The public's beliefs about crime prevention are often misguided.

The statistics on the surge in crime during the post-COVID years may surprise you.

The attribution bias error helps explain misjudgments about crime and punishment.

Given the tone of network and cable news coverage, it might come as a surprise to learn that crime in the United States—including violent crime—has declined in the post-COVID era. According to FBI statistics, violent crime in 2024 fell to its lowest level since 1969. The picture appeared even more encouraging in 2025, when the nation’s murder rate dropped by roughly 20%, accompanied by declines across other major crime categories.

These developments are particularly striking given another trend of the past several years: since 2019 and the protests following George Floyd’s death, police departments nationwide have, on average, shrunk by roughly 6%.

Possible Explanations for Crime Decline

Researchers have proposed several explanations for this decline. The most persuasive—widely discussed among legal scholars and policy analysts—is that the reduction in crime rates significantly resulted from the massive post-pandemic investments in local governments made through the Biden administration’s American Rescue Plan Act, infrastructure funding, and other community-based programs. These federal investments in prevention, services, and local infrastructure appear to have yielded significant social dividends.

Consider Baltimore, for instance. City officials used federal funding to launch an outreach initiative targeting a group of young men believed to be trapped in cycles of retaliatory violence and, therefore, at high risk of committing serious crimes. About 400 letters were sent to individuals identified through data analysis as part of this high-risk group; 360 responded and were offered various forms of support, guidance, and assistance.

In addition, Baltimore invested in a series of neighborhood programs aimed at struggling communities: building public pools, expanding summer recreation opportunities, and creating job programs for teenagers. These initiatives were guided by research suggesting that youth unemployment among teenage boys, and prolonged school closures during the pandemic were key drivers of rising crime during the COVID period. A central goal was to reduce the number of young men left idle on city streets without work, structure, or healthy outlets.

The results were dramatic. Baltimore’s homicide rate has fallen by roughly 60% and now sits at a 50-year low. And significantly, this improvement occurred despite a reduced police presence.

Baltimore is not alone. Similar patterns have emerged across the country. In Allentown, Pennsylvania, for example, homicides dropped to their lowest level in 40 years. Local officials attribute the decline to expanded job programs, improved paramedic response times, and conflict-resolution strategies implemented by community-based violence-interruption organizations.

Despite such evidence, skepticism remains widespread. Many observers doubt that what are often labeled “soft” community interventions could outperform traditional “tough-on-crime” approaches. Historically, public opinion has favored more punitive responses—greater police presence, stricter enforcement, and harsher sentencing.

Changing Perspectives on Crime and Prevention

Still, over the past two decades, particularly since the early 2000s, researchers and policymakers have increasingly recognized that criminal behavior often emerges from a complex web of social and environmental factors. As a result, prevention and rehabilitation have gained greater attention in criminal justice circles, and with the public. Even so, especially in the aftermath of the pandemic, public belief in harsher punishments and expanded policing remains strong.

Part of the explanation lies in how we intuitively think about crime. Police presence, arrests, and prison sentences are visible demonstrations of society’s investment in public safety. They appear to represent common-sense deterrence. Community programs, by contrast—violence-prevention initiatives, neighborhood investment, youth employment, and social services—are less visible and less intuitively connected to crime reduction.

One answer may lie in a well-documented phenomenon in psychology known as the fundamental attribution error. This cognitive bias leads people to overemphasize personal traits—personality, or moral failings—when explaining behavior, while underestimating and devaluing the role of situational or environmental influences.

In everyday thinking, we tend to see individuals as autonomous actors, largely independent of their surrounding social context. Empirical research in psychology science, however, has repeatedly shown that behavior is often strongly shaped by external circumstances.

Of course, adults remain responsible for their actions. But it is equally true that behavior emerges from a complex interaction between personal agency and environmental conditions. Our intuitions, however, often lead us to focus almost exclusively on the individual. When we do so, our moral judgments lack nuance, are less accurate, and hew toward doctrinairism.

Under the influence of this attribution error, it becomes difficult to see how a community-based violence-prevention program—such as the one implemented in Baltimore—could meaningfully alter the behavior of high-risk teenagers. Yet when we recognize the powerful role that social context plays in shaping opportunity, chronic stress, and decision-making, the effectiveness of such programs becomes easier to understand.

Correcting this cognitive bias is particularly important when evaluating individuals whose backgrounds differ sharply from our own. It is easier to appreciate the full range of influences shaping the behavior of someone with whom we hold a close identification, and who shares our social environment, than with a stranger whose life experiences may feel unfamiliar or distant.

The Role of a Forensic Psychologist

As a forensic psychologist, my professional task often involves examining, precisely, the psychology and personality of an inmate. In criminal evaluations, I assess an individual’s psychological functioning and determine its relationship to the alleged criminal behavior—for example, whether the person understood that his actions were legally and morally wrong.

Such assessments require more than a simple evaluation of personality, however. They involve comprehensive explorations that include collateral interviews with family members and others in the individual’s environment,

to understand the psychosocial forces that may have shaped both the individual and his behavior.

In my next post, I will describe two cases involving men who committed similar violent crimes. In one case, both personality traits and social context played critical roles. In the other, personality functioning itself proved to be the dominant factor.

The Cities That Saw Historic Murder Lows in 2025: https://jasher.substack.com/p/the-cities-that-saw-historic-murder

The Good News About Crime: https://www.theatlantic.com/newsletters/archive/2025/05/crime-rate-drop…

Analyzing the Impact of Baltimore’s Group Violence Reduction Strategy in the Western District: https://crimejusticelab.org/publication/analyzing-the-impact-of-baltimo…

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