 | This article needs to be updated.(August 2016) |
In 2012, there were 451,142 crimes reported in the U.S. state of New York, including 686 murders. In 2014, 409,386 crimes were reported in the state, including 616 murders. This number further decreased in 2019, in which 335,736 crimes were reported, with 558 cases of murder. Throughout 2010-2019, violent crime dropped by 8.0%, and property crime dropped by -29.0%. [1]
In 2000 The New York Times reported that there were at least 30 street gangs operating in Yonkers. Mexican immigrants have contributed to the rise of Mexican gangs in Yonkers. The largest Mexican gangs operating in Yonkers in 2000 were Chicano Nation, Aztec Pride, Vatos Locos and 13 Locos. A district attorney for Westchester County attributed the high levels of gang activity to strict law enforcement practices within the city limits of New York City. Gang units collected intelligence on gangs by photographing gang tags and passing the data on to graffiti cleanup crews. [2]
22 gang members were charged with narcotics and firearms offenses in 2012 in three federal indictments in the United States District Court for the Southern District of New York. United States v. Mark David et al charged the gang with intent to distribute crack cocaine and marijuana, and firearms charges related to that offense. [3] [4] In 2016 the United States Department of Justice announced that Da'quan Johnson had been sentenced to 30 years for murder, racketeering and narcotics crimes that he committed as a member of street gang based in Yonkers. [5]
Gang violence was the source of over half the shootings in Yonkers in 2020. Shootings were up 60% in 2020 compared with the previous year, and gang related shootings were up 30%. [6] Mayor Mike Spano and the Yonkers Police Department announced that the rise of gang violence would be met with increased surveillance, law enforcement and collaboration with federal officials. [7]
Crime rates in New York City spiked over the post-war period as the city experienced white flight. [8] The highest crime totals were recorded in the late 1980s and early 1990s as the crack epidemic surged, [9] [10] and then dropped through the 1990s and 2000s. [11]
During the 1990s, the New York City Police Department (NYPD) adopted CompStat, broken windows policing, and other strategies in a major effort to reduce crime. The city's dramatic drop in crime has been variously attributed to a number of factors, including the end of the crack epidemic, the increased incarceration rate, [9] [10] gentrification, an aging population, and the decline of lead poisoning in children. [12]
The boroughs of Queens and Staten Island have historically had lower crime rates compared to Brooklyn, The Bronx and Manhattan. Since 1985, the Bronx has consistently had the highest murder and violent crime rate among the five boroughs. [13]
Since 2017, murders in the city have increased bucking the trend. Murders in New York City surged in 2020 by 47% to 468 from 319 the year prior, one of the most significant increases in the city's history, but still lower than any year between 1960 and 2011. [14] There were 488 murders in 2021, the highest total since 2011.
In 2008, the state of New York had 514 state and local law enforcement agencies. [15] Those agencies employed a total of 95,105 staff. [15] Of the total staff, 66,472 were sworn officers (defined as those with general arrest powers). [15]
In 2008, New York had 341 police officers per 100,000 residents. [15]
Capital punishment is not applied in this state., [16] but in the past it was. The last execution took place in 1963, when Eddie Mays was electrocuted at Sing Sing Prison. The state was the first to adopt the electric chair as a method of execution, which replaced hanging. Following the U.S. Supreme Court's ruling declaring existing capital punishment statutes unconstitutional in Furman v. Georgia (1972), New York was without a death penalty until 1995, when then-Governor George Pataki signed a new statute into law, which provided for execution by lethal injection. In June 2004, the state's highest court ruled in People v. LaValle that the state's death penalty statute violated the state constitution, [17]
New York has one of the highest rates of human trafficking in the country, partially due to its large immigrant population and status as a major port of entry. According to a 2011 Department of State report, New York, together with California, Texas, and Oklahoma, has the largest concentrations of survivors of human trafficking. [18]
Homicide is an act in which a human, causes the death of another human. A homicide requires only a volitional act or an omission that causes the death of another, and thus a homicide may result from accidental, reckless, or negligent acts even if there is no intent to cause harm. Homicides can be divided into many overlapping legal categories, such as murder, manslaughter, justifiable homicide, assassination, killing in war, euthanasia, and capital punishment, depending on the circumstances of the death. These different types of homicides are often treated very differently in human societies; some are considered crimes, while others are permitted or even ordered by the legal system.
