Ferguson‑Effect Reversal

Updated: 2025.12.31 29D ago 2 sources
Some U.S. cities that saw homicide spikes after high‑profile police incidents are now showing sustained declines back toward earlier baselines. If validated across jurisdictions, that reversal would force reevaluation of policing, prosecution, and community‑trust tradeoffs used to explain the 2015–2021 homicide rise. — Demonstrating a coordinated return to prior homicide levels would reshuffle policy debates about the causes of the violence spike, the effectiveness of policing strategies, and the role of media narratives in shaping public fear.

Sources

The racial reckoning murder spree is over
Steve Sailer 2025.12.31 100% relevant
Steve Sailer points to Baltimore’s homicide rate returning near 1977 levels and cites the Freddie Gray riot (April 27, 2015) as the local start of the earlier surge.
Ten things that are going right in America
Noah Smith 2025.12.28 78% relevant
Noah Smith’s article highlights falling violence and murder rates as one of the central positive trends; that directly parallels the existing idea that recent homicide spikes have begun reversing as policing and social norms normalize. The article supplies the same empirical claim (murders down, violence easing) and uses it to argue for broader social recovery.
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