Krugman and the Politics of Falling Crime

Krugman claims Trump “won’t mention” the good news about plunging crime rates. In fact, Trump has repeatedly highlighted the decline. During this year’s State of the Union address, he declared: “In the last year, the murder rate saw its single largest decline in recorded history. This is the biggest decline, think of it, in recorded history, the lowest number in over 125 years, since 1900.” He has repeated that claim in speeches, social media posts, and televised Cabinet meetings. FBI Director Kash Patel and other administration officials have likewise credited the administration’s policies after the Council on Criminal Justice reported historically low homicide levels.

Krugman writes that murders are “approaching lows not seen since the 1960s in a number of big cities.” The national numbers tell an even more remarkable story. Since national recordkeeping began in 1900, the previous record-low murder rate was approximately 4.5 per 100,000 people. The rate stood at about 5.0 per 100,000 in 2024, but fell to just under 4.0 in 2025, and, if the Council on Criminal Justice’s reported 18% decline in murders across the nation’s 30 largest cities during the first half of 2026 reflects the national trend, the U.S. murder rate will fall to roughly 3.25 per 100,000 this year – the lowest rate ever recorded.

Reducing crime is not complicated. Governments reduce crime by increasing the certainty of arrest and conviction, imposing meaningful prison sentences, and allowing law-abiding citizens to defend themselves. Recent developments have moved in all three directions.

The FBI dramatically increased enforcement in 2025. FBI arrests rose 184% over 2024 levels, while total FBI arrests – including many joint operations with state and local agencies – increased 197%.

Voters also replaced several George Soros-backed prosecutors in jurisdictions such as Los Angeles and San Francisco with district attorneys who prosecute criminals more aggressively and seek tougher sentences. Across the country, President Trump’s U.S. attorneys have likewise pursued violent offenders far more aggressively than their predecessors. In Washington, D.C., for example, the Biden administration’s U.S. attorney declined to prosecute 67% of those arrested. Under U.S. Attorney Jeanine Pirro, that figure has fallen to just 4%.

The decline in crime has also coincided with increased immigration enforcement. During the Trump administration, approximately 70% of deported illegal immigrants had either criminal convictions or pending criminal charges. Even those without criminal records understand that contact with law enforcement can lead to deportation, giving them a stronger incentive to avoid criminal activity.

It isn’t a coincidence that felony violent crime rates soared by a record 59% during the Biden administration; we had a record influx of illegals coming into the country, and violent crime is plummeting now that the border is closed and illegals are being deported. During the Biden administration, at least 12.8 million illegal aliens either surrendered at the border, were apprehended after crossing illegally, or became known gotaways, but no one knows how many more millions of additional illegals entered without being detected.

More Americans are also carrying concealed handguns for protection. Surveys show that the share of general election voters who carry concealed handguns increased from 24.3% in December 2024 to 30.9% in July 2026. Hispanic and black voters are carrying at substantially higher rates than white voters. Among those who carry all or most of the time, Hispanics and blacks are 2.6 times more likely than whites to do so. That pattern matters because if you are going to reduce violent crime, you must ensure that the most likely victims can defend themselves.

Krugman instead attributes the decline in violent crime to the Biden administration’s American Rescue Plan. Yet decades of academic research find that economic factors such as welfare payments, poverty rates, and similar measures explain only a few percentage points of the variation in crime rates. By contrast, studies consistently find that criminal justice variables – including arrest rates, conviction rates, sentence lengths, and the death penalty – account for over half of the variation.

Krugman ultimately argues that “the cruelty is the point” and that punishment serves no public-safety purpose (“Punishment isn’t a means to an end, a way to fight crime; it’s an end in itself”). According to Krugman, Trump cannot acknowledge falling crime because doing so would prevent him from continuing his policy of cruelty and inflicting pain. Whatever one thinks of the administration’s motives, the relevant question is whether its policies have reduced violent crime. If those policies have contributed to the historic decline in murders, then they have also saved lives – including many black lives, since black Americans accounted for almost half of murder victims in 2024.