The Progress Report: Crime Plummets in 2025!

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Zachary Karabell: What could go right. I’m Zachary Karabell, the founder of The Progress Network, joined by my co-host, Emma Varvaloucas, the Executive Director of The Progress Network, and this is our weekly Progress Report where we look at some tidbits, some news that you shouldn’t lose, but almost certainly would have missed because it’s not usually news will lead us. a series or maybe more like chamber music. ’cause we don’t do a whole, you know, full orchestra of multiple movements of some stories of the week and the month and the year that she has found interesting. And therefore, all of us must

Emma Varvaloucas: I think people are gonna find this interesting. Well, maybe they won’t. Maybe they’ll be completely bored. But if you are, don’t tell me. Tell me that. It was interesting. 

Zachary Karabell:Let’s talk about, lie to me. I promise I’ll believe.

Emma Varvaloucas: yeah. Absolutely please. And it’s shaping up to be a potentially record breaking year, insofar as low crime rates. Did a newsletter on this, this week. There’s a lot of data to report usual caveats about, we don’t know if these trends are gonna hold, but so far, first quarter plus of 2025 is looking very nonviolent, very peaceful, very demure, very mindful.

So. First four months of 2025, we’ve had the lowest counts of mass shootings with four or more fatalities. And some of these like very specific definitions are just how the experts define these things. So, lowest count since the first four months of 2006, which is the first year that data began to be collected in this particular mass shooting database shootings with at least four victims killed or wounded are also down in the first four months of this year compared to the same time period last year.

We’ve had zero mass shootings that have occurred in public. And for context, there were three last year and a record 10 in 2023. So all these mass shooting data is down. We’ve had a homicide rate drop of a little over 20% in the first quarter of 2025. The crime, he’s sort of like the internet. Of crime analysis.

His name is Jeff Asher and he has a great substack. Considering the possibility that 2025 could feature the lowest murder rate ever recorded since Reliable Data became available in the sixties, so previous record was 2014. And these would be, if it do, I mean if it does end up beating that record, it’s a rate that was equivalent to the early and mid sixties when, when data first began to be collected.

Also violent crime is down 11% again, the first quarter of 2025. Property crime down 13.8%. So just, yeah, lots of it’s a particularly safe time to be in the United States insofar as violent crime goes.

Zachary Karabell: Now I am sure there are many who will point to the new administration as a factor in that it’s not clear. These things follow national politics, and there has been a somewhat of a mystery around the ebbs and flows of crime. So when crime radically spiked in the 1970s and 1980s. All sorts of explanations from decaying cities to rampant illegal drug use to white flights were all proffered as explanations.

And then crime started coming down in the 1990s and 2000s, and the odds in every city in the United States, sort of irrespective of what had a Republican mayor, a Democratic mayor, almost irrespective of whether it had a city government that people thought was good or bad. Everywhere crime started decreasing.

There were some exceptions. Detroit lagged and Baltimore lagged, and places like Wichita lagged and East St. Louis. But overall things just got safer and safer and safer. And then the pandemic happened and crime rose everywhere. That was probably not so mysterious, right? Feeling a complete societal breakdown, combined with the whole black Lives Matter, George Floyd protests, questioning of police force.

You know, there’s a whole series of things that kind of make sense. Now without much change in actual policy, crime is coming down again, which is great. But it’s, it’s interesting the degrees to which these things kind of move nationally and happen mysteriously.

Emma Varvaloucas: So I have a little bit of info to challenge that somewhat because I was diving into this and it is certainly true that the pandemic, I’m sure has something to do with this up for debate how much the George Floyd protests and what followed, including a lot of community violence interruption programs that the Biden administration funded, how much that effect crime rates.

But there is a professor at the University of Montana, his name is James Tuttle, and he has a pretty persuasive art argument that. The rise in crime and the subsequent fall has actually a lot less to do with the pandemic and more to do with long-term societal trends that began in the mid 2000 tens.

So for him, that was like, basically it’s three markets that were mushrooming previous to the pandemic. That’s fentanyl, firearms and alcohol consumption. And once all three of those markets peaked, which they all did right around the pandemic, like around 2021, basically between 2021 and 2024, that’s when the, the crime rates also started to come down, particularly the homicide rates and other rates that are kind of, I don’t wanna say correlated.

Yeah, correlated with, with the, the homicide rates. 

Zachary Karabell: So, that’s interesting.

And it’s true. I mean, all the statistics point to people drinking less, but I mean, even the reasons for that are somewhat mysterious in the sense of it’s not like there’s been a nationwide push. I. To reduce alcohol consumption. There’s never been like war on alcohol the way there was a war on drugs.

It just kind of, it’s as if everybody collectively decided, you know,

maybe we’ll have kombucha instead of a

Emma Varvaloucas: Yeah,

and that actually, I mean, per your original argument might have to do with the pandemic because when people talk about that, they do tend to throw around the light. Everyone kind of had this health craze thing during the pandemic that kind of stuck around. So they’re all kind of intertangled, interwoven, interrelated.

Hard to pull out exactly what’s happening as you were saying. But I did find that I haven’t read that analysis anywhere else that I thought that was very interesting. Yeah.