Crime in Canada is generally considered low overall. Under the Canadian constitution, the power to establish criminal law and rules of investigation is vested in the federal Parliament. The provinces share responsibility for law enforcement, and while the power to prosecute criminal offences is assigned to the federal government, responsibility for prosecutions is delegated to the provinces for most types of criminal offences. Laws and sentencing guidelines are uniform throughout the country, but provinces vary in their level of enforcement.
The Almighty Latin King and Queen Nation is one of the largest Caribbean and Latino street and prison gangs worldwide. The gang was founded by Puerto Ricans in Chicago, Illinois, in 1954.
Project Exile is a federal program started in Richmond, Virginia, in 1997. Project Exile shifted the prosecution of illegal technical gun possession offenses to federal court, where they carried a mandatory minimum sentence of five years in federal prison under the federal Gun Control Act of 1968, rather than in state court. Note that federal law provides for a penalty of ten years in federal prison for being a "prohibited person", i.e., a convicted felon in possession of a firearm, as well as for falsifying information in order to obtain one, or furnishing a gun to a convicted felon.
Crime is one of the most urgent concerns facing Mexico, as Mexican drug trafficking rings play a major role in the flow of cocaine, methamphetamine, fentanyl, heroin, and marijuana transiting between Latin America and the United States. Drug trafficking has led to corruption, which has had a deleterious effect on Mexico's Federal Representative Republic. Drug trafficking and organized crime have been a major source of violent crime. Drug cartels and gangs have also branched out to conduct alternative illegal activities for profit, including sex trafficking in Mexico. Some of the most increasingly violent states in Mexico in 2020 included Guanajuato, Zacatecas, Michoacán, Jalisco, and Querétaro. Some of the world's most violent cities are reportedly within the state of Guanajuato with extortion from criminal groups now being commonplace. The state of Zacatecas is said to be valuable to multiple organized crime groups for drug trafficking, specifically methamphetamine to the United States. As of 2021, Michoacán is experiencing increased instances of extortion and kidnapping due to a growing presence and escalation in the armed conflicts between CJNG and Cárteles Unidos on regions bordering the neighboring state of Jalisco. CJNG is also currently battling the Los Chapitos faction of the Sinaloa Cartel in the North Mexican region of Sonora.
Crime has been recorded in the United States since its founding and has fluctuated significantly over time. Most available data underestimate crime before the 1930s, giving the false impression that crime was low in the early 1900s and had a sharp rise after. Instead, violent crime during the colonial period was likely three times higher than the highest modern rates in the data we have, and crime had been on the decline since colonial times. Within the better data for crime reporting and recording available starting in the 1930s, crime reached its broad, bulging modern peak between the 1970s and early 1990s. After 1992, crime rates have generally trended downwards each year, with the exceptions of a slight increase in property crimes in 2001 and increases in violent crimes in 2005–2006, 2014–2016 and 2020–2021.
The East Harlem Purple Gang was a gang and organized crime group in New York City consisting of Italian-American hit-men and heroin dealers who were semi-independent from the Italian-American Mafia and, according to federal prosecutors, dominated heroin distribution in East Harlem, Italian Harlem, and the Bronx during the 1970s and early 1980s. Though mostly independent of the Mafia and not an official Mafia crew, the gang was originally affiliated with and worked with the Lucchese crime family and later with the Bonanno crime family and Genovese crime family. It developed its "closest ties" with the Genovese family, and its remnants or former members became part of the Genovese family's 116th Street Crew.
Crime in Chicago has been tracked by the Chicago Police Department's Bureau of Records since the beginning of the 20th century. The city's overall crime rate, especially the violent crime rate, is higher than the US average. Gangs in Chicago have a role in the city's crime rate. The number of homicides in Chicago hit a 25-year high in 2021.
