On 13 May the FBI released an early look at annual crime data. From FBI.gov:
“The preliminary data show violent crime decreased an estimated 9.3% from 2024 to 2025.”
- Murder and non-negligent manslaughter decreased an estimated 18.1%
- Rape decreased an estimated 7.6%.
- Robbery decreased an estimated 18.5%.
- Aggravated assault decreased an estimated 7.2%.
These encouraging statistics arrived to the sound of two parties assuming their predictable positions. The numbers show a real decline in violent and property crime, which is good news by any measure, but in today’s political climate, even good news becomes something to weaponize.
The dominant party in power has been quick to credit the current administration and its strict immigration policies. There’s a partial truth there. Young males make up the majority of illegal immigration—some 70% of border encounters. Crime is heavily influenced by demographics, and reducing the influx of young males—who statistically commit a disproportionate share of certain offenses, regardless of nationality—can reduce crime in absolute terms. But this is not the same story told by anti‑immigration activists, who often frame the issue in ways that don’t align with the broader data.
The opposition counters with its own partial truth: the downward trend began before the current president took office. That’s correct in a narrow sense, but incomplete. Much of the decline reflects the unwinding of the pandemic‑era spike—an aberration driven by social disruption, economic shock, and the collapse of routine structures that normally suppress crime.
There’s another factor the current administration can point to, one that rarely makes headlines: police morale. Law enforcement tends to be more effective when officers feel supported—financially, politically, and socially. Speaking only from personal experience, and without assuming that a part represents the whole, many officers I know felt abandoned during the height of anti‑police rhetoric. In some cities, that rhetoric translated into policy, and the resulting demoralization had real operational consequences. Reversing that atmosphere doesn’t fix everything, but it matters.
But these partisan arguments, while loud, miss the deeper structural shift happening beneath the surface. The biggest crime‑reduction tool in America may not be a policy at all—it’s the smartphone. Yes, you read that right.
More specifically, it’s the way the smartphone has reshaped the daily lives of young people. A generation that spends more time indoors, online, and socially isolated simply has fewer opportunities to commit traditional street crimes. You can’t steal a car from your mother’s basement. You can’t get into a fight if you never go outside. The decline in youth engagement with the physical world has many troubling implications, but one of its side effects is a measurable reduction in certain types of crime.
So we’re left with a strange picture: good news that neither side can fully claim, shaped by forces neither side fully controls. And yet the political coalitions tear at it in bad faith, like hostile dogs tugging at the same piece of meat, each insisting it belongs to them.
In a civilization this polarized, even shared victories become battlegrounds. And that’s why, in moments like this, it’s hard not to notice a deeper truth: Hypocrisy is the glue that holds collapsing coalitions together, and when the bond is that weak, the wheels of history keep turning until they come off.
Outside The Box 