海角大神

After police discovered Huong Nguyen鈥檚 body in a car trunk earlier this year in New Orleans East, suspicion fell on her brother.

After being spotted on a surveillance camera walking away from his sister鈥檚 car the night she disappeared, Hoa Nguyen has been charged and, if convicted, could spend the rest of his life in prison.

For all its singular tragedy, Ms. Nguyen鈥檚 death is part of a tide of gun violence rising from New Orleans to Lubbock, Texas. Coming off a record low in homicides in 2019, New Orleans saw its rate spike by over 50% this year. It is not, by any stretch, an outlier. Lubbock doubled its murder rate, so far, from 2019 to 2020.

To be sure, overall crime has dropped dramatically in the U.S. since the late 1990s. But the 2020 homicide rate 鈥渘ow exceeds the rates of the late 鈥�80s and 鈥�90s, before the big drop,鈥� says Richard Rosenfeld, lead author of 鈥淧andemic, Social Unrest and Crime in US Cities,鈥� a new report. 鈥淭his round of crime increase is unprecedented.鈥�

This year, 51 cities of various sizes across the U.S. saw an average 35% jump in murder from 2019 to 2020 鈥� a 鈥渉istorically awful鈥� development, says New Orleans-based crime analyst Jeff Asher, who crunched those numbers. A different study looking at 21 U.S. cities found 610 more murders in those jurisdictions this year over last year. In those cities, gun assaults increased by 10% over 2019.

Those who want to read partisanship into the trend will be disappointed. Like the pandemic, murder doesn鈥檛 discriminate by political affiliation: Cities with Democratic mayors are seeing the same increases in lethal violence as cities with Republican mayors.

鈥淲e鈥檙e seeing it pretty much across the board in places like New Orleans ... but also in smaller places like Omaha, Nebraska, that don鈥檛 typically have a lot of murders,鈥� says Mr. Asher. 鈥淚t鈥檚 really not something that鈥檚 got a lot of easy explanations.鈥�

Calls for service and arrests in cities like New Orleans have plummeted in a pandemic year, though underreporting could be a factor in those drops.

One nonviolent crime that鈥檚 rising is shoplifting. An estimated 54 million Americans are struggling with hunger this year, a nearly 50% rise since 2019. High joblessness, the end of federal pandemic aid, and a relative lack of a safety net in the U.S. are leading to high rates of despair, experts say.

The pandemic鈥檚 grating effects and the electorate鈥檚 rebuke of a norm-busting presidency have dominated the national psyche. As Americans have bought guns at record rates, some research suggests a causal increase in those weapons being used against others.

The biggest spike in gun violence, notes Mr. Rosenfeld, came in the weeks of social unrest in late spring and summer after George Floyd was killed by police in Minneapolis.

What鈥檚 more, there is evidence that the bulk of the violence is occurring in poorer working class neighborhoods, such as New Orleans East, that have been hit hardest by the pandemic鈥檚 economic downturn and the backlash to calls for police reform.

Police activity 鈥� or lack of it 鈥� 鈥渋s more likely a symptom of this concept of police legitimacy, where police pull back because people are upset and questioning their legitimacy,鈥� says Mr. Asher in New Orleans. 鈥淎nd when people don鈥檛 believe that the police are going to be a natural arbiter, perhaps they鈥檙e more likely to take things into their hands 鈥� more retribution killings. But ... I鈥檓 skeptical that the explanation for why murder is going up everywhere is because police have somehow changed.鈥�

After all, 鈥渕urder is often mundane,鈥� says Kim Davies, a researcher at Augusta University, usually involving people known to one another, often over insults or resentments fueled by alcohol and other drugs, the use of which have risen during the pandemic.

Interpersonal toxicity, she says, can be exacerbated by more foundational shifts 鈥� such as once in a century-level health crisis and a bitter election in which a peaceful transition has come under threat.

鈥淲hen society鈥檚 norms and values are in flux or have disappeared or disintegrated, people don鈥檛 know how to behave,鈥� says Ms. Davies, a sociologist who studies the dynamics of violent crime. 鈥淚t鈥檚 a kind of normlessness that gives way to 鈥楴othing matters.鈥� [The murder increase] is similar to spikes in suicide when we鈥檝e had economic depressions. But nothing like this has ever happened.鈥�

That unique dynamic also gives researchers hope that 2020 becomes a statistical anomaly.

鈥淭he strategy to reduce violence is, first and foremost, to subdue the pandemic,鈥� says Mr. Rosenfeld, a professor emeritus and criminologist at the University of Missouri-St. Louis. 鈥淭he second is to redouble smart policing activity. And the third is to take the essence of police reform seriously, because if police aren鈥檛 able to repair the relationship with communities in the cities that have experienced this uptick, I don鈥檛 think any crime reductions that might occur from more policing are going to last long.鈥