There’s a mantra that all politics is local, and because the idea behind that mantra is so ingrained, we tend to think all policy is local, too. And no issue feels more local than crime. In fact, crime is even more local than it feels. Criminologists have long demonstrated that most violence in a community occurs on just a few blocks. With those facts in place, I am here to make the case that what criminology really needs is to study crime at the national level. The study of national crime trends—what we are calling macro-criminology—is the missing mechanism in understanding crime.

When I raise the idea of macro-criminology, I am usually asked: How does crime in New York City affect crime in Chicago? This question hides an important, but understudied, relationship. It is not that crime in one place directly affects another, but rather that the same forces act on crime in many places. Recently, the COVID-19 pandemic radically changed how Americans went about their daily lives, and it did so almost everywhere. There were COVID-19 effects on crime in both New York City and Chicago. Understanding where those effects were the same and where they were different can yield important information about improving public safety.

Most other disciplines acknowledge that large-scale forces affect local conditions. Physicists must reconcile the behavior of subatomic particles within the structure of the cosmos. Economists must integrate theories of individual decision-making with models of entire economies. Public health leaders must balance allowing individuals to make their own health choices with the need for collective action against public health threats. Both macro- and micro-factors are studied to understand the whole.

Criminology, by contrast, typically lacks a “macro” focus. While there are countless theories about individual behavior and community dynamics, the study of crime as a large-scale phenomenon remains fragmented, relying on extrapolations from smaller-scale studies with large-scale assumptions and leaving a significant gap in our understanding of crime at the societal level. This understanding gap limits the creativity and effectiveness of our policy approaches.

Similarly, macro-criminology could illuminate new ways to approach crime policy. For example, it is difficult to study the ongoing crime drop one city at a time. Nationally, however, the macro-criminological story seems to be (in part) that rapid growth in local government employment—with its direct connection to people and places most at risk of violence and victimization—contributed substantially to the ongoing crime decline. While this relationship may be hard to observe in local data—where a few dozen people were affected by COVID-19 layoffs—the national data clearly show how crime trends rose and fell in lockstep with local governments losing more than one million employees in 2020 and then gaining them back.

In July 2024, the Council on Criminal Justice (CCJ) released a midyear report that shows broad but heterogeneous declines in crime generally and homicide specifically. These data match the spread in homicide declines we see in NORC’s Live Crime Tracker. Of the 28 cities with comparable data for the first half of 2023 and 2024, 19 show a decline in homicides. Seventeen cities show a decline of more than 10 percent, which is an important benchmark because before 2023, homicide (nationally) had never fallen more than 10 percent in one year.

For city leaders, this distinction has practical implications. Some cities in the CCJ study experienced homicide reductions that significantly outperformed the national trend. A macro-criminology approach would prompt these cities’ leaders to identify which local policies or interventions might explain their above-average progress, which would provide valuable lessons that might be shared. Conversely, cities that lag behind the national improvement trend should examine what local factors might be hampering their progress despite favorable national conditions.

It is, therefore, shortsighted for cities to report on and respond to their violence trends without considering this larger national context. When homicide declines across most cities, as it did in 2024, city leaders must distinguish between improvements stemming from broad national factors (like economic conditions or pandemic recovery) versus those resulting from local interventions they can replicate and scale. 

This is not merely an academic exercise. The way we conceptualize crime fundamentally shapes our response to it. Our current narrow focus on criminal justice interventions—oscillating between calls for more policing or more rehabilitation without considering broader contexts—limits our effectiveness and perpetuates cycles of reactive policymaking. 

Establishing macro-criminology as a discipline would transform how we approach public safety in three concrete ways:

• First, it would encourage policymakers to develop dynamic, cycle-responsive strategies—intensifying enforcement during high-crime periods while investing in social infrastructure during low-crime intervals, much as economists adjust fiscal and monetary policy to economic conditions.
• Second, it would integrate crime policy with housing, education, public health, and economic development initiatives, creating comprehensive approaches that address root causes while managing immediate threats. Cities like Atlanta and Minneapolis have begun experimenting with such cross-sectoral approaches, showing promising early results.
• Finally, it would improve resource allocation by helping cities distinguish between local factors they can directly influence and national trends beyond local control. This distinction allows local leaders to focus their efforts where they can have the greatest impact.

The challenges of crime are too important—and their consequences too profound—to address with fragmented theories and siloed approaches. By elevating our perspective to the macro level, we can develop policies that are as sophisticated and multidimensional as the problem they aim to solve. At NORC, our research continues to explore these intersections, working toward a more comprehensive understanding of how communities can create lasting safety and well-being for all residents.