Could the COVID-19 pandemic be causing an increase in the national murder rate?

Besides the obvious effect on public health, the COVID-19 has had several other societal impacts. There has been the deleterious effect on the economy, of course, and there is evidence that the pandemic has lead to an increase in depression and other mental health issues. Now it seems that COVID-19 could be responsible – at least in part – for the nationwide rise in murder rates.

2020 was the deadliest year in United States history, with more than three million lives lost nationwide. That represented a 15 percent leap from 2019. Obviously, that dramatic increase was largely due to deaths related to COVID.

However, COVID deaths do not account for all of those deaths. And in addition to an increase in the overall death toll in the nation due to COVID, there was also an increase in murder deaths from 2019 to 2020.

According to A&E Real Crime, in 2020, the homicide rate skyrocketed across the country by an average of 32 percent in the pandemic’s first six months. Break the numbers down further, and the escalation of violence is even more dramatic.

“In March, April, and May [2020], the homicide numbers actually went down quite a bit,” Christopher Herrmann, an assistant professor of law & police science at John Jay College of Criminal Justice, tells A&E Real Crime. “But once society started to reopen, we saw an explosion—double and sometimes triple-digit increases in homicide. That’s unheard of.”

Is COVID somehow responsible for the dramatic rise in the murder rate?

You would think that with the country shuttered, and more people cooped up at home, that murder rates would drop. However, experts say that the rise is indicative of more people being killed by people they know rather than random acts of violence by strangers.

“Domestic violence is really one of the things that changed a lot for us last year,” says Sergeant Mercedes Fortune of the Phoenix Police Department. In Phoenix, homicides surged by 44 percent between 2019 and 2020. But the domestic violence homicide spike was even starker, with the citywide domestic violence homicide rate jumping 139 percent from 2019 to 2020.

Lieutenant Patrick Pajot of the Milwaukee Police Department Homicide Unit has likewise seen an increase in violence between people with close relationships: those who live in a home together or are romantic partners.

“A lot of [my cases] are people who know each other,” Pajot tells A&E Real Crime. “There’s a lot of mental health issues going on in the world right now that is contributing to the increase in violence.”

Other Ways COVID-19 Could Be Contributing to More Violent Crime

Many criminologists also believe that the financial hardships caused by the pandemic have also contributed to the increased murder rate nationwide. There were more than three times as many Americans unemployed in May 2020 as there were in May 2019. Using poverty as a guiding metric, a spike in homicide was inevitable.

In addition to the increased pressure of being cooped up in quarantine and of facing job loss or other economic travails, school closures could also have something to do with the increase in violent crime and murder since the pandemic hit.

Crime seasonality has been a long-observed phenomenon by law enforcement. Cops know summer often brings an uptick of criminality nationwide. Much of that warm-weather violence can be attributed to young people, who find more opportunity for conflict when they’re not confined to the classroom.

With physical schools closed for the better part of 2020, there’s evidence that youth mischief, which usually wreaks havoc in the summer, was felt year-round.

“There’s definitely an uptick since they’ve been out of school. I’ve seen more juveniles getting arrested, and also more juveniles being the victims of crimes,” says Lt. Pajot, adding that juvenile auto theft and gun violence are likewise up.

Another contributing factor the experts say is the “apocalyptic fear” that has led to a huge increase in gun sales since the start of the pandemic. More guns on the streets inevitably means more gun violence. A lot of those gun purchases were by first-time gun owners—as many as 8.4 million purchases in 2020, according to one estimate, or 40 percent of new guns in a year of record sales.