Zachary Karabell: Okay, next.

Emma Varvaloucas: Next,

let’s talk about another Trump administration thing that I liked. He, Trump just signed it this week. It’s in the model of other bills that have gone through various states and then also abroad.

Italy is kind of leading the charge on this. So there’s like this weird bipartisan field in which like far right kind of nationalist governments have championed this in as much as liberal and left governments. But Giorgia Meloni, specifically in Italy was the one to get Europe going on this, that basically it bans revenge porn.

Specifically also mentions the manipulation of AI imagery and the creation of AI imagery around revenge porn makes deep fix generated by AI that you must take them down 40 hours after a victim’s request. I think this is a huge step for it. I know there are concerns around this. It’s afar as free speech and whatnot and whatnot, but, I am very pro.

Zachary Karabell: Yeah, no, I think the concerns are simply was the legislation written in such a way that someone’s AI enhanced imagery that’s vaguely sexual could somehow be prosecuted as, as opposed to really clearly defining what revenge porn is. I mean, to some degree, there should be no real confusion about what revenge porn and deep fakes are in that, you know, they are clearly what they are.

The, the issue is will some zealous prosecutor use. Sloppily written enforcement language and legislation to criminalize and penalize things that one should absolutely not criminalize. But yeah, I mean, I’m totally in favor of the, these are not things that should be just allowed to go, oh,

well, sorry. Oops.

Emma Varvaloucas: It’s surprising to me that we’re in a world in which that was accomplished by Trump of all people.

Zachary Karabell: The take it down aspect of it, meaning websites have to comply with a. Request to remove something is really, I think, the most important aspect of that because in many ways it, there’s a mechanism for dealing with this that does not involve prosecution and

also doesn’t involve the time that prosecution takes.

Emma Varvaloucas: Right, exactly.

Exactly. The 48 hours is fantastic. I mean, it really, I mean, you know, advocates for laws like this will tell you that the devil’s really in the details insofar as how it’s executed and whether. Police departments are enforcing this and how they’re enforcing it, and if it’s clear to victims where they can go to get something enforced.

So that’s all going to matter. But this applying federally is an amazing first step for people that this has happened to. So let’s, let’s thank everyone involved in that. And Taylor Swift, who really got this momentum going originally, actually, so. All right, let’s move on from the us. Let’s very quickly end with this kind of sweet item from Guinea, Baal. love including countries that we’ve never spoken about on the podcast. And I’m pretty sure you’ve never included Guinea basal. Guinea Baal is holding its first art biennial. I can never say that correctly ’cause I get confused between the American and the British pronunciation.

Zachary Karabell: I think it’s Biennial.

Emma Varvaloucas: Bial Biennial.

Zachary Karabell: It’s either

Emma Varvaloucas: By, by an by anyway. Two year interna, an international arts festival that occurs every two years.

Zachary Karabell: doing. It’s doing. It’s two year art festival thing.

Emma Varvaloucas: Yes. Why is that progress? It is a major feat for the country because the country has no art galleries. It has no art schools, and it doesn’t even have like a framing shop, or I should say it has nearly no art galleries.

But definitely doesn’t have a framing shop per the New York Times article that I saw that in. And so, almost didn’t happen. A bunch of funding from abroad at the very last moment was cut. They overcome loss of challenges, they overcame loss of challenges, but they’re doing it. And it’s running through May 31st.

If anyone finds themself in Katie Baal

Zachary Karabell: 10 days.

Emma Varvaloucas: 10 days

Zachary Karabell: run, run. Don’t walk

Emma Varvaloucas: within the next weeks, by the time this is will be published. But still, I think it’s nice and I, I like, I like hearing about people who are overcoming difficult

circumstances. It’s a great reminder.

Zachary Karabell: aside. Festivals

are. Often an indication of some degree of civil society, coherent and are usually an act of either quiet hope or quiet defiance of whatever ale society. Yes, there’s plenty of examples of political art where they’re also protest and they are standing against X, Y, and Z, but in many places they are much more ae. To be really cliched about it, a triumph of the human spirit, a way of honoring creativity over destruction, a way of honoring that spirit more than whatever is existing in the milieu at the given time. And so, hence why we are celebrating this in and admittedly not often talked about Sub-Saharan

African country

Emma Varvaloucas: In in a positive way, right? Because

normally when. When they’re included, it’s to talk about war and poverty and disease. So

Zachary Karabell: Exactly. So

Emma Varvaloucas: that’s what I got

Zachary Karabell: cool.

All right, well thank you all for listening. Come back next week. We will have more interesting stories from obscure countries. That is, that is definitely one of our, one of our brands. And thank you, Emma. Thank you for scouring the world.

Emma Varvaloucas: scouring the world. I wish I could actually scour the world, you know?

Zachary Karabell: Yeah.

Emma Varvaloucas: So thank you everyone for, for listening. Please tune in next week, as Zachary said, and thank you as always to the Podglomerate for producing and everyone at The Progress Network editorial staff that makes all of the behind the scenes work happen, but especially to you guys for tuning into us hopefully every Friday.