Crime in Toronto has been low in comparison to other major cities. In 2024, a ranking of 60 large cities by The Economist ranked Toronto as the 6th safest major city in the world, and the safest major city in North America. In the same year, CEOWORLD magazine, which includes some major medium-sized cities, ranked Toronto as the 160th safest city in the world, running behind several other major cities including Taipei, Munich, and Jerusalem, as well as, in Canada, Quebec City and Ottawa, but safer than most cities in the United States.
Gangs in Canada are mostly present in the major urban areas of Canada, although their activities are not confined to large cities.
Crime in Brazil involves an elevated incidence of violent and non-violent crimes. Brazil's homicide rate was 21.26 per 100,000 inhabitants in 2021, according to the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC). Brazil has one of the highest number of intentional homicides in the world with 57,358 in 2018. In recent years, the homicide rate in Brazil has begun to decline. The homicide rate was 20.89 per 100,000 in 2019 with 43,073 killings, down from 30.59 per 100,000 with 63,788 killings in 2017.
Crime and violence affect the lives of millions of people in Latin America. Some consider social inequality to be a major contributing factor to levels of violence in Latin America, where the state fails to prevent crime and organized crime takes over State control in areas where the State is unable to assist the society such as in impoverished communities. In the years following the transitions from authoritarianism to democracy, crime and violence have become major problems in Latin America. The region experienced more than 2.5 million murders between 2000 and 2017. Several studies indicated the existence of an epidemic in the region; the Pan American Health Organization called violence in Latin America "the social pandemic of the 20th century." Apart from the direct human cost, the rise in crime and violence has imposed significant social costs and has made much more difficult the processes of economic and social development, democratic consolidation and regional integration in the Americas.
Crime in Atlanta, Georgia is above the national median and has been a major problem for the city since the middle 20th century.
Crime in Honduras has become a growing matter of concern for the Honduran population in recent years. Honduras has experienced alarmingly high levels of violence and criminal activity, with homicide rates reaching a peak in 2012, averaging 20 homicides per day. Corruption, extortion, coercion, and drug smuggling also run rampant throughout Honduran society, preventing the nation from building trustworthy authorities like police, and severely limiting economic, social, or political progress. The situation has prompted international organizations and governments to offer assistance in combating crime in Honduras.
Crime in California refers to crime occurring within the U.S. state of California.
In 2019, 43,686 crimes were reported in the U.S. state of Michigan. Crime statistics vary widely by location. For example, Dearborn has a murder rate of only 2.1 per 100,000 while sharing borders with Detroit and Inkster, some of the highest rates in the state.
Rates of crime in Guatemala are very high. An average of 101 murders per week were reported in 2018. The countries with the highest crime and violence rates in Central America are El Salvador and Honduras. In the 1990s Guatemala had four cities feature in Latin America's top ten cities by murder rate: Escuintla, Izabal (127), Santa Rosa Cuilapa (111) and Guatemala City (101). According to New Yorker magazine, in 2009, "fewer civilians were reported killed in the war zone of Iraq than were shot, stabbed, or beaten to death in Guatemala," and 97% of homicides "remain unsolved." Much of the violent nature of Guatemalan society stems back to a 36-year-long civil war However, not only has violence maintained its presence in the post-war context of the country following the Guatemalan Civil War, but it has extended to broader social and economic forms of violence.
Crime in Denmark is combated by the Danish Police and other agencies.
Crime in Oakland, California began to rise during the late 1960s after the King assassination riots, and by the end of the 1970s Oakland's per capita murder rate had risen to twice that of San Francisco or New York City. In 1983, the National Journal referred to Oakland as the "1983 crime capital" of the San Francisco Bay Area. Crime continued to escalate during the 1980s and 1990s, and during the first decade of the 21st century Oakland has consistently been listed as one of the most dangerous large cities in the United States.
Crime in Finland is combated by the Finnish police and other agencies.
New York State's highest court ruled yesterday that a central provision of the state's capital punishment law violated the State Constitution.
