DeSantis vs. Newsom on Violent Crime – WSJ

The Federal Bureau of Investigation this week released national statistics on 2022, and the headline was that violent crime fell 1.7%, dipping back to the same level as before the pandemic. But it s a big country, and those averages don t tell the whole story. In California violent crime is still up 13% since 2019. In Florida it s down 31.5%. The rate of violent crime in Mr. Newsom s state last year, 499.5 per 100,000 people, was nearly double that in Mr. DeSantis s domain, 258.9 per 100,000.

The nearby chart shows a longer view. Amid the Covid lockdowns, the George Floyd protests, and a public backlash toward law enforcement, violence shot up in Florida, as in many other states, though California stayed on a higher plateau. But the real difference is what happened next: in 2021 and 2022, violent crime plunged in Florida while surging in California. One caveat is that the FBI in 2021 changed its methodology for calculating crime rates, but this affected all states, so it isn t responsible for the obvious divergence.

via www.wsj.com