NYC Is Less Homicidal Than You’d Think

It’s not at all widely understood in the rest of the country how low the crime rate in New York City has been driven since the five consecutive elections from 1993-2009 in which the Democratic nominee for mayor was defeated by the law and order candidates Rudy Giuliani and Michael Bloomberg. Looking at CDC homicide victimization data for 2020-2022, it’s striking how low the rate of blacks being killed is in New York City, even during the racial reckoning, compared to much of the country.

In four of the five boroughs of New York City, African-Americans die less often by homicide in this decade than even in Boston. The overall black homicide rate in NYC, 16, is less than one-fourth of the black homicide rate in Cook County, IL, 66. The black homicide victimization rate of 20 in the Bronx is particularly impressive

It’s perfectly reasonable to think of New York as a nice place to visit but you wouldn’t want to live there. But it’s ignorant to ignore the enormous progress that New York has made in imposing law and order over the last three decades just because you wouldn’t want to live there.