JOHN YANG: As the COVID-19 pandemic spread across the country, crime rates surged to highs not seen in decades.

But now crime trends appear to be shifting.

Ali Rogin has the latest on what new research says about the state of crime in America and the best practices for curving it.

ALI ROGIN: A new report from the Council on Criminal Justice provides new insight on crime levels for the first half of this year.

Data from 37 cities shows that most crime has gone down compared to last year, but levels are still higher since before the pandemic.

The most notable exception is a large increase in motor vehicle theft.

At the same time the number of homicides dropped sharply over 9 percent lower than the first half of 2022.

Adam Gelb is the founder, president and CEO of the Council on Criminal Justice, which is a nonprofit Think Tank focusing on criminal justice reform.

And Thaddeus Johnson is a Senior Research Fellow for Council on Criminal Justice who studies policing, crime control and governance equity.

Thank you both so much for joining me.

Adam, let's start with you.

Walk us through some of the main findings of this report.

ADAM GELB, President and CEO, Council on Criminal Justice: Sure, the headlines here are that we have a significant decrease in homicide 9 percent.

It would be historic if it stays that way throughout the year, and then a significant increase in motor vehicle theft.

The rest of the crimes are pretty flat, trending downwards, downwards somewhat slightly.

And we do still see unfortunately, elevated levels of homicide and violent crimes in particular.

And with respect to all of that the actual doubling of the rate of auto theft today compared to 2019.

ALI ROGIN: What are the factors behind that?

ADAM GELB: Yeah, but this is one of the most interesting things about what's happened over the last couple of years.

You know, it takes three things to have a crime, you've got motive, means and opportunity.

Here with a motor vehicle theft, it really highlights the role that opportunity plays.

And that is, particularly with two types of models of cars, Hyundais and Kias became a lot easier to steal.

And there was a TikTok video that showed you how to do that, but a very simple way.

And so all of a sudden, we see this significant rise in auto theft, not because people have different reasons for doing it.

But it's just easier to do.

ALI ROGIN: Thaddeus, I want to talk to you about crime reduction methods.

What are some of the proven methods that you have seen in some of these communities that really work?

And how much can we attribute these declines in the cities that this report looked at to those crime reduction methods?

THADDEUS JOHNSON: That's the billion dollar question, right.

And it's difficult to really pinpoint the exact causes of the crime trends.

But at a fundamental level, we can think about the pandemic and the associated shutdowns, they disrupted the way police and service providers were able to engage and serve our communities, especially those at greatest risk of community violence.

And so one key strategy has been focusing on the small number of people and places where violent crime is concentrated.

For instance, the report showed that in Philadelphia that 1 percent of the population was responsible for about 60 or 70 percent of the crimes.

And so police are turned away from the stop and frisk type of policing.

And they've turned to a more intelligence driven policing that draws on police intelligence, crime mapping, risk terrain mapping, says social network analysis that identify these people does not just police, it's not just communities, we need each other.

And the most effective strategies are the ones that really emphasize that relationship.

ALI ROGIN: I want to pick up Adam on another thing you said, which is that crime levels are still higher than they were pre-pandemic.

So how should people be looking at this?

It seems like it's a mixed bag of results.

ADAM GELB: I think that's right, it is a mixed bag.

Mostly it's coming down, though.

And so I think it's very optimistic and we can be guardedly optimistic about where things are headed.

And there's no magic wands, just to be clear, but we know what can work that just outlines several of the other things, and that we now just need the leadership and the political will to do them.

ALI ROGIN: Thaddeus, I wonder, are there methods that you believe can be replicated across the country?

Or is it very important to make city by city applications of these things?

And essentially, no one size fits all?

THADDEUS JOHNSON: No, you're absolutely right.

It's person base.

It's placed based.

It's time based.

It involves communities.

It involves the police.

It involves technology.

It involves data driven, smart policing.

And again, I will emphasize, it involves police and communities working together, particularly our communities, our most vulnerable.

And these are the places that really want the police, despite what the narratives may be nationwide, however, the trust and legitimacy of policing and the history, and many of these neighborhoods have been a big issue.

And it's hard to build this without trust.

But the right cities and the smart cities have worked to engage and build those relationships, because that forms the core.

And so it's not really complex.

It's about relationships.

It's about focusing on what's good and tailoring those things for your community based on these principles and evidence based practices.

ALI ROGIN: Thaddeus, I'd like to stick with you.

Why are communities of color disproportionately impacted by crime?

And they're often not part of the conversation when it comes to policing methods?

Why is that and how can that be changed?

THADDEUS JOHNSON: Unfortunately, black and brown communities bear the brunt of violent victimization, and offending, it doesn't mean that these communities are broken that these people are inherently more valid.

And so many times these communities, they don't want to defund the police.

They want to have policing there.

But we have to get past this actual level of this trust.

And this history that we have and oftentimes has caused them to be on the serve is also called these communities to withdraw from these table because they've been disenfranchised.

They haven't been empowered.

So we have to get permission from these communities with these ideas.

We can't just come in and act like we're invaders.

It's important that we come in as partners and put them first.

Adam Gelb and Thaddeus Johnson with the Council on Criminal Justice.

Thank you both so much for joining us.

THADDEUS JOHNSON: Thanks for having us.