Forbes, August 2025
As National Guard troops from Ohio, Mississippi, Tennessee, and other states flood into Washington, D.C. under the Trump administration’s “crime crackdown,” one thing is missing: a crisis. In fact, crime in the nation’s capital is at a historic low.
Violent crime is down 26% year-over-year, according to the Metropolitan Police Department. Nationally, the FBI’s most recent Uniform Crime Report shows a nearly 6% drop in violent crime, an 11% decrease in property crime, a 15% reduction in murders, and a 25% drop in motor vehicle theft. The post-pandemic crime spike? All but gone.
And yet, instead of investing in the public health, education, and social programs that have helped cities like D.C. drive down crime, the federal government has chosen to deploy troops. At the same time, researchers at Northeastern University’s Crime Prevention Lab are sounding a different kind of alarm. In the latest issue of the Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science, criminologists Brandon Welsh and Eric Piza argue that the strongest crime-fighting tools available to American cities aren’t handcuffs and jail cells, but preschools and streetlights.
