Professor John Pfaff was quoted in a New York Times article examining the rising homicide rate in America and expert opinions on what measures can be taken to combat it.
In 2020, murders in the United States surged by almost 30 percent, the largest one-year increase since the start of national record-keeping in 1960. As the murder rate continued to climb in 2021, albeit at a slower pace, the share of Americans dying of homicide hit its highest level since 1996, according to preliminary estimates from the crime analyst Jeff Asher.
Even before the recent spike, Americans were being murdered at much higher rates than residents of similarly rich countries. Why are so many Americans killing each other, and what can be done to reverse the trend? Here’s what people are saying.
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As John Pfaff, a criminologist and professor at Fordham Law School, argues, social spending solutions can be more cost effective than policing, an important consideration for states with limited budgets. One study found that $1 spent on medical drug treatment, for example, reduced the social costs of crime on average by about $4. (That figure does not include the health benefits of drug treatment, which are considerable on their own: As Pfaff points out, far more Americans — nearly five times as many — are dying of overdoses than of murder.)