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Are you sure? Even last year homicide seems to have fallen again and certainly in PA's large cities we are now at a near 10 year low, and much much lower than we were in the 80's.
In Philly the homicide rate peaked at over 44 (per 100,000) in the mid 1980's. Dropping to about 16 in the early 2010's, it peaked again at about 35 in 2021 but has dropped again down to just over 17 for 2024. And so far in the year it is about 35% down on last year, which means we might actually get the lowest homicide rate in the last 50 years in 2025. Pittsburgh's numbers seem to following the same rough trajectory.
For the whole US the peak appears to have been 1991 with 10.7 before reaching a low of 4.7 in 2014 before increasing to 7.75 in 2021, and decreasing to 5.2 for 2024. So similar trends across the nation. Estimates for the 1950s and 60s put the figure around 5 then as well. So 2024 was one of the least violent (looking at homicides) years in modern US history.
The evidence seems to suggest that not only can we actually maintain a level of violent criminality much higher than we are currently at (not that I am saying that is a good idea of course!) that our current rate is not actually all that high (historically) as the Covid era increase has largely now vanished.
Just for comparison, my homeland had a homicide rate about 31 per 100,000 at the peak of the Troubles in the early 70's but had decreased to about 0.8 before Covid. It spiked up to around 1.3 during Covid and dropped back to 0.7 in 2024.
I think the evidence shows that public order can in fact be maintained with significantly higher levels of criminality and lower levels of punishing bad people. I am not advocating for that being a good idea just to be clear!
Just pointing out we do have a pretty high tolerance all in all, and that if current means whatever punishing we are doing in 2024 and so far in 2025 it seems to be working pretty well.
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