Why Is Murder Spiking? And Can Cities Address It Without Police?

<p>In 2020 the United States experienced a nearly 30 percent rise in homicides from 2019. That’s the single biggest one-year increase since we started keeping national records in 1960. And violence has continued to rise well into 2021.</p><p>To deny or downplay the seriousness of this spike is neither morally justified nor politically wise. Violence takes lives, traumatizes children, instills fear, destroys community life and entrenches racial and economic inequality. Public opinion responds in kind: <a href="https://fivethirtyeight.com/features/americans-are-worried-about-crime-but-that-doesnt-mean-theyre-blaming-democrats/" target="_blank">Polling</a> <a href="https://www.rasmussenreports.com/public_content/politics/partner_surveys/70_of_voters_say_crime_is_out_of_control" target="_blank">indicates</a> that Americans are increasingly worried about violent crime. And if November’s state and local campaigns were any indication, public safety will be a defining issue in upcoming election cycles.</p><p>Liberals and progressives need an answer to the question of how to handle rising violence. But that answer doesn’t need to involve a return to the punitive, tough-on-crime approach that has devastated Black and brown communities for decades and led millions of people to take to the streets in protest last summer.</p><p>Patrick Sharkey is a sociologist at Princeton University and the author of <a href="https://wwnorton.com/books/Uneasy-Peace/" target="_blank">“Uneasy Peace: The Great Crime Decline, the Renewal of City Life, and the Next War on Violence.”</a> The central claim of his work is this: Police are effective at reducing violence, but they aren’t the only actors capable of doing so.</p><p>Sharkey’s research has shown that the rise of local nonprofits was an important contributor to the crime decline of the 1990s and 2000s. He has studied community-based models for addressing violence in places as varied as rural Australia and New York City. In recent years, his findings have been reinforced by <a href="https:/