In his first 100 days in office, Donald Trump may have been inconsistent and incoherent on many of his campaign promises. But he’s been unwavering in his attacks on “inner city” crime, which his hand-picked Attorney General Jeff Sessions deceptively describes as “surging in American cities.”
Violent crime has indeed risen to concerning rates in Baltimore and Chicago—but those two cities alone are responsible for much of the rise that has occurred across the U.S. since 2015. As the Brennan Center for Justice reported this week, overall crime has fallen in the nation’s 30 largest cities to 2,857 incidents per 100,000 people from its peak of 5,856 incidents in 1991. Violent crime has dropped from 716 incidents per capita to 366, and murder from 9.8 killings per 100,000 to 5.3 in that same time period.
