moving up or down. This special issue of the Journal of Contemporary Criminal Justice brings together recent research on trends in crime and related issues, such as arrests, imprisonment, terrorism, and reporting crimes to the police. These papers show that the study of crime trends is alive and well in criminology and point to innovative data sources, methods, and topics that deepen our understanding of how and why crime rates move up and down over time.

The study of change over time in crime rates is as old as criminology itself. A fundamental question about crime rates is whether they are moving up or down. This special issue of the Journal of Contemporary Criminal Justice (JCCJ) brings together recent research on trends in crime and related issues, such as arrests, imprisonment, terrorism, and reporting crimes to the police. David McDowall’s opening article considers the empirical properties of crime trends. McDowall argues that understanding these properties is essential for evaluating explanations of the change over time in crime rates. Research on homicide trends in the United States has largely relied on just two major data sources: the National Vital Statistics System and the FBI’s Uniform Crime Reports. The article by Ethan Rogers directs attention to the National Violent Death Reporting System (NVDRS). He argues that the NVDRS opens up productive new avenues of research on U.S. homicide trends.

Using a sample of several dozen U.S. cities, Kelsey Cundiff examines the relationship between trends in racial and ethnic income inequality and in homicide and other violent crimes. Her analysis reveals little to no relationship, although she concludes that inequalities in wealth, rather than income, might yield different results. Mass shootings in the United States remain rare, but they have generated a great deal of news coverage and public concern. The article by James Alan Fox addresses the uncertainties and confusion surrounding mass shootings in both public and scholarly discourse.

The following article by Philip J. Cook and Javier Lopez switches focus from crime to arrest trends. They document the substantial decline in arrests in Chicago and consider whether rising evidentiary standards for arrests may have contributed to this decline. Charis E. Kubrin and Bradley J. Bartos ask whether Covid-related releases from California jails led to crime increases and find no consistent relationship between releases and crime rates. Min Xie, Veyli Ortiz Solis, and Preeti Chauhan consider recent trends in reporting crime to the police in the United States. They find that reporting rates have decreased in recent years which, they argue, is related to a decline in trust in the police.

The next two articles place homicide trends in international context. Gary LaFree, Bo Jiang, and Yesenia Yanez find that worldwide trends in homicide and terrorist attacks share many underlying features in common while differing in other respects. Poverty and inequality, for example, are related to homicide trends but not to terrorism. Meghan L. Rogers asks whether upturns in homicide rates in the United States from 2014 to 2016 and 2019 to 2020 also occurred in other nations. She finds some evidence of common increases in the earlier period but no such evidence for 2019–2020.

The final article in this special issue returns to some of the empirical issues addressed in the first article, but in this case with an eye to forecasting future crime rates. Richard Rosenfeld and Mark Berg call for the revival of crime forecasting in criminology and illustrate their argument by forecasting violent and property crime rates in New York City over the next several years. Time will tell whether their forecasts are accurate and how their forecasting methods and model may have to be revised.

These papers show that the study of crime trends is alive and well in criminology and point to innovative data sources, methods, and topics that deepen our understanding of how and why crime rates move up and down over time. Our hope is that this JCCJ special issue sparks additional research on crime trends that will keep criminologists and other social scientists busy for many years to come.