So what is going on with these murder rates?
One way of looking at this is to see it not so much as London getting massively more violent, but rather New York achieving an astonishing drop in its murder rate.
The tally of 290 New York murders in 2017 – while still much higher than London’s corresponding total – has been hailed in America as a hugely encouraging breakthrough. It is definitely the lowest annual murder total since comparable New York records began in 1994 and it is being reported as the city’s lowest number of homicides since the end of the Second World War.
It is also indicative of the fact that since recording 2,245 murders in 1990 and 1,905 in 1989, the city has achieved great things in tackling violent crime – albeit that the precise reasons for the success are hotly debated.
London’s recent history, meanwhile, has been mostly one of steady if unspectacular drops in the murder rate, from 181 homicides in 2005 to 155 in 2007 and 101 in 2013.
When the annual London murder total dropped to 93 in 2014, it was hailed as a great success, the first time since the 1960s that there had been fewer than 100 homicides in a year in the capital.
Since then, of course, London’s annual murder totals have increased: from 93 in 2014 to 116 in 2017, a rise of nearly 25 per cent.
It’s worth remembering, though, that if you look over a time frame of a decade, there were 25 per cent fewer murders in the capital in 2017 than in 2007.
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white talking point Chris
