NYT admits homicides in 2020 likely topped 20,000, most since 1995, but can’t figure out why

It was one of the greatest public policy achievements of our lifetimes — the generation-long decline in violent crime. Since the early 1990s, violent crime and murder have dropped by two-thirds, with almost every subsequent year showing a new drop in crime levels from the previous year. Many people thought this was a permanent and irreversible trend and even forgot what it was like to live with ubiquitous violent crime. Well, new data presented by the FBI shows that the entire generation-long gain against murder has been wiped out, with no end in sight.

For the past seven years, I have been a lone voice fighting the trend of de-incarceration promoted by both parties and the Koch brothers. Those who forgot that we achieved the drop in crime by locking up career criminals used the low crime levels to justify "criminal justice reform," aka jailbreak. Well, now those policies have come home to roost.

Although the FBI doesn't release its full uniform crime reporting until later in the year, on Monday, the agency released preliminary statistics showing a 25% increase in murder reporting last year from an incomplete set of major city data reporting. What does that mean? It's not just a reversal of the downward trend, but according to the New York Times, "A 25 percent increase in murder in 2020 would mean the United States surpassed 20,000 murders in a year for the first time since 1995."