Is Falling US Crime Rate Due To The Trump Effect, AKA The Yogi Effect?

News18

14 hours ago

Regardless of laws, when the public believes an administration won't go soft on crime — like in Uttar Pradesh — it often has a deterrent and positive effect.
The latest US crime figures highlight piquant parallels: serious offences are down at the same time that migration both illegal/legal have reduced too. According to the latest figures released by a non-partisan think tank Council on Criminal Justice, incidents of murder, gun assaults and carjackings actually fell during the first half of 2025 across 42 US cities, a trend that began in 2022. Does that mean Trump's often apoplectic pronouncement worked?
The highest profile violent crime in the US is mass shootings. According to the latest statistics quoted by Forbes, these are at a seven-year low now, down by a whopping 44 per cent in the first half of 2025 from the 12-year high of 342 in the same period of 2023. While the figure of 195 mass shootings till July 2 is chillingly high, it is actually 25 per cent less than the 262 reported in the same time period in 2024. Overall crime rates in big cities, however, are the bellwether.
Of course, the US has many more cities (around 4,000) but at least in the 42 cited by CCJ, homicides are 17 per cent lower so far in 2025, compared with the same period in 2024 in 30 cities. Only five cities saw a rise, ranging from 6% in Milwaukee to 39 per cent in Little Rock, both of which have Democratic Party mayors. The drop in violent crime is mainly because of an improved record in traditionally high crime cities like Baltimore and St Louis, both also run by Democrats.
But now, comparing violent offences from the first half of 2024 and 2025, not only have murders fallen by 17 per cent, but aggravated assaults were also down 10 per cent, gun assaults 21 per cent, sexual assaults 10 per cent, robberies 20 per cent and carjackings 24 per cent. But domestic violence cases rose by 3 per cent. Moreover, car thefts also plummeted 25 per cent, house burglaries by 19 per cent, non-residential burglaries 18 per cent, larceny 12 per cent, and even shoplifting reduced by 12 per cent in the first half of 2025.
So, could the improved numbers—at least in 42 large US cities be due to the crackdown on illegal migration or a more responsive policing and criminal justice system due to the change in the White House and consequently the stance of the federal government? Can Trump claim credit for this improvement in the law and order situation since he took over or is this the result of a long overdue autonomous recalibration of official US attitudes to crime?
Given Trump's penchant for hyperbole, he may just claim that as illegal migrants were behind most crimes in the US anyway, his categorical action against them since he took office has put brakes on these offences and hence there is a dramatic fall in numbers. As always there is a dearth of evidence to prove Trump wrong—or his opponents right, for that matter. The falling crime rates do speak for themselves, however. and he has a right to appropriate them.
Trump had posted on Truth Social post in late July that eliminating cash bail as a condition of pretrial release from jail has caused crime rates to rise in American cities that have enacted this reform. As usual his critics point out that there is no evidence for his claim but there is no proof that cashless bail has been beneficial either. So people will believe what they want, but much depends, again, on the vigilance of law enforcement to ensure compliance.
His post apparently was based on a 2022 report from Yolo County, California, about a temporary statewide cashless bail system instituted to prevent Covid-19 outbreaks in courts and jails. It found that out of 70.6 per cent of the 595 people released between April 2020 and May 2021 under cashless bail were arrested again, more than half of them repeatedly. But detractors point out that the re-imposition of the bail system did not have the opposite effect either.
Statistics may show falling rates, but mass shootings keep the public unsettled. Two days after a gunman entered a building in New York and shot dead four before killing himself, another man in little Tiptonville, Tennessee also killed four of a family and is on the run. Public records show he was jailed for armed robbery in 2014 and released last September. Two months later he was charged with attempted murder and drug crimes—but was out on bail.
Whether crime is related to rises in illegal immigration or not, the recent downturn in crime rates after Trump assumed office can have lessons for all nations. He has a habit of taking more credit than due but on the face of it, his reputation for being tough on crime and illegals appears to have had a salutary effect. In India, Uttar Pradesh, for instance, is usually in the news for bulldozers razing properties of criminal elements but crime rates there are down too.
This March, the UP government claimed in a statement that according to police records, robberies are down by 84.41 per cent compared to 2016, while loot cases have fallen by 77.43 per cent. Kidnapping, dowry-related murders and rapes have reduced too. The government credits this to a zero-tolerance policy and proactive law enforcement, backed by CCTV and technological aids. But many say it is because of the tough image of Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath.
Tough or lenient laws notwithstanding, wherever there is a public perception that any administration will not be soft on crime or any specific category of offenders, there is usually a salutary effect—as in UP. Trump could be the beneficiary of a coincidental decline in crime in the US just as he assumed office, but that seems a bit of a stretch. Record lows in illegal migration happening at the same time as a reduction in crime rates will be hard to explain away without the Trump factor.
The author is a freelance writer. Views expressed in the above piece are personal and solely those of the author. They do not necessarily reflect News18's views.
tags :
donald trump US crime Yogi Adityanath
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New Delhi, India, India
First Published:
August 04, 2025, 14:21 IST
News opinion Opinion | Is Falling US Crime Rate Due To The Trump Effect, AKA The Yogi Effect?
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