Despite fewer activities outside the closure of businesses and schools, killings have increased drastically in 2020.
The increase is due to a number of factors, criminology experts told CNN. The pandemic closed schools and businesses, leading to unemployment. This meant that children and unemployed adults got stuck at home, leading to noticeable stress and anxiety levels, especially in low-income homes.
The virus also changed the way police officers do their jobs due to illness and social distance, which in turn led to fewer officers being on the streets in areas that needed the most crime prevention.
“It’s almost as if these communities just had their heads above water, and then Covid and they just sank,” Bocanegra said.
Apart from murders, other violent crimes – serious and gun attacks – also increased in the spring. Severe assaults increased by 15% in the summer and by 13% in the autumn, while gun attacks increased by 15% and 16%, according to the report.
No experts say there is no link between summer protests and murder
As murders increased, violent crimes – burglaries, rentals and drug offenses – decreased as many businesses closed and there were fewer people on the streets, the report said.
However, the report states that the link, if any, between the social unrest and increased violence remains uncertain.
Richard Rosenfeld, criminologist at the University of Missouri-St. Louis, told CNN the same neighborhoods are that the witnesses of police violence are the same as where the crime is recorded. The communities have never had a strong or positive relationship with the police, and this leads to people taking legal matters into their own hands, he said.
“We have two forces at work. We have the pandemic and social unrest surrounding police violence. The combination of the two main factors forms a deadly combination. This explains the sudden increase and timing of the increase and the magnitude of the increase ( in murders), ”Rosenfeld said.
What is missing in the assumption linking the protests and the murder to the head is ‘good evidence’, Rosenfeld said.
In other words, protesters do not commit the crimes, he said.
Bocanegra, Chicago’s program director, told CNN there were protest rallies in the suburbs, but there was no increase in killings in the areas.
“Those who perpetrated the violence struggled even before the Covid,” he said.
The government must approach violence like Covid, experts say
The pandemic has shed new light on how to combat increasing violence in cities, experts told CNN.
First, the coordination of local, state and federal governments to mitigate the spread of the virus has not been seen before in the US – and criminal justice experts believe the same approach should be taken to violence.
“Violence is a symptom of the unrest and inequalities we have seen in our communities for decades. We are not going to change it overnight, we need to estimate a plan of 10 to 20 years,” Bocanegra said. “Unless we can think of future generations … we will continue these conversations in 20 to 30 years.”
Jens Ludwig, who runs the Crime Lab of the University of Chicago, told CNN that information about violence and mental health for people between the ages of 18 and 24 goes hand in hand.
“So, if you look at the problem of violent violence. It’s usually concentrated among young people, say 18 to 24. If you look at the CDC data on mental health … people show 18 to 24 signs of anxiety, depression, increased increase in drug use in response to the pandemic and to try to deal with the pandemic, ”he said.
Bocanegra said it was hopeful that the country and its city of Chicago would be able to learn and apply the lessons of Covid-19 to gun violence. He told CNN he did wonder why there had not been such a reaction in the past.
“Is it because Covid did not discriminate on the basis of gender, creed or class? Or is it because most gun problems affect black and colored people and people with mental health?” he said. “Who determines which lives are worth more than others?”
In 2021, Rosenfeld said that previous years would lead in the coming months. In 2015, there was an 11% increase in homicides nationwide after the Ferguson protests that spilled over into 2016.
“We may take an increase in murders next year,” he said.
CNN’s Priya Krishnakumar, Peter Nickeas and Adrienne Broaddus contributed to this report.