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The United States has seen a strong increase in violent crime. There can be many reasons why we’re seeing this increase in crime such as the increase in guns being brought or the rise in poverty due to the pandemic which might cause issues such robberies turn into worse. There have been steps taken to reduce this such as president Biden giving cities permission to use covid stimulus funds to fund the police with them being able to take $350 billion to do so. He also directed the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives to revoke the license of gun dealers who fail to run background checks. The justice department has started strike forces in San Francisco, Chicago, New York, Los Angeles and Washington, D.C. The goal of this is to reduce gun trafficking. These steps are all important because if they are successful they can help reduce gun violence and violent crime, two serious issues in society. 

But one of the best ways to tackle the crime issue is to tackle the poverty issue. Even with poverty dropping to 9.1% there is still much more work to be done. A study from the university at Hilo shows that a 1% rise in poverty would amount to a 2.16% rise in crime and a 2.57% rise in violent crime. Also given the 30% rise in murder rates from 2019 to 2020 the year when covid hit the U.S. I believe it. There have also been steps taken to cut poverty such as the $1.9 trillion American rescue plan which included unemployment insurance, stimulus checks, child tax credits, and more. It’s common knowledge that deprived communities have higher crime rates. So if these steps that the government is taking does not work the next solution needs to be to stop leaving certain communities in the dust and working to rebuild these communities and make them livable. It’s obvious we can’t take everyone out of these communities but what we can do is make them livable.

But the sole reason behind this is the pandemic which has caused most of the issues I listed that have contributed to the rise in crime.  Once the pandemic is actually handled, which nobody actually knows when that will be, we will see a reduction in both crime and poverty. There has been sort of a return to normalcy with school being reopened, mandates being dropped, and covid cases dropping drastically. So the real questions are will it stay this way and will crime and poverty drop with covid cases. 

By: Dantrell