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By David Kennedy
Mr. Kennedy is a professor of criminal justice at John Jay College.
America is slogging through another of its counterproductive debates about violent crime, occasioned by President Trump’s deployment of the National Guard to patrol the streets of Washington and his threat to send the Guard into Chicago and elsewhere.
Many on the left say Mr. Trump is just stoking a moral panic, and they point to recent decreases in violent crime in Washington and other major cities: In Oakland, Calif., homicides were down 32 percent last year and dropped 21 percent in the first half of this year, with a 29 percent decrease in violent crime overall. Philadelphia is on pace this year to have the fewest homicides it has had since 1966. In 2025, Baltimore has had the fewest homicides it has seen in the first half of a year in 50 years.
