From Vox: 2020’s historic surge in murders, explained

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That we don’t yet know what caused 2020’s murder surge isn’t surprising. To this day, there’s still a lot of debate and disagreement among experts about what caused the massive decrease that halved overall crime and violent crime rates in America since the 1990s — known as the Great Crime Decline. There are theories based on the research, ranging from changes in policing to less lead exposure to the rise of video games, but there’s not a single set of explanations that the entire field of criminology has embraced.

We also don’t know if 2020’s increases represent a permanent shift in murder or violent crime trends. According to Asher, so far murders were up in the first three months of 2021 compared to the same period last year in a sample of 37 US cities. But that data is too early to draw sweeping conclusions from. And there’s reason to believe, between Covid-19 and last year’s large protests about policing, the trends could be driven by temporary factors.

Regardless of cause, and permanent or not, experts also argue that there are things the US could do right now to reduce murders, from urban renewal initiatives to gun control laws to changes in policing. Even if there hadn’t been an increase in 2020, the proposed solutions could have helped make the US even safer than it was in the past few years.